Twilight of Bookmonkey: Day Nineteen

Having just finished The Short Second life of Bree Tanner a couple hours ago, I figured that I should give my impressions of the novella on its own before I look at the saga as a whole.

The Good: The book is short, and at 178 pages, it actually feels a lot closer to horror than any of the other books (I've always been a big believer that, Stephen King aside, short stories are the best medium for horror). The book has barely any Bella at all, although she is described as sweet, amazing and special a lot in the one brief interaction Bree has with her. Finally the vampires actually act like vampires, killing people and having serious hunger issues, making them the closest thing I've seen in the entire saga to vampires as I know them.

The Bad: Like Bella, Bree falls in deep teenaged love with a boy about 10 seconds after she meets him. Also the giant fight sequences I missed in Eclipse is also missed in this book. To be fair to the author, writing fight scenes is not her strong suit, so this might be a good thing. Finally there are a number of continuity issues, things that don't match up with the stated events of the novels, which comes across as a little lazy on the part of the editors of the book.

Overall this book is tricky - if you want to read great vampire fiction, this isn't it, but at the same time it is leaps and bounds above the rest of the series from a horror point of view. Unfortunately as it is a fill-in-the-gaps-type story, you really need to read the other books to figure out what is going here, so there you have it.

Next I'll look at the series as a whole and then the soundtrack to New Moon.

Twilight of Bookmonkey: Day Eighteen

Having just finished Breaking Dawn, I can now say that I've read the Twilight Series (my current book, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, is kind of a side novel), and I've got some questions about the films.

1) Why on earth is Breaking Dawn being split into two films?

The first half of the novel focuses on Bella getting pregnant by her husband, and her best friend coming to terms with that. The second half of the book features a possible threat that builds and builds and is then removed by a Deus Ex Machina (basically a magic solution which solves all the problems without the help of the main characters). I'm just not sure how many people are going to want to check out these movies - my kids are pretty tired of the series right now, but that might be because my oldest is in University and my youngest has moved on to the Hunger Games.

2) Why is there so much interest in who is playing one-line characters in the films?

I get that a lot of people are interested in who will play Renesmee (Bella's hyper-aging daughter), as her role in the book is pretty big, but Irina (a vampire who has two lines)? or Riley (a fighting vampire from Eclipse)? Seriously, who cares which star will play these roles for 3-5 minutes of screen time?

3) Is there any way I'm going to see New Moon or Eclipse?

New Moon is in high demand at my library (currently over 200 holds) and Eclipse is out of theatres so I'm not exactly sure how I will get to see either film without shelling out $20 for New Moon or trying to illegally download Eclipse (which I'm very VERY against). I'll do my best to see these films, but it may get kind of tricky.

All right, next we're on to The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner.