Review: Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
Kudos must go to Stephanie Meyer. Round of applause to the woman who made a killing and fools out of a great many of us by writing waffle. No really, I do admire her balls for continuing to battle on with this series of nothingness. Who needs compelling, lively characters? Who needs a seamless plot full of twists, surprises and fascinating connections? Who needs beautiful prose painting a wonderful mental image of a colourful setting? Not Stephanie! Some paper, a pen and no ideas will do for her!
I mean what is this? Come on Stephanie, what are we actually looking at here? This was by far my most hated of the Twilight saga. I truly do not know what I was thinking the day I decided to pick up Eclipse.
Bella needs a good old shake. She is such a non-person. She may as well be a cardboard cutout on wheels with which to push her to the next location. A strong gust of wind and she'll be over, or blown into the forest surrounding Forks, wrapped around a redwood, fluttering like a rag and eventually picked apart by crows who will use her to built their nests. That is unless Edward catches ahold of her first and props her back up again. She has no substance. She doesn't care about her grades, getting into college and actually making something of herself. She has no regard for the feelings of her friends and family and seems quite happy at the thought of abandoning them, grieving for her for the rest of their lives. She seems, unsurprisingly to have lost all of her friends, only visiting Angela to please Charlie. All she can see is Edward and it's not healthy! She needs to wake up and get out into the world.
But no .... Instead, at the end of the book she agrees to marry Edward, further closing off her options and choices for the future. It's not even as if she really wants to marry him, she just wants to have sex with him. Last time I checked, there's nothing to stop you having sex before you're married. Some people will disagree with me on this. However, it's 2013. We're all big boys and girls. As long as we're safe, consenting and of an appropriate age why shouldn't we enjoy sex and feel free to make an informed choice that includes knowing all aspects of a person before we marry them? I think this should have been a clue to Bella that it is time to think about walking away from this "relationship" with Edward. It's all very well being physically attracted to each other but if their basic values and ideas don't match up (for example whether sex before marriage is right or wrong .....) then it's doomed to failure. But of course cardboard Bella being cardboard Bella, she folds where Edward asks her to fold. I don't like having this little moral lesson snuck up on me like that, not necessary Stephanie, not necessary.
Like the characters, the plot of Eclipse wasn't up to much either. Victoria has got to be the most pointless, ridiculous villain ever. There's a whole family of vampires and a whole pack of werewolves and they still can't catch the bitch until right at the end of the book! I'm not even sure what Victoria is so up on her high horse about anyway ... The Cullen family killed James, uh huh, but Victoria's actions seem way out of proportion to the event that angered her. There are other way to settle this score without resorting to raising an army. Whatever happened to subtlety? Whatever happened to a surprising plot twist? The whole story is just lazy and seems to descend into listing things and endless repetitions of the vomit-inducing love triangle between Edward, Jacob and Bella. Why can't they just live their lives?
In the end all I can say is congratulations to Stephanie Meyer for tricking me into giving her more of my money. Maybe she's smarter than her writing makes her appear because for all I dislike this series I still parted with cash to buy all four books.
Stephanie Meyer: 1
Me: 0
x
