Self:

Twilight: A Book Review

December 1, 2008 by Kyle Brady
Tags: Book Review, Books, Goodreads, Twilight
As required by the FTC, a Full Disclosure is available - this piece adheres to the Code of Ethics

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I usually don't post book reviews on here, since I belong to one of my favorite sites of all time, Goodreads, that lets me keep track of what I've read, am reading, and what I thought of each book.

But this review is too precious to not mass-distribute, so here it is.

My review of the teenage girl's wet-dream of a book, Twilight.

Probably the singularly most terrible book I've ever read.

I went into this book expecting something interesting and vampire-based (like a pre-ILOVEJESUS Anne Rice novel, or an early Laurell K. Hamilton book), so I didn't come in with any prejudice.

The beginning of the book was tolerable, and I attributed alot of the fluff and nonsense to the introduction of the characters, setting, etc. But I was wrong.

The majority of this book reads like the memoirs of a horny-but-goodgirl teenager, stuck in the world of vampires for no apparent reason. Five pages of describing how a shirt clings to Edward's "muscular chest" because of the "dampness of the fog", while also vaguely describing her girlish reactions, is way too much for the average reader, let alone an audience that veers outside the preteen/post-menopausal range.

Not only does the majority of this book equate to female-oriented softcore porn (like those trash novels you can get at CVS), but Meyer throws out everything interesting and seductive about vampires. Granted, most authors "reinvent" the vampire legend for their works, but she seems to have made a bullet-point list to intentionally discount them. Sunlight? Nope, just makes them shiny. Evil on the inside? No, because some of them drink animals' blood. Crosses/garlic/silver? Laughable.

So basically, he's not a vampire. He's just some sort of superhuman character with no flaws, who lives forever, has super-strength, and feeds off the blood of animals. No weaknesses, only godlike existence.

Great.

Another large discussion point when reviewing this book is it's obvious literary failure. Did Meyer ever graduate from middle school? If so, how can she be so completely oblivious to the standard plot model? 90% of the book is just the inane ramblings of a high school girl who buys clothes, gossips, and semi-dates someone at school. And then Meyer gets within the last handful of pages in the book and seems to think "OH SHIT! I NEED DRAMA!" and throws in some random vampire fight.

Then the book ends.

Full of literary value, Meyer is obviously on par with JK Rowling, Tolkien, and probably even Stephen King.

Finally, many of what readers assume are Meyer's "morals" that she wishes to impart on the audience are actually just Mormon indoctrination. They aren't obvious in this first installment, but I have it on good authority that the later works are extremely obvious in their moral and religious intent. Knowing this, if you go through the book, you can pick out essentially the premise of the entire religion.

This is not acceptable. Yes, authors have a right to religion. Yes, they have a right to impart certain morals, themes, and suggestions on us. But they should not indoctrinate us. C.S. Lewis managed to write epic stories that used the themes of Christianity without preaching. And he is just one of many who accomplish this strange-to-Meyer feat.

All in all, a terrible book. Not worth reading. Ever.

And I don't plan on seeing the movie, nor reading any of the book's sequels

[see and comment on the original, at Goodreads]

Self posts are about me (Kyle Brady), in one form or another.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.