Eclipse

Hey avid readers! So today is the last day of summer. In a weird sort of way I am ready to start school because I figure that I will be able to get my hard classes over quicker. But I am excited to start the new year as a JUNIOR! WOOOO UPPERCLASSMAN! But for the last review of the summer, I am going to do the next Stephenie Meyer novel Eclipse. Here we go!

Characters: Again I am just going to add the new characters. If you want a more complete list, check out my previous reviews of New Moon and Eclipse
Victoria: vampire that is creating a newborn army/trying to kill Bella/was James's mate
Jasper Cullen: Edward's "brother"/can control the emotions of people around him/has the most fighting experience out of all the Cullens
Jane: one of the Volturi/can make people believe they are in inexplicable pain/has a twin named Alec
*None of these characters are new, they just play a more central role in this novel*

Plot: Bella Swan has just barely survived her last run-in with the Volutri and she is not hungry for another visit. However, her next meeting may be sooner rather than later. As the vampire police force, the Volutri are responsible for keeping the vampires' secret. So when a group of vampires threaten to expose their entire existence, the Volutri act. Quickly. And with a new vampire threat from Seattle looming over the horizon, the Cullens and Bella have to figure out how to prevent a Volutri intervention before they discover Bella is still human. And with Jacob Black still vying for her heart, will Bella choose to stay with Edward, the one she truly loves, or turn to Jacob, her best friend?

What I liked: I think Eclipse had the most interesting concept of the Twilight novels written at that point. The idea of having a newborn army marching on Forks was a potentially great storyline. However, I think the potential for the novel is the extent of my praise. Meyer could have done so much more with the newborns. But she didn't. However, this is the wrong section for this: this is supposed to be what I liked. Since I can't think of anything else though, I guess I will just have to switch sections.

What I didn't like: As I previously mentioned, the idea of a newborn army is particularly intriguing. Meyer could have taken this opportunity to showcase the unruliness of newborn vampires and how seeing them in action would make Bella hesitate in her desire to become a vampire. Instead, we saw no newborn action because Bela was conveniently in another location. More on that in a moment. But Meyer could have had Volutri spies infiltrating Seattle who discover that Bella is still human in the process. There could have been dramatic show-down scenes with the Cullens and the newborns facing off. Oh right there was one. But we didn't get to read about it because Stephenie Meyer couldn't figure out how to write a battle scene. That is the only logical explanation why we didn't have a back-in-forth section in Eclipse cutting from Edward, Bella and Seth in the mountains to Jacob, the pack, and the Cullens down in the valley. If you also notice, when Meyer actually writes an account from the newborns perspective called The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, you don't experience the fighting scene much there either. Bree (main character) actually ends up coming late, so you see very little of the scene. But back to Eclipse. Meyer totally dropped the ball. But moving on from that and back to Bella aka the worst heroine in existence. So Bella has the nerve to drag along both Edward and Jacob. She strings them both along saying she can't live without them and she needs them both. With Jacob, she won't let him get over her by constantly leading him on and telling him how much she cares about him. She doesn't need him because she has Edward right? And if she does need him, she shouldn't be with Edward. She doesn't have the decency to let Jacob live his own life. She just drags him back into her own. And poor Edward. He puts up with all of Bella's crap and then has to deal with her almost not picking him, making him sit out of the fight because she cannot bear to lose him. For me this was the most annoying thing in the book. You see thousands of wives whose husbands go to war, and I am sure that they cannot bear to lose them either. But they are strong and work to go on with their lives. Bella sniffles and pouts and plots and pretty much blackmails Edward into staying. "If you don't stay, I will be suicidal and put myself in danger." The reason this upsets me is because this isn't an adult novel where women who read this already know that Bella's behavior is unhealthy and unacceptable. Instead, Eclipse is directed at the teenage fan base and they don't know yet that Bella is acting completely ridiculous. If you are going to write a teen novel, you have the duty to create a heroine that is a good example for teen girls, or if you want to create a bad heroine, LET THE AUDIENCE KNOW THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO ACT. Instead, Meyers says again and again how unselfish and brave Bella is. Newsflash. If she was unselfish she would let Jacob go and move on. And if she was brave she would have been in the valley in order to ensure that the Cullens won the battle. Bella is the worst heroine in existence and if you look at a character like Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, even if you don't like the novel, there is really no comparison in terms of strength, bravery, character, unselfishness, and beauty. Bella may be prettier, but Hermione Granger is a beautiful person while Bella is a shallow, self-absorbed creature. Lastly, nothing happened in the over 600 pages. The only real action was the last fifty or so pages but this has become a reoccurring trend in Meyer's novel. No interest until the very end. A lot of buildup, but no results.

Overall: Dull 3 out of 10. I don't have anything else to say about this except I am just glad that the world of Bella Swan consists of only four novels.