The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

This short novella provides the story of a newborn vampire who appears briefly in the twilight books. Alas, she comes across almost the same as the human protagonist of Twilight, Bella. It feels like a short excursion on "what if Bella had fallen in with bad vampires instead of good ones." It doesn't add much to the stories in the books (the key relevant details are already known.)

On its own, it is a so-so sorry. A vampire girl lives with a bunch of childish vampire-lings. She casually associates with a loner among them because everyone stays away from him. She tries to be good, and ends up starting a relationship with a "good-guy" young vampire (Diego). He disappears shortly thereafter, (rumored to be on reconnaissance). She becomes slightly more friendly with the loner who planned to leave the group during the time of the big fight. She wants to leave too, but also wants to find Diego too. However, near the fight she finds Diego is already dead, but it is too late. She is caught and then killed by the vampire police.

Pretty ho-hum for a plot. There is plenty of violence, but all very tame (comic-book lite). It looks like it is supposed to be character driven. Alas, the characters seem flat and boring, with artificial relationships.

Oh well, I'm sure it made a lot of money for the author.

The Host

After authoring a bestselling series, authors often branch out. Due to their prior fame, they often have a great deal of freedom in their efforts - with millions of fans, they have a built in audience. Some authors use these freedom to take on bold literary challenges. Others put a bunch of junk on a page and collect their check. The Host, alas, falls in to the latter.

In the Twilight series, each book seemed longer, and less edited than the previous book. This book beats them all. It screams out for an abridgment. The first half of the book could easily be reduced to a few pages without negatively impacting the novel.

In spite of this verbosity, the characters seem to suddenly make out-of-character decisions solely for the purpose of advancing the plot. (For instance, the narrator suddenly becomes strongly intent on suicide.)

The story is told from the point of view of a sentient "bug" that is living in a human "host". These peace loving bugs have taken over most of earth, aside from a few rebellious humans. However, the body that our narrator takes over does not give in easily. The host still retains her mind. A lot of the book consists of the two minds conversing with each other. (Having a book about a schizophrenic would not be nearly so interesting.) And of course, the two minds both fall for and passionately kiss two different guys. (It's a chick-book after all.) In the end, the parasite gets a new body and her man, and everybody lives happily ever after.

After this bloated book, a Twilight novella will be a great career move for Meyer.

Vampire books and Steinbeck (Vampire High, Breaking Dawn, New Moon, Eclipse, Cannery Row)

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Vampire High by Douglas Rees

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Friendly vampires seem to be the rage today. I finished the Twilight series over Christmas vacation. Then Vampire High School. Both books took different approaches to 'vampire lore'. But in both, Vampires were mostly just overachievers living among us. They had some special powers, but also fragile personalities. And of course, they fell in love. (and both had a few token Romanians) And they were both told in a first-person stream-of-conscious fashion.

Vampire High was a much lighter book. It seemed to go a little overboard with cliches and stereotypes. But, it was a fun quick read. Perhaps its just a male thing. Quick and too the point. And a nice love story at that.

The Twilight books were much more serious. It seemed that each book in the series got longer and longer, but not necessarily better. Some parts were just not too believable. (Believable vampire books? Perhaps consistency is a better word.) It looks like editing was sacrificed in a rush to get the sequels out. They were good, but not great. It was a big downer to see Bella turn in to a Vampire at the end. I found myself much more interested in Alice and Jacob. The main characters (Edward and Bella) seemed to become bigger and bigger jerks as the story went on, while the supporting characters become more and more interesting. If she continues with the series, a focus on Jacob would probably be the way to go.

Finally, running out of happy vampire books, I picked up Steinbeck's Cannery row. After going to Monterrey this summer, I thought I might be able to 'relate' better to the geography. (Its always nice when you can actually identify certain locations- especially if they have totally changed since the time of the story.) I liked the way the story was told, with a series of very short chapters that could very well be stand-alone stories. Some of the chapters related directly to the main plot about "Mack and the gang" and "Doc", while others seemed to have absolutely no relationship to the main story (yet remained tangentially related to the community.)

Crepusculo (Twilight in Spanish)

After hearing Paramore's "Decode" on an internet radio station, I decided I'd like to see Twilight. The song was really good, and even a bad movie with a good soundtrack can be worth it. (And it helped that my wife really loved the book and was eager to see it.) It turns out the movie was played as the second song in the closing credits - but we sat through the very end. The movie was ok. Things seemed a little disjointed, and the Edward's character did not seem all that interesting. (Though Bella seemed to be pretty good.) There also seemed to be a lot of holes in the 'Vampire-lore' that was spun around the story. My wife told me that the book was better and would fill in a lot of the wholes.
So, I went ot the library to get the book.
Only, they didn't have any copies in stock, and had a gazillion holds on every copy that was checked out. But, they did have a Spanish copy in stock. It had been a while since I read a Spanish book, but I figured a teenage fiction book wouldn't be too hard. (And it helped that I had already seen the movie!) It was actually a pretty easy read. I had to grab the dictionary for a few words. (And then it seemed those words were used over and over again.)
After reading the book, it seems that both leads were horribly miscast. In the movie, Bella was way too cute, and Edward was not nearly cute enough.
The script, however, seemed to do a good job of distilling the essence of the book in two hours. It somehow managed to also include just about all the key scenes from the book. (Though this probably led to the jumpiness in the movie - if you don't pay attention to minute details, you wont catch what's happening unless you have read the book.)
The book itself, I found somewhat tedious. It seemed to be overly repetitive. (Not necessarily in plot, but in the the way that things were explained.)
The vampire lore and the characters of Carlisle and Alice seemed to have a lot of potential to be explored in greater detail. Even more history of Edward could have really helped add to the book.