When I first started thinking about this blog, I knew that if I was going to write about young adult fantasy, there was one book I couldn’t ignore for very long.  So while I didn’t want to start with Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, I think the day has come to look at it.

If you’ve never heard of Twilight, I’m going to have to respectfully ask what planet you’ve been on recently.  Twilight is the love story of Bella, clutzy book lover, and Edward, ravishingly handsome vampire.  They’ve taken the teenage world by storm and spawned any number of vampire story knock-offs.  Some of which surely make Bela Lugosi, above, turn over in his, er, coffin.

I’ve read all four books in the Twilight series.  And there are few books that leave me so confused about how I feel about them.

You see, here’s the problem–I can tell you all about why they are deeply flawed books.  And yet I read each one in two or three days, and found it very difficult to put them down.  So let’s take both sides of it.

The flaws.  Well, chief in there are the characters.  I can’t tell you much of anything about Bella or Edward as people.  I described Bella as a klutzy book lover, and that is ALL I can tell you about her.  Oh, and she’s in love with Edward.  Madly, obsessively, all-consumingly in love with Edward.  Which kind of works out, because he’s madly, obsessively, all-consumingly in love with her.  And that’s pretty much all I can tell you about him.  Oh…wait…he plays music.  Which we mostly hear about because he wrote Bella a song.

The two leads are one-dimensional characters.  And, in the first book at least, none of the other characters are developed either.  That gets better later in the series…the rest of the vampire clan get their moments to talk about their histories and we find out more about who they each are.  I particularly like Carlisle and Alice.  Jacob has his moments.  Edward and Bella…stay pretty flat.

The all-consuming, to the exclusion of all other interests, romance is…well, it is kind of fun, but it’s also disturbing when you step back long enough to really look at that.  I watched the movie version of The Great Gatsby not that long ago, and there’s a scene where Gatsby stands outside Daisy’s house all night “in case she needs me.”  And I thought–that’s such an Edward thing to do!  Except that it’s clear Gatsby is unhealthily obsessed, and Edward is supposed to be a model for romance.

So there’s some massive problems.  And I know that the writing is really not that great, and even the plots are, well, not usually much more complex than “evil vampires are coming to get us!!!!”

And yet…I found the books so addictive.  Why????  I don’t really know.  The main thing I’ve been able to figure out for myself is that Edward and Bella are really cute when they’re romantic.  Yes, they’re obsessive…but there are a lot of cute, sweet scenes.  And one thing sort of on that note that I do have to give Stephenie Meyer huge points for (minor spoiler here)–way to go on not having them sleep together before they’re married.  Especially when Bella’s only seventeen.  That is so sadly rare in modern stories (books, movies and television) and it’s nice to see that.  And also–concrete proof that it’s possible to write extremely romantic stories without having the characters jump into bed (okay, well, literally they do–but you know what I mean).

Now that I’ve rambled a little about my Twilight conflict, I’m going to give up on inventing my own explanations and just point you to someone who’s already got it all worked out–Cleolinda Jones (maybe you’ve heard of her Movies in Fifteen Minutes parodies?) wrote an absolutely brilliant analysis on Twilight.  Here it is.  I think she’s nailed it on all counts.  And also, she pretty much sums up all of Twilight in this one line: “Omg I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him he loves me!! And he sparkles!”

Yeah.  That’s Twilight.  And the literary analyst in me can’t stand the thing, but my inner teenage girl loves it.  So I’m conflicted.  And, please, by all means–tell me your thoughts about the sparkly vampire.

Author’s Site: http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/