Eclipse

originally written 05/01/2011

I don’t deny that I rather actually enjoyed Twilight and New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, despite myself. However, I found Eclipse much more unwieldy and even a bit of a pain to get through. Manny of the reasons for this were petty—from the tacky profusion of fonts used to the effrontery of the leads comparing themselves to Cathy and Heathcliff—but overall it was frustrating with the lumbering pace of the novel.

Nothing much happens in Eclipse until the last third—the rest is taken up by endless dialogue, exposition, and even worse, monologue. Bella Swan has gone from a sympathetic if slightly artificially-constructed character to a moaning, rather stupid and selfish teenager. All pretense of the symbolic has gone from Bella’s desire for deflowering as a human being and transformation as a vampire. Her yearning for a more conventional ruination at the hands of Edward is sharply denied by his moralistic and completely inexplicable refusal. Old-fashioned morals, my butt. Jacob Black comes off as ineffectual, and Rosalie’s story of Depression-era violence seems pulled from fantasy rather than history.

So while I was disappointed, I will still read the final installment.