Product Description
Readers captivated by Twilight and New Moon will eagerly devour Eclipse, the much anticipated third book in Stephenie Meyer’s riveting vampire love saga. As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob — knowing that her decision has the poten… More >>
Let me make myself clear that I am an avid reader and a HUGE fan of the Twilight series. I found the first novel, Twilight, to be a beautiful love story so inspiring and unusual that it blew me off my feet. The relationship between Bella and Edward seemed very different, and I found one chapter in particular in the first book allowed me to become entranced by the two lovers. Bella Swan comes to Forks leaving sunny Arizona to find herself on an alien green planet where it rains every day. At her new High School she finds herself perplexed by the Cullen family, which we then discover to be Vampires. Edward Cullen and Bella Swan fall madly in love. A love so passionate it could put Romeo and Juliet to the test.
Eclipse is the third novel in the series. After looking at a few reviews and acknowledging the rating of the novel I began to have my doubts. Many people found the book to be the best of the series or found it entrancing. While some reviewers were immensely disappointed. It is very difficult for an author to create a third novel that will live up to the first novel’s expectations and in my opinion Stephanie Meyer did not truly deliver. This is understandable since many authors cannot even write a decent sequel, which Meyer managed to do. The second novel New Moon was almost as good as the first. The middle part, to be quite honest was a little boring, but none the less kept me going. But Stephanie Meyer had so many expectations to live up to it is understandable that it wouldn’t be easy.
The third book begins with Bella and Edward discussing college with Charlie , who has just released Bella from the house. The novel continues to mention Bella’s choice to join Edward forever and her relationship with Jacob Black. Stephanie Meyer has mentioned many times that she found Jacob to be her favorite character and after reading this novel I found myself disliking him more then I did in the second novel. The Edward-Jacob-Bella love triangle continues to play out through all the 626 pages in which the reader will want to throw the book on the floor because they are so annoyed with how stupid Bella truly is.
I have never personally liked how Bella is always portrayed as the damsel in distress and I found that part of her character a bad influence for young women who might otherwise look up to her. Many feminists would be appalled at how Bella reacts. She makes herself vulnerable and at one point in the book she even says, “IF YOU LEAVE ME I’LL DIE.” Which I found to be silly and very sexist. I understand that the traditional love story is that the damsel is rescued by the man but at least one love story should not have that stupid shallow idea. This book was by far the most inappropriate in that sense since Bella is manipulated heavily by Jacob in such I cruel way I wanted to grab Stephanie Meyer and ask her why she took pleasure in writing such a sexist book.
The book is the poorest written of the three books. I have never considered Stephanie Meyer an excellent writer but she does tell a great story that makes the reader want to turn the page to see what is coming next in the story. The whole story seems rushed even though the novel is indeed 626 pages. It seems the publisher may have hurried her to write so it is a little sloppy. I also noticed many typos throughout the novel.
The characters are extremely one dimensional. Even Edward seemed too dramatic and fake with his passion for Bella. I cannot recall a single sentence he spoke to her that didn’t have the word love, honey,sweet, darling or something sappy like that. Edward also lost his cocky sexy arrogance that I loved. He was obsessed with Bella in an unnatural way that disturbed me. His character was completely different. Jacob became such a nasty manipulator I was surprised that Edward didn’t sink his teeth right into his neck. All Edward ever said was “If you’re happy Bella, I’m happy.” – please give me a break! Bella became a shallow even more selfish girl. She became so confused with her emotions I almost pitied her because Meyer had robbed Bella of the strength that made her such an interesting character in the first book. Rosalie, Alice, Emmett and Jasper were also turned into different characters all of which seemed out of character from the first two books.
The first two books were amazing and inspiring. The true love that possessed Bella and Edward left after book two. I feel this new book is incomplete. I do not think I will buy the fourth book. I’ll borrow it from the library, and if I could I would go return this book. This book is no longer a love affair so deeply passionate between a Vampire and a human. It is now about having to make choices when you should already know what the right answer is.
I started this review with mixed opinions but now as I conclude I find myself so disappointed I shall try to remember the Edward and Bella I know from the first novel, Twilight, keeping those characters who are so deeply in love nothing could tear them apart.
Stephanie Meyer I’m afraid you disappointed a true Twilight fan till the very end. My only hope is that you can rekindle the beautiful story you had with Edward and Bella in Twilight. Good luck on the next book, I hope it’s an improvement! If a movie is ever to be made may it only be the movie of Twilight.
Goodbye Edward and Bella. I’ll miss you!
Rating: 2 / 5
I realized after I’d picked up this book from an airport bookstore that it was written for a young adult audience. Nevertheless, and despite my being very much an adult, I opted to read it because the premise fascinated me (How could it not? Vampires and Werewolves sharing space in the same story; oh my!).
That said, I learned within the first few pages that the writing was, shall I say, very juvenile. Yes, I do see the irony of my own words. But the author writes as if a 13 year old can’t comprehend sub-text and subtlety at all. Is this true? I thought kids were super-humanly smarter nowadays than we were when we were their age. No?
Here’s the good: This work was my first introduction to the series, but even with that, I was still able to (mostly) understand what had happened in the previous two books, and didn’t feel like I was lost or confused about why things were happening as they were. So there’s that.
Also, the author does a fantastic job of immersing us into a fantasy world that could, if we clicked our heels and wished hard enough, really be happening secretly in some Any-Town-USA. The fact that the story takes place in Washington–the state in which I live–made it all the more real…er, I mean, fantastic to me.
Okay, so here’s the bad and the ugly. Firstly, I thought authors were supposed to suffer over every word they committed to paper. It’s almost as if Meyer hurried through her first draft and then, when she was done, decided 629 pages later that it was as good as it was going to get.
Here are some examples… On practically every page, some one is either “murmuring” or “mumbling” something, sometimes 2 or 3 times a page, and some times 2 or 3 characters at a time. Can no one speak clearly in the author’s world?
Next, everyone is constantly–and I do mean constantly–rolling their eyes and gnashing or clenching their teeth. Personally, I don’t remember the last time I did either, and certainly not multiple times a day. Is that really what teenagers do?
Balled up fists are rampant in the author’s world because, you know how every time some one says something you don’t care for you ball up both of your fists, clench your teeth, roll your eyes and mumble something under your breath.
People, especially the main character, are in a near-constant state of flinching and wincing. If they are not busy with these spasms, then they are busy pouting or pursing their lips. There is a lot of pouting and pursing not to be missed. I mean, I’ve never “met” more skittish, sensitive people in my life. Skittish vampires and werewolves? Who knew they could be so touchy.
The biggest annoyance though, is that Bella, the main character, has not one redeeming character. She is a weak, gloomy, petulant, ungrateful girl with a bad temper. When she is not acting out some repulsively cowardly trait, she is busy pouting about her impending graduation, her impending graduation party, her impending marriage, her father, her mother, her very existence. The sad thing is that the book is narrated in the first person, so I spent hours being inside Bella’s depressed and depressing head. I felt myself craving Prozac.
Bella–and everyone else in the story for that matter–never simply “says” anything… She is always either shrieking or yelling at some one. Oh, she does whisper, too… Whispering is another extremely common action in the story. She is so weak, in fact, that rather frequently she is “frozen in fear” or so “paralyzed with fear” that she cannot even speak. As a matter of fact, she spends much of the entire 600+ page tome doing absolutely nothing but alternating between crying, yelling, and sobbing. And too hot, supernatural, true gentlemen find her irresistible? What a catch. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, I say.
And what’s with the addictive, completely unhealthy relationship between Bella and Edward. Jacob points out, rightly, that Edward is like a drug to Bella. Excluding examples from Greek mythology, who goes berzerk and turns sour and even depressed when their partner is away from them for only a few hours? I believe we can probably find something in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that would aptly explain Bella’s obvious issues.
Oh, one other slight annoyance: The author interrupts my suspension of disbelief in several sections of her occasionally gory vampiric, lycanthropic horror saga to lecture me on the virtues of staying chaste until marriage and how this very act will save my soul from eternal damnation (in case you didn’t catch it, the irony was intended). I get it. It’s a novel written for young teenage girls, after all, and there is certainly no harm in reminding them to be safe about sex. But I found the sex ed lesson a little heavy-handed, personally, despite its debatable appropriateness.
The long and short of it is this: The author’s writing style is melodramatic and sloppy, at best, over-the-top and lazy at minimum. One can argue that it is distasteful and a step-back to a century or ten ago to introduce young, impressionable readers to a weak, and utterly useless character such as Bella who requires constant saving, reassurance, and is so obsessed with her love (although I balk at calling it love when it is so clearly obsession) that she repeatedly asserts that he is her *entire* world and she is useless without him. Seriously. Is this 2008 or 1608?
Despite all of that–and despite my wanting to bash my own head in with the heavy tome during the first half when absolutely nothing was happening except for the author having the characters repeat similar-sounding conversations at the cafeteria, Bella’s kitchen, Bella’s bedroom, the Cullens’ home, inside a car or a truck, etc.–I actually liked this book. Crazy, right? True, though. In the end, I just love anything about vampires and werewolves (I am a SciFi, b-movie lover, after all). I also liked that Meyer’s story carried me away for two full days into a world that was (melo)dramatic enough (not unlike the original Beverly Hills 90210 or The OC, I’m ashamed to admit) to keep me coming back for more, and more–all the way to page 629.
Rating: 3 / 5
To preface this, I’ll say up front that I loathe love triangles. They’re trite plot devices that are very rarely executed well, and that’s just one of the huge problems with Eclipse. It’s a love triangle that, according to the author, was designed for Bella to make a choice. Really? Was there any shred of doubt over what option she was going to go with?
Unfortunately for Eclipse, about three quarters of the book involved pitting Edward and Jacob against each other in a quarrel over who Bella loves more (and again, really?). Sure, it’s great to be loved, but in this instance it just makes everyone look bad. Jacob comes off as too sexually forceful, Edward looks like a lump on a log reciting the same “if it’s good for Bella, it’s good for me” line, and Bella looks more selfish and whiny than usual. Sure, Bella was whiny and annoying way before Eclipse, but she puts on a grand display here and it makes one long for a point of view change. Anyone. Jessica’s point of view would probably be preferable.
The rest of the book is about some killings in Seattle that, of course, mean Bella is in danger, which, naturally, means Edward has to act like a psycho boyfriend intent on saving her from herself. Early on he attempts to keep her house bound by ripping the spark plug out of her car, and while I thought that was a little melodramatic and creepy he one ups himself constantly after that. No wonder Bella kept grumbling and sighing whenever he kept swooping in to tell her where not to go and why. Then there’s the marriage issue — he wants to, she doesn’t (it’s embarrassing, you see…far more than having to tell one’s family you intend to become a vampire in the near future because marriage is so much more shocking) — but it’s not like Bella has a say in the day that’s supposed to be hers. She literally doesn’t. It reminded me a little of an arrangement than a celebration with the amount of groaning and wincing Bella does concerning the upcoming nuptials.
What disturbed me more, besides the rickety plot, the endless comparisons to Wuthering Heights (the author studied literature in college, I get it. most of us college educated people did and I still don’t see the need for comparisons to Heathcliff and Cathy), and the annoying love triangle, was how self-deprecating Bella was. How she constantly went through the book saying how unworthy she was of everyone, how at fault she was of everything, how clumsy, stupid, selfish (that one I actually don’t argue with), immoral, weak, helpless, pathetic, and frighteningly normal she is. Sure, it’s hard to have immortal, strong, mostly male friends, but as a woman I’d like to see Bella shed that “oh well, I’m just a little weak girl, woe is me, I’ll just sit in the corner and die now” attitude without having to become a vampire. At every turn in Eclipse Bella depicts herself harshly, and the story does nothing to turn that around. She’s the one that wants to have sex outside of marriage (which is too immoral for virtuous Edward), she’s the one that’s too weak to do anything other than be babysat, and for the most part the story agrees with her. The men (with the exception of possibly Alice) are the selfless heroes by the end, and the women are selfish (Bella), shallow (Rosalie), and bitter (Leah). Where have the strong female role models gone?
Rating: 1 / 5
I wasn’t really sure how to rate these books, because in terms of literary quality they’re certainly one star. Yet, they’re so delightfully cheesy that in terms of entertainment value, they probably rate a 5-star review. Of course, I’m the girl that adores awful monster movies on the SciFi channel, so maybe you shouldn’t trust my judgment.
But really folks these books are absolutely ridiculous. They’re so over the top they read like parodies of supernatural romance novels. The characters’ motivations and reactions defy any sort of real world logic. These books just don’t make any sense. Like here’s my main problem with the series: What in the world do all of these people see in Bella? And I’m not just talking about Edward and Jacob. That also includes Mike Newton, the entire Cullen family, Angela, and even Victoria and James from the first book. The entire Twilight universe revolves around Bella. Everyone is obsessed with this girl. Why? She’s whiny, hypocritical, self-obsessed, co-dependent, moody, childish, sulky, I could go on, you get my drift. She has no goals, ambitions, hobbies, dreams, or talents. She shows no interest in the world around her. She basically shows disdain and/or contempt for anyone in her life who isn’t impossibly beautiful or superpowered–including her own parents. Her one goal in life is to become a vampire so she can live forever, be impossibly beautiful and strong, and never age. Yes, this is our heroine, people. Was I the only one rooting for Victoria to knock the hell out of her?
Then of course there’s Edward. I believe I’ve read in SM’s own words that Edward is her idea of the perfect man. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one. And let me just say that I don’t care how beautiful and gorgeous and perfect and wonderful a character is–NO ONE deserves to have 300 pages telling us these things. If a character is supposed to be beautiful then I only need to be told that once, and then I’m looking for their more interesting aspects. If their beauty is brought up more than once than I’m going to assume that it’s signficant to the story somehow…it relates to the plot, it’s an ironic contrast to their not so beautiful inside, it serves as commentary for cultural perspectives on beauty. I don’t want to get the idea that I’m reading about Edward’s crooked smile, or bronze hair, or perfect chiseled features, or muscular chest over and over again because the author is imagining herself as the object of his affection and likes reminding everyone of how gorgeous he is.
And Jacob…how did he go from a sweet kid to a rapist-in-training? And why is SM so convinced that we’re all going to adore this twerp as much as she does? That said, as a character, he’s still 1000 times more believable and better developed than Edward.
Basically this book had so many unintentionally hilarious moments that I was imagining it as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. There was Charlie’s utterly bizarre reaction to Bella’s breaking her hand…(What’s that? You tried to sexually assault my daughter? And she injured herself? Way to go tiger!) Bella’s stupidity after Rosalie’s backstory (Hmm…I think she’s trying to tell me something about life and humanity and family, but all I can really focus on is that some hot vampire chick once came onto Edward..WAAAHHHH Edward!) Edward’s rather psycho definition of love( He basically says “I don’t care about anyone else. I only care about you. Only you matter.”) And the vampires’ reactions (or rather non reaction) to the murder of the new vampire Bree disturbed me. They basically do nothing and have no reaction when a teenage girl is ripped to pieces right in front of them. Six months ago she was probably a normal teenager and now she’s a pile of ashes and not one of the saintly “good” vampires even bothers to say “Poor girl. I wonder if her family is looking for her?” And these are the people that Bella wants to hang with for eternity?
Hey I won’t lie, I’ll probably be buying the 4th book, but I have no expectations of quality or literary value, only that I’m going to entertained by more cheap melodrama and cheesy, pseudo-sensuality.
Rating: 1 / 5
My Original review on Aug. 10:
After finishing this book, I have no idea why it was written other than an excited writer’s desire to fulfill a publisher’s request as soon as possible. The writing was unevolved, and the sheer number of editorial errors proves how quickly both editor and author worked to release this book. Most of the issues that were brought up in the first two books were dropped in this one. To make matters worse, new issues abound that make the “willing suspension of disbelief” impossible, plot points are picked up and ignored randomly without any real twists or conclusions (except Vicky, of course), and you aren’t really left with a character to love: Jake’s forceful and annoying, Bella’s negative and a martyr, Alice is pushy and superficial, and Edward is far too selfless.
The first and last part of the book is filled with bickering and grumbling which is used to set a stage for Meyer’s beautiful and witty sarcasm, but does little to enhance the plot. Without ruining anything, I’ll just say that there actually comes a point where Bella has to resign herself to being with Edward. In general, the relationship between them is so obviously codependent and unhealthy, without any basis in a reality, that it’s lost all of its original touching reluctance. By the end of the book, Bella’s constant victim-stance, her bickering, complaining, whining, and general inability to be happy has ruined the book.
UPDATE September 3, 2007: I am now absolutely DISGUSTED with both Meyers and her publisher. As soon as the rating fell below four stars, and almost all of the reviews commented on the same negative attributes, suddenly the reviews are flooded with five star, four sentence reviews from people who have nearly identical reviews on every other books they’ve posted for – falling in line with the newer trend of buying reviews for books. Shame on you Ms. Meyers for not letting your product stand on its own, and shame on you for disrespecting the loyal followers of your series in such a manner by telling them that their opinions are worth as much as cheaply bought props.
Rating: 1 / 5
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