Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Ho boy.

So I mildly enjoyed the first two books in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series–enough that I considered myself somewhat of a Twilight apologist. No, no, I tried to convince the naysayers, she’s really not all bad! Though I found Twilight and New Moon to be deeply flawed, I also thought that Meyer had her finger right on the pulse of adolescent melancholy. What Bella’s story may have lacked in feminist leanings, it made up for in rich setting and earnestness, if nothing else. I didn’t quite like them enough to buy Eclipse, but when a friend offered to lend me the massive tome that is Breaking Dawn, I figured it wouldn’t kill me to give it a try.

Well. Um. Hmm.

I’ll say that, like the series it concludes, Breaking Dawn starts with some promise. Whiny McWhinerston Bella Swann is angsting over her impending shotgun marriage to vampire Edward. It’s an act that’s largely a technicality for her–something she grudgingly plans to endure so she can get laid and get some superpowers. While I found this model of dealmaking-in-the-place-of-compromise in an adult relationship a bit troublesome, I also found most of the sentiment honest. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t raise a stink about my sugar daddy buying me a Mercedes (or is it a Beemer? Whatever), but as a recently-married type, I empathized.

But then Bella gets hitched and the book completely falls apart. And we’re only an eighth of the way in to this door-stopper of a dud.

I don’t really want to rehash all the plot points here, no matter how cringe worthy they are and how easy it would be to play them for laughs (yes, the childbirth scene is the first that pushes this series into horror; yes, Bella sucks at naming children). What I want, instead, is to talk a little about the overarching theme here–how Bella is the best, how her life is the best, and how everything falls into place around her–and why it didn’t resonate with me.

I say this as a woman married to her first serious boyfriend, who she met at eighteen: I think Bella’s story does a disservice to young wives. It certainly does one to young mothers. Not to mention anyone who has ever actually been a corner of a love triangle.

I understand that these books are meant to be wish-fulfillment, but by making Bella’s life so utterly perfect and utterly easy, Meyer fails to acknowledge life’s actual complexities and pains–and so the joy found here is pretty shallow. Nothing is earned. Nothing is lost. The stakes are so low as to be non-existent. We know that nothing bad will happen to anyone because Meyer shows us again and again that Forks is really some sort of fluffy-cloud heaven. And so the final, patched-together plot, building only over the last two hundred pages, has no urgency at all. I’ll admit it: I skimmed. So sue me.

She could have, instead, given us something honest and bittersweet, a story of love and loss and growing older–because really, in not-so-many metaphorical words, that should be what Bella’s marriage, motherhood, and subsequent vampirism represent. Sure, have Bella choose Edward, choose her child–but let’s talk honestly about what these choices usually mean for women like Bella, what they have to sacrifice to make their young families work, what they lose, and what they gain, in becoming fully-fledged women so young.

Instead, Meyer chooses to lock her characters in a hellish fantasy of perpetual childhood–maybe this is what she meant by the Millay line at the front of the book? In the place of genuine tenderness or beauty, she gives us the saccharine (Bella and her daughter’s flawless and unearned perfection), the unbelievable (Charlie’s reaction to . . . everything), and the bizarre (pedophiliac imprinting).

But perhaps worst of all is the writing, the truly terrible writing. And by the end of this novel it really is–truly–terrible. It’s a slow slide into poopy prose; thanks to a middle-eight spent in the narrative clutches of Jacob, whose voice is far less assuming and much more casual, it’s easy to forget even the descriptive potential that Breaking Dawn revealed in the first few hundred pages. Forks is, at a time when it should be completely immersive, suddenly rendered in flat, lifeless terms. Description and narration are all pushed aside for cutesy dialog. Two passages near the end–one slightly hackneyed extended metaphor where Bella’s life is likened to a quilt, and another, where her brand new Thomas-Kinkade-calendar-esque cottage in the woods is described–stand out for not being completely awful.

Seriously, the novel’s last third was so poorly written and so unbelievable that I couldn’t help but grope for some sort of explanation. I mean, we weren’t really meant to believe this, were we, much less find it good?

So I’d like to suggest an alternative reading–one that seems quite a bit more palatable to me, and a bit more believable. Bella actually dies permanently in childbirth. The last third is her bardo fantasy before she can move on to the next spiritual plane (thanks for the idea, LOST writers). That’s why it’s so goddamned weird! In the real world, the baby goes on a rampage–killing Rosalie first, then savaging the other vampires. Against all odds Jacob and Edward are able to band together to stop and kill the monstrous being. Of course, once this happens, Edward asks Jacob to end his life. He does, sorrowfully, laying Edward to rest beside his child bride. And he’s about to end his own when Leah Clearwater appears to suggest that maybe they should try to face the future together. He may be mourning; she may be sterile. But they still have free will and can still choose life with an equal, could still choose love.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for a bittersweet ending.

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The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s difficult for me to review Carrie Ryan’s first novel, The Forest of Hands and Teeth objectively–because I can’t help but feel like there were two very different books packed into the volume’s three-hundred-some-odd pages.

The first was the delicately story that was clearly and wisely aimed at young adults: that of Mary, who lives in a village isolated from the rest of the world thanks to a zombie plague that rages outside its gates. In this tale, when Mary’s parents become infected, and the man who previously expressed an intention to court her turns her back on her, she is forced to join the mysterious Sisterhood, a religious organization that rules the village and guides its inhabitants through every stage of their carefully controlled lives.

In the second tale, Mary flees the village with a handful of people, including two brothers who both love her. Though ostensibly the more action-packed of the two stories, as Mary and her band struggle to reach the coast, this is largely a meditation on marriage and commitment, and on the sacrifices we are forced to make when we promise ourselves to someone else.

You might be surprised to learn that I found the first story here far more successful than the second.

Within the novel’s first third, I found Ryan’s prose particularly beautiful and captivating. Mary’s story was told with a delicate touch, and the poetic, slightly archaic tone only complimented the rich post-apocalyptic setting. The world within the village reminded me of the similar dystopia found in John Christopher’s Tripod series at least as much as it was redolent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Seemingly medieval, seemingly peaceful and simple, this setting only made the horrors that Mary experienced in her life in the Sisterhood that much more terrifying. I read quickly, and was deeply absorbed: I wanted to discover the secrets of Mary’s world just as much as Mary did. Though I was troubled by her dithering affections for two fairly flat men, Travis and Harry, it seemed clear to me that this bland love triangle was subordinate to the drama of Mary’s life in the Cathedral.

I was unfortunately wrong about that.

The second half of the novel, which follows Mary’s progress through the eponymous forest along with her band of relatives and suitors, was almost entirely about this love triangle. The mysteries of the Sisterhood are unsummarily dismissed in favor of questions which I frankly found less compelling: Why is Gabrielle different from the other zombies? Will Mary ever learn to read Roman numerals? Will she choose Harry or Travis? Concerning the last “mystery,” Mary waffles between the brothers several times, even if through most of the novel both men are bland ciphers, totally lacking in personality.

We finally do get a conversation–just one–with Travis around page 220 of the book where we start learning why he’s drawn to Mary and what might, conceivably, make him a sympathetic and compelling love interest. This is during a long stretch of the novel where we’re plunged into a domestic setting. Mary seems to have chosen Travis, and they’re trying to make a life together despite the fact that they were both betrothed to others, and despite the fact that Mary’s true passions will always lie elsewhere. The idea of this theme interested me, even if I didn’t find it quite as juicy as the book’s first half. Unfortunately, I found the execution a bit shallow and cursory.

I think this may be the nature of the beast, when you make marriage and commitment and the choices we make when promising ourselves to others the centerpiece of a novel aimed at teenagers. That’s not to say that I think that teenagers are incapable of understanding these themes, but more to say that many just aren’t interested in them–I know I wasn’t back then. And the brevity of this plot line does these themes a fundamental disservice. Had Ryan been writing a longer book, one aimed (say) at adult women, rather than at teenage girls, she would have had more room to explore the issues surrounding Mary’s commitments in-depth. The men in question could have been rendered more vividly and completely. And I would have felt more engaged with the issue of her choice.

But as it stood, I never really cared that deeply at all. Certainly not the way I did during the beginning of the novel, when our primary question was What’s going on here? rather than Who will she choose?

In the end, I can’t help but wish that this had been two books: the first, a riveting YA novel exploring an oppressive religious organization that took advantage of man’s vulnerability during the zombie apocalypse, featuring Mary, our curious and determined heroine. And a second book–longer, quieter even when the zombies intruded, which focused on Mary-the-woman, rather than Mary-the-girl, and explored the sacrifices, romantic or not, that adults make during desperate times.

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Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m a bit surprised by all the reviews that attempt to call-out Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver as a Twilight rip-off for their superficial similarities. I suppose I shouldn’t be: it’s such a common complaint leveled by Twilight fans of other supernatural romances. And they’re right–Shiver and Twilight do both share very small and ultimately unimportant features–but they differ drastically in how they resolve these plot points. For example, as in Twilight, Stiefvater’s heroine, Grace, cooks dinner for her parents and leads an essentially lonely adolescence. Unlike Bella, however, she has a history of close friendships with other girls, even if these friendships have (true to the lives of many adolescent girls, I’m sure) become thorny. And unlike Bella, she’s not happy with the wide berth her parents give her or the care-taking role that she’s unthinkingly fallen into with them. In fact, that’s part of what draws her to werewolfboy Sam; he truly cares for her in both a literal and metaphorical sense; he wants to spend time with her; and, in a gesture that’s very unlike Twilight‘s Edward, he truly wants to have a healthy, normal relationship with Grace.

But I feel like I’m lingering too long on these similarities, and fear doing so might do Shiver an injustice. Because, wow, this is a very, very beautiful book in its own right, independent of any other volume in the genre. Shiver‘s prose was obviously crafted deliberately and lovingly. The writing is poetic and lovely, but never crosses the line into “overwritten.” In fact, Stiefvater knows exactly when to hold back and offer us sparse language, and precisely when to indulge in rich sensory details.

And, like any good horror story, the sensory details are integral here–the setting, both on a micro level (Grace’s parents’ home) and macro level (Mercy Falls) is as important a player in this book as any of the human characters. Even the weather is significant, an significance underscored by the inclusion of temperature notations at the beginning of each chapter. Because Sam’s transformation is triggered by the cold, this was a very effective and small way to increase tensions as our characters moved from autumn into winter proper.

My qualms with this book, and I had a few, were very minor and hardly detracted from my overall enjoyment of Stiefvater’s tale. The ending solution felt a bit tacked on–I would have liked to see it at least hinted at perhaps a hundred pages sooner–and Stiefvater seemed eager to wholly redeem characters who may have been less than completely redeemable. And, perhaps more problematically, I was never really convinced by Sam’s voice that he was an actual teenage boy (or, less importantly, a songwriter). Though I never had trouble telling him from Grace, as some readers apparently did, he just seemed a tad too soft-spoken and, frankly, fey. But he was, at the very least, internally consistent. I could believe that he was perhaps an outlier thanks to his being raised largely away from other children, and even if he wasn’t true to the boys I’ve known, he was certainly true to himself. And ultimately, I’m willing to excuse this because Stiefvater was clearly doing something ambitious here in rotating the narration between two different voices.

And I think “ambitious” is a good word to use to describe Shiver. Stiefvater manages to tackle teen romance in a very realistic way, for all of its supernatural trappings. She has her pulse, too, on the complicated nature of female friendships and was successfully able to create not just a sympathetic pair of main characters but a vivid and believable universe. Highly recommended

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The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Oh, how I wanted to adore Kelley Armstrong’s The Summoning.

And, to be fair, there’s a lot to like here between just the cover and the first handful of chapters. Armstrong promises us the dark and alluring story of Chloe Saunders, a fifteen-year-old girl who, in one day, both gets her first period and starts seeing ghosts. I was initially won over by what seemed like the depth of Chloe’s character–not only does she suffer from the very real adolescent affliction of menstruation, but she also seems believably complex; she has interests (movies), flaws (she’s a stutterer), and isn’t perfect looking (though the cover accurately reflects her appearance, something that’s unfortunately rare in YA book covers, she’s short and underdeveloped for her age).

But as the story progressed, and Chloe was shipped off to the Lyle House, a residential home for mentally-ill teenagers, my enthusiasm for the story waned. Initially, I thought this had something to do with Chloe’s voice. Armstrong’s sentences are brief and sometimes abrupt–she relies on sentence fragments just a little too much for my liking. She also has an unfortunate tendency to engage in the dreaded infodump. There isn’t a single conversation or passage in here that discusses the characters’ underlying supernatural powers in a way that I’d call artful.

(And a brief aside: I’d die happy if I never read another YA novel where a character researches his or her supernatural predicament via wikipedia. Yes, I realize that this is how modern teenagers get information. But encyclopedia passages repeated verbatim is just never interesting, whether the source is The World Book or google, and protracted descriptions of the minutia of their search–typing in URLs and the like–are just really tiresome. I always get the feeling that the author is trying to say “Hey, I know the technology of kids these days!” but I’m never quite convinced. That Armstrong botched a description of Nintendo’s PictoChat didn’t help much either–I’ve never known anyone who would draw inscrutable hieroglyphs on there when they could just type something out–or even write it. Anyway . . .)

As I read further and further into The Summoning, I found myself struggling in a way that went beyond just finicky problems with voice. I’d describe this in two words: pacing problems.

The bulk of the novel’s problems take a very, very long time to unravel. This would be fine if the tensions built in a gradual and meaningful way. But unfortunately, the chapters here are both very brief and very inconsistent. Characters would be talking to ghosts in one chapter and flirting over breakfast the next. Chloe Saunders, for all of her apparent genre savvy, remains painfully clueless about the very transparent conspiracy that underlies the Lyle House–most of which I’d guessed about a quarter of the way in. Worse, I never really got a sense of the characters during the novel’s first two thirds, either. It wasn’t until about halfway through that I could even reliably tell you which character was which, and that would be in very broad strokes: Victoria’s the bitch, Derek smells, Simon’s a nerd, and Rachelle is . . . uh, black? The lack of concrete characterization and consistent tensions made it very difficult for me to care through most of the book.

Luckily, the novel takes a sudden turn for the better in the last hundred pages or so. Finally, Chloe catches on with regards to the sinister nature of the Lyle House and, along with several other students, she sets out to finally do something about it. By necessity, the personalities of the characters were suddenly much better defined and more interesting. But then the novel ends abruptly, with absolutely none of the plot threads resolved. I’m all for cliffhangers; I love long series with rich continuity. But I also like to have a small feeling of resolution by a novel’s end. By the last page of The Summoning I had the distinct feeling that the story was just beginning. Which would have been great! Except I just wish I hadn’t had to read through four hundred pages of prose to get there.

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