Twilight

Twilight.

When my cousin got married this summer in St. Louis, I decided to walk over to the Borders across from our hotel around 11:00 at night. I knew Border stores were open late, but I thing had not crossed my mind. It was August seventh, and at midnight the fourth book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, was to be released. To get to the Graphic Novel section I had to adventure through the different covens of high school girls dressed all in black, camped out so they could be the first to read the newest adventure of Edward and Bella. I knew the feeling from the Harry Potter days. I picked up a couple copies of New Avengers, used my Borders Rewards card, and started on my way out, hoping that I would not have my blood drained by the floor full of vampire wannabe’s. An older worker with a bag full of buttons caught my attention. He was handing out buttons to the campers that read, “I was bitten by Breaking Dawn.” I snuck into the crowd of girls and was handed a button. As I walked out with my button, I told myself that I would not read Twilight. I would not be sucked into the cult.

That was August 7^th, 2008.

January 7^th 2009 I drank the Kool Aid and started reading Twilight. It is now January 13^th, almost a week later, and I just finished New Moon.

What happened to me? I am now halfway through this tale of Vampires that I promised myself that I would not read. Because they are actually good. Of course the books have faults, but still. The first thing I like is how Stephanie Meyer has taken the myth of the Vampire and the Werewolf and made them more real-life. Gone are the crosses and coffins, garlic, wooden stakes, bats, full moons, and as far as I can tell, silver bullets. The same basic myths apply. The Vampires are basically immortal. They drink blood and are “undead.” Beside the mythology, the book is well written. Meyer captures emotion very well. The story is a love story and every emotion is very descriptive. But, even though the emotion is captured well, other story elements were fast and not as drawn out. It might just be me, but the fight scenes and chase sequences could use a lot more detail. And it seemed that characters were thrown into sudden peril. Were it seems it most books the amount of danger gradually builds; in Twilight it seems that everyone is hopping around la la la and then you turn the page and they are racing the clock for their lives.

Even with its faults I have found myself given my full attention to this book. I want to know what will happen to Edward and Bella, and now Jacob. But with the first book about her falling for a vampire, and the second almost falling for a werewolf, I am half expecting the third to involve a trip to Egypt to met the Mummy, and then running into Frankenstein’s monster. That would cover all the Universal movie monsters. But seriously, I am finding myself excited to pick up the third book, when just five months ago I had sworn myself off of them completely. I have drunk the Twilight Kool Aid, and I like it.