I'm quite afraid of this book. Mainly because New Moon was in my mind the only genuinely good Twilight movie but I also recognise that most of this was down to how beautiful that film was, it had great special effects and beautiful cinematography. And although the relationships and so on were much better handled, I'm worried how shit New Moon might be if you take away all the flashy visuals (which a book can't really have) - but we'll see. Enjoy!
My fears for the visuals practically vanished from the moment I opened the book. There are a lot of things in a book you can do, that you can't transist to a film. So as Meyer goes into details about how Bella is feeling, physically and emotionally in a way a book only can I soon found that New Moon as a book would be a totally alien experience to the movie version, and I must say I'm very excited indeed.
The first problem I ran into is Meyer keeps making references to the first book, like we hadn't read it. I assume she had too but her publishers, but really? Who starts reading a 'saga' on the middle book? Why not just read the first book you lazy turd?
Bella finally finds some personality in this book and comes across as a total douchebag. I can perfectly understand the awkwardness of parties and presents during birthdays. But when your boyfriends sister excitedly offers you a gift to which you simply bitch at her for even bothering just makes you rude. And then moaning constantly that your boyfriend and their family have set up a party for you just makes you a cunt. Then you know what is worse? The book basically proves Bella's dickery as the right reaction when the whole thing goes tits up when she gets a paper cut. What a load of shit. Then as the book goes on Bella unashamedly uses Jacob for her own personal gain, what an absolute bitch. And then how she treats him when Edward comes back on the scene, what a horrible horrible human being. I mean have you seen how she treats Charlie? She no longer even bothers to call him Dad and he looks after her, he loves her so much, the book makes this so obvious and she just shits on him. In the first book it was weird because she was so bland, now she is just so unbearably unlikeable, I've never followed a character in a story before where I actually felt hatred for them, and yet still everyone fawns over her.
What year is Twilight set in? The whole silver volvo thing was explained away being that the whole town is a little behind the times, but Bella gets bought a camera with film? I didn't even know they still made those except for instant cameras. And except for pretentious art students... Plus no one seems to have a mobile, no one seems to have Facebook, it's weird.
You know though, the more I read of New Moon the more the biggest problem started to appear. Hollywood have long since tried to recapture pretty much anything with popularity, but they often miss what makes it popular in the first place. Like for example, Kung Fu Movies - between all the hilariously awful dubbing, grainy film stock and unclear health and safety rules that we love, the film is low budget, so it has to be full of soul and passion to make up for that, to make it work and hold together. Hollywood's recreations of these are clean, shiny, glossy and high concept, with all that money, the soul is gone, it isn't needed. New Moon is much in the same way, it's so much better written than Twilight, the pacing is so much better, things blend together so much more smoothly that in the end it actually becomes kinda...dull.
I complained about Twilight's pacing in the review, but after reading New Moon I'd argue Twilight has the perfect pacing, a sort of: 'I promise I'll give you a whole chapter on vampires, just let me devote these two chapters to Bella at school for the sake of my story, okay?'. This way, after slogging through forty or so pages of what basically amounts to filler, just the mention of the word 'vampire' becomes extremely exciting. Whereas New Moon is just so much more... clean sure in terms of blending the worlds of romance and horror this books falls down, but in every other regard the pacing is better tenfold, much like all other technical aspects of the book. Twilight just didn't work as a book, almost as much as it didn't work as a movie. Here in New Moon the improved pacing just means the exciting parts just don't really stand out any more.
Like for example, imagine if I made a ten minute movie, eight minutes of the movie were devoted to a gang of teens just hanging in the park, being teenagers. Then in the last two minutes, without warning or any real context, they are all brutally murdered. It'd come out of nowhere, that ending would blow you away. Now imagine the same film again, imagine that I've broken down the film into four two and a half minute sections, a minute of those sections is devoted to teenagers in the park, then the rest of the section to brutal killing scenes. The shock factor is soon lost, with it being blended in so equally with the rest of the scenes. That is the difference between Twilight and New Moon. All the cards have really been revealed by the end of Twilight so New Moon is left to focus much more on the present of the 'Twilight Saga'. So although, in terms of writing and so on this is vastly improved over Twilight, I don't feel the same soul so it ultimately is nowhere near as enjoyable.
For all the comments on the improved pacing, know this, New Moon isn't Twilight. Twilight is as much about vampires as it is teen romance and although it is a mess, Meyer does her best to meld the two genres together. New Moon however makes no attempt at this, aside from scenes with Edward in at the start there is practically no mention of anything supernatural in the first half of the book. The first half is just a plain breakup and move on romance story. And although it is well written and all the rest, I don't come into the Twilight Saga looking for plain romance, I come looking for romance...with monsters. So I have to say for the first half of the book, I was just bored. It picks up considerably when more supernatural elements begin to creep in around the half way point but I really can't understand why Meyer decided to just draw a line between the two elements this time. Is it because it went so wrong the first time? You improved everything else, why can't you try and improve the blending? I hope you do in Eclipse.
However that said, the whole mystery of Sam Uley and what is going on in La Push is much better handled in the book than it is in the film. In the film there is no build up, some guy transforms into a wolf, Bella shrugs it off and the film carries on as normal. Here however the build up is long and slow and this creates a much better pay off. What is this mysterious cult in La Push? What is Sam doing to the kids of La Push that make them idolise him? What is Jacob hiding from Bella? Why is he ignoring her? Sadly, I already knew the answer, I knew the answer before I even watched the film. But even knowing the answer I could still admire the build up. In the end though, the vampires still steal the show. Whether it is the little snippets of information we get on the way vampires act around other vampires or whether it is more depth and information on the Volturi, I was considerably more fascinated by that information than I was with the mystery of Sam Uley. Although Marcus 'sees relationships'? What kind of fucking power is that?
Plus, I just really enjoy Bella and Edward's chemistry. For all the complaints for Meyer's prose and as weird as this story is, I just really get Bella and Edward. Whether they're fighting or having a normal conversation, often the dialogue is melodramatic for the sake of interesting storytelling but at the core of all of it, it all just feels so natural, so real. I can relate to every uttered word, every feeling. In ways, I wish Bella and Edward argued more, just to complete the 'realness' of their relationship.
You know what, New Moon's what the fuck factor is even more apparent in the book. Edward is the entire reason for Twilight, so taking him out of the story just makes no fucking sense. I can't think of another pop culture text that takes their entire premise out for the sequel. Just such a weird move. In the movie he at least appears in the form of hallucinations, but in the book he is just a voice. Jacob is admittedly in the books a lot more than he is in the films but I still don't know why he got his own book. It has nothing to do with his popularity, because New Moon was finished before Twilight itself was published and my copy of New Moon has a sneak peak of Eclipse in the back, so it isn't like she planned to make this the last book. Plus if the movies are anything to go on, Eclipse practically retcons New Moon from existence by continuing the love triangle like New Moon never happened and ends up resolving it in exactly the same fucking way. New Moon is basically an entire book of filler. It is totally pointless which is a shame because it's a well written story, if not rather bland. Despite this being a 'saga' you could basically skip this book and really that is exactly what I'd suggest.
However perhaps the weirdest thing is 'Edward's Voice' - Bella hears Edward's voice when she is danger. This is how she fights the pain of losing him after he breaks up with her. I guess weird enough in itself, but you can just kinda go 'fair enough' but then Meyer makes a really big song and dance of this to the point where Bella spends a lot of the pagetime theorising why it happens. The more you do this, the weirder the concept becomes.
Meyer also does try perhaps a little too hard to make Jacob a replacement for Edward for whatever reason, the contrast is at least more apparent in the books than it was in the films. It was touched upon in the Eclipse movie, but here in New Moon she makes a big deal about how warm, strong and just generally cheerful Jacob is which is a stark comparrison to how Edward is. Jacob however, never really has Edward's charms but the contrast of the two is still an interesting device on Meyer's part, so I'll give her and Jacob that much. And although Edward's entrance towards the end of the book is smoother than it was in the film, Jacob I think is still dropped a little too completely. But you know, pointless book and all.
Plus, the way Jake is described in this book is...revolting, huge and gangly, rust coloured skin, tendons and veins bursting at the surface of his skin, with giant hands. I imagined him like an orange Hulk more than I did Taylor Lautner and last I checked, the Hulk wasn't a sex symbol. Then again, Meyer doesn't make Edward all that appealing either, by the time he finally arrives in the book all Meyer seems fixated on is how cold Edward is to touch, being dead and all. Go on Meyer, why not just push the whole contrast between Edward and Jake a little more. Jake is always hot because he is a WEREWOLF. And Edward is always cold because he is a VAMPIRE. Look Vampires are usually solo and Werewolves are usually in packs. Look it is a PARADIGM, look I have a DEGREE in literature, look guys! For fucks sake...
A question. What is going on with werewolves and vampires and their powers? I assumed vampire powers didn't work on werewolves since Alice couldn't use hers on Jacob. But Edward can use his on Jake. Is this explained later on? I don't remember this in the movies or is this just a glaring plothole?
Let's talk about books. Books have always been something that have fascinated me, firstly because I love to write and secondly because I am a film student. In a world where we can now see on the big screen people flying through the air and throwing buses at each other and we live in a world where we can watch movies on the bus on screens as big as our hands, we have to wonder, where do books fit in? For the longest amount of time the main reason I read books is they were budgetless so if a guy wanted to write a book about a group of aliens having a gladiator battle in a library well they fucking could, the only limit was their imagination. The problem now is, with the lengths CGI has gone both in lowering of cost and the kind of shit it can do, I can see in two decades if gimmicks haven't crushed the movie industry, the limits of what we can see on our screens will simply be gone. However books like New Moon prove that there will always be a place for books. You see I'm honestly surprised New Moon turned out to be as good a movie as it did, at least reading the book explains why the story in the movie sucked so bad, because this book has no real fucking story.
New Moon is basically one long monologue about a girls feelings when she breaks up with her first love and eventually meets someone else and moves on with her life. And although there are things like visual metaphors, voice overs and the like in such a visual medium it's really fucking hard to adapt a book based almost completely around everything but the visual. And although for the most part New Moon is just fucking boring, I am at least extremely happy about the fact that Meyer used the fact her book was a book to its fullest. The beauty of writing is that at least as it stands right now, it gives you certain freedoms you can't have with things like film and the like and it is always nice to see someone playing with those things, even if it doesn't necessarily work.
So do I recommend this? Honestly New Moon leaves me torn. There is no denying that at least in a technical sense, New Moon is better in every way than Twilight. In terms of comparing it the movie, the movie gets everything the book does right, right and anything the movie gets wrong is improved in the book to make it a nice companion to the already great film. But this just works so much better as a book. That being said, there is also no denying that taking Edward out of the book is not only a weird move, but a bad one, Jacob is no Edward, no matter how hard Meyer tries. And really the greatest sin is that the book is rather...boring, the film makes it much more exciting than it really is. The whole break up plot is well handled, but since this is a supernatural romance saga, it didn't need to take up half the book, or it could have if Meyer mixed together some supernatural elements into it. But she doesn't really do that for the first half of the book.
So erm, yes, I suppose I do recommend this book. Fans of the film will probably love this, just to see how good an adaptation the film is and seeing perhaps a little more depth added to the weaker aspect of the film (like the werewolf mystery and so on). And the book is actually well done on a technical level this time. But if you're just a casual reader, or not convinced on the whole Twilight thing. Firstly why would you even read the second book if you haven't read the first? And secondly, I'd just say read Twilight and just skip this book out, everything gets redone in Eclipse according to the movie. Which is the book I will be reviewing next time!
Think About It!
-Locke
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