Twilight... I was first introduced into this vampire-romance novel by my sister when I went back home to Manila more than a year ago because she's graduating from college. I saw this huge hard bound book with an apple on the cover. I read the small synopsis at the back and realizing that it's about vampires, I was intrigued: I love Anne Rice's vampire chronicles. My sister said the book is good but she can't find the time to finish it. I tried to read the first chapter but the hectic schedule prevented me from even finishing the second page.
Last October when podcasters from MuggleCast kept on babbling about Twilight, my interest was again piqued. The release date of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was moved and its original release date of 21st Nov was given to this Twilight movie adaptation. Since there's no more new Harry Potter book to look forward to, I decided to pick-up this series of books - it's just four anyway and is already completed. So I went to Borders and got all the four books: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. Because I haven't read in such a long time, I read voraciously one book at a time. Here's what I thought of the series...
It is really just for young adults. Even though people have labelled it as the next Harry Potter, it is was out of the HP league. Tolkien's Middle-earth is complex; Rowling's wizarding world is intruiging and purely magical; Stephanie Meyer's story is just Sweet Dreams - Sweet Valley High - type with mythical creatures. I felt like I was back in my teen years while reading Twilight: girl goes to a new school, meets a cute mysterious boy, boy talks to her, asks her out, and then they dated exclusively. There were even passages that describes what they are both wearing on one date and the girl commented that their colours complimented! Harry mooned over Cho and his "monster" beneath his chest roared when he saw Ginny kissing Dean, but that's all you'll get from HP.
As the books progressed, I guess the author also developed more writing skills as the dialogues become richer, some red-herrings were introduced and there are some foreshadowing. But for someone who's been a sleuth during the Harry Potter saga, they were just peanuts. Conflict in each book are really shallow, and considering that this is a vampire novel, there isn't much bloodshed. Rice's vampire novels are sexy and gory and Meyer's are all PG - Breaking Dawn tried to go PG-13 though, but that's as far as it could go. The final confrontation in the very last book was bland - one would thought that this might match the Final Battle at Hogwarts but all the characters did were stand on each side and talked. No heartbreaking moments such as when Sirius died or when Dumbledore died or when Harry died... oops!
