The Anonymous Post: Eclipse Book Review
Anonymousxcxc Hi again. I'm back from a two week leave and now I guess I'm ready to dive into this book. Oh boy Eclipse where can I start? No no I'm not going to be that one prick who just offends Twilight fans, no I'm only going to say that if you like this book that's fine, I just did not and you will see that this review will be very long and angry. But hey this Twilight book review saga is almost over so yay on that part, but anyways I have to dive into the actual review before you all get bored so brace yourselves, this will be very very long.First off let me point of some things about this book: it's... what is it? Oh yeah, Meyer can't develop characters well at all. Yeah she somehow made the jerkiest of characters even more whiny and spoiled. Also there are some differences with the Twilight movies with the books like them combining two annoying characters from the books or a different character is the valedictorian of Bella's graduation ceremony in the movie than in the book. Also before I let you all get into my thoughts on the actual book (I know, I know, this is taking a very very long time) I will also let this rant out: the movie for this was released on my BIRTHDAY. Sure I was like 8 but still. This series just puts my birthday to shame. Gah! Why Twilight why?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Now as always let's go into plot. Like the previous book this one starts off in a foreshadowing dream only to have her wake up to filler land I mean Forks. Yeah so Meyer has a filler problem, you see I've noticed in her writing that she likes to use filler a lot. Sure some of it is used to "develop" her characters but most of the time it's wasted on very needless things that don't help the plot at all. Not only that but she has kind of a tone problem too, for instance I've noticed that they incorporate a lot of action but then subplot it for romance. Look I get that this is a romance series but come on! I mean she has all of this potential build up and what does she do? She decides to use the filler button and include all of this graduation bull and other pointless things.
Okay let me be clearer on what I mean by graduation. So Bella's about to graduate from high school and as you may know from my review on New Moon they reveal that Bella can become a vampire but Edward wants Bella to marry him after graduation. Bella is skeptical of this for some reason even though she claims that she wants to be with Edward forever. Yep this is our main plot here, pointless romantic conflict between two boring characters that are obviously an established couple. Okay so anyways there's also this side mystery with mysterious killings in Seattle that is mentioned frequently in the book and also Bella is experiencing a rift with Jacob and she wants to see him but her dumb boyfriend (Poker Face) refuses to allow it. Yeah I'll get back to this one later.
Anyways the beginning involves a lot of pointless school filler and at some point Alice gets a vision. She also visits Florida with Poker Face but not without a fight from Charlie and she legit has to SNEAK OFF to visit a guy she claims is her best friend. Well they do catch up and stuff where Bella hears of a fight between Jacob's pack brother and Poker Face's adoptive brother. This is also when Jacob talks about his pack leader (Sam) and of the concept of imprinting. After this she goes to a friend and then back to P.F. where they fight and because P.F. is so controlling he literally bribed his sister with a car to take Bella on a slumber party just to prevent her from visiting her friend. Okay what the heck?! What kind of a boyfriend does that? And to think that later in the book Bella says that Edward is "the most decent person I know." I'm sorry what?!
At the slumber party Rosalie comes into Bella's room and explains her backstory and on why she doesn't want Bella to become a vampire and in this backstory they give Rosalie a logical and legit reason for not wanting Bella to become a vampire. The next day Jacob has Bella ditch school and hang out with him which then leads to another fight between them. Edward soon returns and more romance filler happens until Bella finds out that some unknown force had searched her room and taken her clothes. Shortly after this Poker Face thinks that Alice has a vision and everyone is suddenly protecting Bella from what would be like what her 80th underdeveloped threat. Of course Bella has a theory about this but no one believes her.
After this it's basically build up to an epic battle as both vampires and werewolves have to bond together to prepare for this fight. Yeah a lot of filler happens here, in one chapter we get an interesting and long backstory on the werewolves and the readers learn more about the character Jasper and the newborn vampires (Bella thinks that they broke into her room). But unfortunately Jacob reveals that he is in love with Bella (sure you could easily infer this but it was like really?! This action and the ditching school thing made me lose all interest in Jacob) at some point in this. Another "highlight" is that Bella breaks her hand and blames Jacob and makes a big deal out of it and the dumb graduation happens. Plus we learn more about the wolves and stuff.
Okay I'm sorry if I'm spending too long on plot but I have to pinpoint these main things. Edward proposes to Bella after they make a marriage compromise, P.F. makes some peace with Jacob, Jacob and Bella talk about serious things together, and finally the battle happens. Yes the battle that was built up for a very long time is finally happening and do you know what happens? Nothing because instead of reading about a badass battle we're stuck with more romantic crud and it turns into even more of a soap opera than it already is. In short this all leads up to a very vague fight between Edward, Bella, Victoria (the underdeveloped threat), and her newborn vampire army although Bella doesn't really do anything and in the end I guess most of the newborn vampires get destroyed and Victoria dies (it wasn't written very clearly). Okay so after the battle the werewolves leave, the Volturi arrive, and this surrendered newborn comes out only to be killed off later. Yeah this is basically filler from here other than the epilogue in Jacob's POV where he decides to run away.
Tone, grammar, and action. The tone bounces back between action and the romance that it infuriates me. This is because there is a lot of action and intrigue that could have the potential to make the book awesome but no the romance is so overused that it waters down the action and turns the book into a never-ending soap opera due to all of the fights that happen with the characters. Also with the grammar I noticed a fair amount of spelling errors and grammatical errors; I'm sorry was the editor just lazy? Yeah let's go to characters now.
Oh boy if you thought that the first two books were bad about characters then you were dead wrong. This book basically takes almost every single character and either devolves them or makes them worse somehow. Ugh! Let's just get this over with, here's the character analyses:
- Bella- Dear god she just gets worse as these books go on. Now she's whiny 48/7 (if that's even possible) and all she does is either a) nothing, b) whine and pout, or c) fight with someone. But again I could go on forever about Bella and her jerkiness towards others, but I want to highlight these few points before I move onto a different character. Bella is a piece of crud towards other people. Honestly she is horrible towards Jacob; she manipulates him in so many ways and she acts like a brat in front of him the entire time. Plus she kind of says stuff about him behind his back, like excuse me he's your best friend and you're saying semi-mean stuff about him, friends don't do that to each other, he never did that to you. Also Edward is abusive and it's not even hard to detect, oh she needs to get out of that relationship ASAP. Also one thing I don't like about her is that she calls herself out all the time on her flaws (like how she's boring and stuff) and other characters deny this sort of thing, it's not just with Bella but she seems to do it more than everyone else in this series. Look I'm okay with people being themselves (for the most part) but if you're constantly calling yourself out then that annoys me because then it makes me think that you're being those things on purpose (or at least in Bella's case it does).
- Edward/EdWAD/P.F.- If you thought he was possessive and controlling before then you're about to be proven wrong here Not only that but he's prejudiced (towards werewolves) too. Great (sarcasm). Anyways this dude is just creepy in general but let me explain some things that he does that proves that he's controlling: 1, He practically orders his girlfriend to marry him and 2, When his girlfriend's best friend really needs a friend to help him he tells her multiple times that she CANNOT go visit her friend even though he needs her help. And to ensure this he bribes his sister with a car to "kidnap" her so that way Bella won't visit Jacob again. I'm sorry isn't that second thing a red flag for an abusive relationship because I'm pretty sure not allowing your significant other to hang out or be around their friends is considered being abusive at least that's what I learned in health class. So why the hell is this series treating it as star-crossed love then.
- Jacob- I liked him. I really did, but then this book came. This book single-handedly managed to turn Jacob from a nice dude that supported his friends into a douche that only cares about dating Bella. Like seriously this book made him almost as bad as Edwad. Almost. I still think Edward is worse because at least Jacob would allow Bella to see her friends and he wouldn't watch her in her sleep. Way to go Meyer, you managed to turn another one of the few characters I liked from your book series into an annoying suitor for Bella.
- Alice- At least in the other two books she didn't get that much screen time but now that she has more of it I realized that she is even more peppy than I thought. She's just irritating, not bad, just very very very irritating.
- Angela and Ben- Nice characters, they again just blend into the background so I don't remember anything about them.
- Bella's other lunch friends- Most of them are nice but forgettable. Except for Jessica. Jessica is essentially Alice but less annoying.
- Jasper- Forgettable and kind of annoying but he's not too bad. Still better than Edward and Alice. But I can't believe that he actually likes Alice though.
- Emmett, Esme, and Carlisle- Again they're not too bad but they are very very very forgettable.
- Quileute pack- Forgettable but annoying. Except for Seth, Seth is cool or at least he's not a douche.
- Victoria & newborns- Underdeveloped and annoying. Seriously Bella talks about her (Victoria) a lot but doesn't go into detail on who she actually is that much. Also why would she raise an ARMY just for freaking Bella? Anyways they all showed traits that just irritated me.
- Volturi- They're not in this book much. They're just underdeveloped and lame. I'd rather have the Empire or something.
- Charlie- One of the two characters I still like in this book series. Although he's easygoing he still tries his best to be a good father (personally I think that it was Bella's mom that made her a brat) and he does try to set rules and boundaries in his house. I really don't see why Charlie isn't one of the main focuses of the book.
- Rosalie- She and Charlie are probably the only characters that Meyer actually developed in a positive way. Too bad they're both side characters though. Anyways Rosalie is still sensible and likeable even if she's starting to hate Bella less. At least she wants to protect her family for a good reason and she doesn't want Bella to be a vampire because she herself regrets being one and unlike Bella, Rosalie didn't have a choice. When I listened to her backstory I was intrigued. I wanted to know more about Rosalie, hell why aren't Rosalie and Charlie the two main characters of Twilight? They're actually compelling and complex characters (despite being side characters).
To wrap up this post I would like to conclude with the fact that I hated this book (although I might scarily enough be building an immunity to this series) but if you liked it that's fine. Again I hate romance and it being a major component did not help be at all. Just know that I read all 628 pages of this book so that way I could try not to be biased in my Twilight hate (hell that was why I decided to read it in the first place) but also because other Twilight haters wouldn't have to. Now I can't wait for the final review of my Twilight review saga which will be of yes, Breaking Dawn, so be prepared for the final end of this harrowing journey.