Wherefore (Pg. 13-17)

In high school it's Edward, Alice, and Bella as a happy little threesome who are now the best of friends. Almost getting murdered by a mutual enemy will do that to people but we forget about Bella's other 'friends.' People like Mike and Jessica, who used to have somewhat of an important role in Bella's life given that they are the first people she met here, the first people she hung out with, etc. Now however they are relegated to supporting players and although I'm supposed to say 'I hate to say it but I told you so' I really don't hate to say it. Being right isn't something I prefer to be modest about it which is actually kind of sad since I am outwitting a book aimed at teenage girls. I said it before, a long time before, that Bella's problem is that she thinks she's too hip to be happy, and that she would dump her friends as soon as she could. And she has, she's too happy to be around Alice and Edward completely forgotten about the rest of the population of the school.

We run into Mike though, he has dyed his hair blonde-ish and spiked it out (or is it up). Apparently, as Bella conjectures, to copy Edward. This is feasible given that Mike had a thing for Bella last book, but anyone that thinks spikey blonde hair is going to overcome the stink of "too nice guy" needs to reevaluate their priorities. It's not the looks it's the fact that he treats her badly that makes her want Edward.

Just because Bella has forgotten about the rest of the school doesn't mean that Meyer has. The section describing the new year is short, but that's actually an improvement. I criticized the previous book for not being a realistic portrayal of high school. Everyone was too friendly and the social caste system didn't seem to exist. I went so far as to wonder if Meyer was home schooled given that she just didn't get it. That problem still exists here, but first we need to set it up. The older Cullens have graduated leaving only Alice and Edward left in the school. How they determine who is what age is probably better left to fan fiction, but what is important here is that the privileged table of social betters is gone. Alice and Edward could probably hold it themselves but with the addition of Bella it means the dynamic is changed. It would be doubtful that three people could hold the position as they did before.

This means that other people have been upgraded and economy of storytelling means that we have to have already met them. Jessica, Mike, Lauren, and Eric now sit with them. Eric is an odd addition given that he should remain somewhere else. He's the dragon tee-shirt wearing, chess club, guy that was briefly introduced and then dropped. Lauren, I think, is the girl who hated Bella for her relationship with Edward and for some reason she sits with them as well. Mike and Jessica make sense though. This is where Meyer repeats her problem from before. Although it's hard to fault her for it since in order to populate the table she would have to introduce new people or just use them. They might be sitting at the same place but they aren't sitting with each other, Bella comments that there is an invisible line. It's only Alice, Edward, and her on one side and the rest of the people on the other. They don't mix, which means that it's just for show. The only reason to have Bella mention it is so she can brag about it. Even worse than that is that she blames everyone else for this discrepancy.

Her complaints make no sense, because when Alice and Edward are in school she won't talk to the rest of them. And when they are missing they talk to her. She's got the best of both worlds, but as I have said before, she just needs to complain.

The school scene is short, and it's just set up anyway. It's just that the minor scenes often tell us more about Bella than is intended.

With school out they go home to watch Romeo and Juliet prior to the party that Bella doesn't to go to. For some reason the version of the movie is stressed as being important (the 1968 version with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey). This is only done to show that Edward is old because its the version he hasn't seen. It also means that he is cultured, something that thus far hasn't really played any importance or relevance despite the fact that it is stressed that Bella is so smart. After some short making out they watch the movie.

Edward offers up a criticism of Romeo that is out of place if only because he is making it, "Well, first of all, he's in love with Rosaline-don't you think that makes him seem a little fickle? And then, a few minutes after their wedding, he kills Juliet's cousin. That's not very brilliant. Mistake after mistake. Could he have destroyed his own happiness any more thoroughly?"

Edward makes an interesting point about Romeo being fickle. Rosaline ditches Romeo prior to the play beginning but then he falls completely in love with Juliet. All that really means is not that Romeo is fickle but that Juliet was the rebound girl. Other than that he's completely wrong, Romeo doesn't make a series of mistakes. Sure Tybalt is gunned down (or skewered) but it's in keeping with the partisanship of renaissance Verona. I believe the two of them were fighting and Tybalt "gets got" but if he hadn't then it would have been Romeo in the dust. The play is more a series of unfortunate events than it is about love. Which is why "wherefore" ought to have been the title. Despite what most people think "wherefore" doesn't mean "where" it means "why." The famous line of Juliet's, "wherefore are thou Romeo." Is not about Juliet wondering where he is but why he is. Why was he named by a Montague.

Edward's criticism is made and Bella gets defensive because before Edward she had a thing for Romeo...as much as any person can have a thing for a fictional character. It really shows that she's not attracted to the right type of person. Edward-a controlling narcissist or Romeo the gangster. Which leads us to ask wherefore Bella, wherefore?

Discrepancies (Pg. 3-13)

We begin the actual book with a dream. It’s an interesting dream too, and we should all know that if an author is going to write a dream it’s important for the story, otherwise why bother. It’s based on word economy and the old trope of Chekov’s gun. If it’s there a payoff is inevitable. The trouble with that is Meyer seems to be quite unreliable in this concept. The last book gave us hundreds of mentions that Bella was clumsy and it seemed that the only reason for that was to set up an excuse at the end of the book for her injuries, and it was a lame excuse at that. We’ve heard of unreliable narrators but what we have here is an unreliable author and that’s troubling. Yet we’ve read this kind of thing before with Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code so it’s nothing new.

Anyway the dream has a disembodied Bella looking at an image of her dead grandmother and then Edward appears behind the grandmother. It turns out that this isn’t her grandmother but her in the future as Edward hasn’t aged a bit. Filling Bella with a sort of worry makes a lot of sense and perhaps the payout for this dream isn’t plot wise it’s character wise. This is good, a very good start. It’s akin to the sequence in the movie version of “The Two Towers” where Elrond explains to Arwen why she should abandon Aragorn. It works here as well as there, but the atmosphere of futility was much better in Jackson’s movie, that’s ok as this book is for a different, and younger audience.

What the dream sets up is that there is going to be an issue between the two of age. Which is about as realistic as a story about relationships with vampires is going to get. This issue was brought up a little bit in the first book, but not to any serious satisfaction. Edward in the dream has a curious aspect to his character, “Edward stood beside me, casting no reflection.”

The lack of reflection is wholly new. It was never brought up previously when Bella was researching her crush, in any of the intra-vampire discussions nor in the list of attributes brought up with regard to the special superpowers that each individual vampire possessed. We might be able to forgive this omission but it seems to be quite important since all of the Cullen "children" go to high school and Dr. Cullen works in a hospital. No one has ever noticed that they don't cast a reflection? All of the children would be required to participate in Gym class and that would entail showering with other people and then fixing themselves up, for their impeccable appearance, in a room with a large mirror. It also raises another interesting questions and that is whether or not they can be photographed.* School pictures, hospital ID badges, and sometimes in an OR procedures are recorded. The Cullens can probably escape picture day, but with the advent of cell phone cameras it would be kind of hard. Especially since they are so good looking. The Doctor is going to have some explaining to do when it comes to his ID badge.

The standard explanation given for the lack of reflection is that they are creatures of anathema to nature. They don't cast reflections because nothing can abide their presence, which is why dogs bark at them etc. Mirrors are abhorrent to them because the lack of reflection reminds them of what they once were in reference to what they are now. This is a factor that Meyer has discarded but he's still not showing a reflection so we are going to need an explanation for it. Perhaps they dodge the business with mass hypnosis, or even more realistically psychological explanation. The reason we think that a coin flipped eight times landing on heads all eight is "due" for a tails. Or if you look at a person with no eye brows, you realize something is wrong with their face, but you can't quite place it because you are used to eyebrows being on everyone it is almost as if you do see them. 

The reason for all of Bella's doubt is that today is her 18th birthday. She's officially an adult that can buy cigarettes, lotto tickets, and pornography. What it also means is that she's older than Edward, "I was eighteen and Edward never would be." Well, yes and no. Sure he would never age biologically beyond and eighteen year old, but he is certainly physically older than 18. Mentally probably not.

She gets to school and sees Edward by his shiny Volvo "like a marble tribute to some forgotten pagan god of beauty." We tired of this in the last book and I guess it's going to continue. The troubling thing about the last novel and it seems this one as well, is that we are offered no reason to think Bella should be going out with him other than his looks. I suppose this means that Meyer hasn't thought of any good reason either so she's sticking with appearance. He stands there and next to him is Alice. I said last post that Alice was my favorite character in the series so far. Not only does she have good characterization and is an actual likeable person but she also brings levity into the situation. Edward and Bella get right into brooding, and Alice interjects by reminding Bella that 18 isn't old. That isn't the point of course, and I think that Alice gets that, what I believe she's doing is reminding Bella that now isn't the time for wondering about impending morality.

Bella also has another problem the birthday is going to put her into the spotlight that "any other accident-prone klutz would agree. [That] no one wants a spotlight when they're bound to fall on their face." This is entirely unnecessary. Meyer should have taken the pseudo-clumsiness out of the story since it already served its purpose before. Putting it back in just means we have to hear about it more. Further based on what we know about Bella, we already know that she will pretend to not want the spotlight. The klutz thing is superfluous.

It's also established that this is a new school year, the beginning of their senior year. Bella has a job at a sporting goods store, even though this would be the worst place for her to work, and the manager must have been paid off or hypnotized into hiring her, she is not planning on going to college, "college was plan B. I was still hoping for plan A, but Edward was just so stubborn about leaving me human."

This is your role model girls? She's willing to sacrifice her future, any possibility where she could learn on her own or develop some actual skills at something, for a man. This is the same despicable theme that ran through "Sex and the City," that a woman's importance is only about landing a husband. Although in the HBO series it was all about a rich husband here that's not so overt but since Edward is already rich I guess it's still there.

The Cullens are rich too, Bella brings this up when fantasizing about being a Cullen in reference to her working class roots. They had a plethora of money that came from Carlisle's unlimited life and "a sister who had an uncanny ability to predict trends in the stock market." Bravo! Someone finally uses a person with the future sight to do something obvious with it. Of course it would be easier with regard to sports outcomes since the payoff would be almost immediate, but this is a nice touch. Most vampires are obscenely wealthy but their wealth isn't usually explained. In the Blade series it's not really touched upon, neither in the Underworld series, but here we get it. They exploited the psychic. Makes sense.

The other thing to note is that Bella uses "sister" and not "daughter" in reference to Alice. This is curious because she considers the money, the house, and the life she wants to be Edward's and not Carlisle's, or the Cullens'. She's pretty much obliterated any reference to herself here as well. The only real assertion of her person that she makes is when she talks about how she's "out of balance" with regard to Edward buying her things and how she would like him to stop. All of this is done in an air of how superior he is to her, making it that much worse. Even though she says she actually objects to his paying for things like dinner, a car, college, it's not him being a control freak or anything like that. It's about how much better he is than her, even though he "for some unfathomable reason, wanted to be with me."

Well that sucks, because I was hoping our protagonists had changed for the better but we've seen that she hasn't. Let's hope he has. 

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*Check out an old BBC series (90s I think) called Ultraviolet where vampire hunters exploited this using video cameras to hunt their quarry. It's unrelated to an incomprehensible Milla Jovovich movie of the same name.

The Task Anew (Front Cover-pg. 2)

And, we're back...

Before we begin I want to explain the style of this series. The last series was about the first book so we had no prior reference to any of the characters or setting. This book, being a sequel is going to assume that readers already know who is who and have a basic understanding of the type of universe that the story inhabits. I am going along with this, if you are new to this blog then I would suggest clicking on the archive and starting from the beginning to get the feel of what this is about. Also because this is a sequel the temptation is to point out inconsistencies from one book to the next: I'm not going to do that unless they are major. I actually hope that some exist since the main characters were so unlikable to me, that if they act differently or have different point of views this will be an improvement. So unless the vampires can't go out in the daylight all of the sudden or become allergic to garlic, I'm going to skip over it. I'm not that pedantic. Newcomers should also know that I get a bit heavy handed with philosophical/literary references given my academic background. And once more, I do make every attempt to be open minded with these books, I only bring what I know from the last one to this one. I don't have the books out of spite nor do I love them, although I do love writing this despite the toil that it may sometimes present. 

Starting from the very beginning of the book, I'm working from the paper back edition copyright 2008. It's got a flower or something on the front that is either dripping with blood or the color is running off of it. I suppose either would work given the subject matter at hand. The first book began with a quote from the Judeo-Christian Bible book Genesis regarding the tree of knowledge, and how eating from it will cause a person to die. In retrospect I should have wrapped the last book with reference to that quote because it doesn't make sense. If I want to be ultra generous I could say that the speaker in the Bible, God I suppose, although that book is usually attributed to Moses* for some odd reason, was speaking metaphorically. It's not that you die, die, but rather that you can't go back to not knowing what you now know. For instance, I really wish I didn't know about the Japanese super hornet but I do, and now I can't go back (seriously these thinks are fucked up). Although I doubt whoever wrote it was in to that kind of subtlety.

The beginning of this book gives us Act II, Scene IV of Romeo and Juliet, "These violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume."

It's a nice quote, but I venture to guess that it is out of context. The scene takes place in the cell of the friar who is about to marry Romeo to Juliet in secret. Right there we don't have any context for the quote because the relationship between the two isn't secret at all. Everyone knows that they are going out. I suppose again, we could be generous, as not everyone knows what Edward is. Then again, even that courtesy doesn't work because everyone that matters to Bella knows this. Which means that Edward and his family know.**

We get a further complication because  the play "Romeo and Juliet" have about as much to do with people's perception of Romeo and Juliet as "epicurean delight" has to do with "Epicurus." Ask anyone on the street what the play is about, and they'll more than likely say something akin to "two people who fall in love but are from families that don't like each other." Which is about as succinct as it can get and for most people the stress is on the love part. Also most people understand that the play ends tragically but they say it in a most curious manner, that the two committed suicide rather than live apart from each other, which greatly appeals to my humanist side but my intellectual side wants to chide them for this. This isn't the "Love Suicides of Sonezaki," we must remember that the tragic ending comes about because someone couldn't get a messenger out in time because of the plague. Juliet fakes her death, Romeo doesn't get it and kills himself, then Juliet kills herself out of grief. It was no suicide pact. Furthermore the play is really about gang warfare, and Romeo is still a straight thug. Even after being married to Juliet he murders Tybalt for killing Mercutio. It's a vendetta thing forget about it. The point is that even though Romeo was in love with Juliet, despite the fact that he was just as in love with someone else at the beginning of the play, he can't give up the life of a gangster (or Partisan as he would have been called in Renaissance Florence).

I mentioned Epicurus earlier for a reason. The friar isn't talking of love as all consuming, the way we think of it. He's borrowing from an Ancient Greek Philosopher's idea. The friar is talking about how all consuming the fire of desire is, until the achievement of that desire which then completely quenches that fire. So Romeo should wait a bit lest he become tired of the thing that he wanted so the friar continues, "the sweetest honey is loathesome in his own delicoiousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite: therefore love moderately; love long doth so; too swift arrives as tardy as too slow." Romeo should slow down his plans. Epicurus believed that artificial pleasures, love, sex etc. were so intense in their desire that a person would strive for them at any cost, but their resolution was often so hollow and fleeting and the consequences so dire that these sorts of desires were to be cast off.

I like the sentiment, but I don't like it here. Bella is already past that point by the end of Twilight. She's too in love with Edward, as we have seen, she can't make rational decisions about him. I'm not sure what this quote is doing here, maybe Meyer will justify it.

There's a prologue, shit.

We're actually want to skip an in depth analysis of the prologue. For two reasons, one: this seems to be Meyer's technique. She's going to start the book in the middle of the action and then tell the story from well before that point. The only trouble with it, is that it didn't work in the previous book, she was not of the caliber of "The Usual Suspects" or "Fallen," maybe she's improved but we can't know right now. Second, by doing this now, I effectively ruin the entire book until we hit that point. My reviewing will wonder what she's talking about and why. Furthermore I risk making generalizations here that will be proven false later and it won't be anyone's fault. Although the reasoning for wanting to skip there is why people put prefaces in their books in the first place, so I really can't skip it can I?

"With relentless, uncaring force, they turned inexorably, toward the end--the end of all things" Someone got better Mrs. Meyer. Bella is talking about her perception of time, and how no matter what her perception is the hands of a giant clock still click ahead at the same rate. It's really well done here, in fact so much so that I have hope of this book. Danger is established, but we kind of knew that was going to be the case going in, but there's also a sense of panic. This preface actually works better than the last one because at least here we don't have the false sense of death for the protagonist (we really can't say "hero").

We expect Edward to be with her but "Alice had said there was a good chance that we would both die here."

I'm glad Alice has returned, easily my favorite character in the first book because writing a character with the ability of foresight is a tricky thing, and giving her a happy personality is unique. The death thing isn't contradictory to what I said before since Alice herself has made mistakes previously, but those mistakes were on her interpretation not on some lame tricking fate kind of thing. She's trapped by the sun because she can't go out in it lest she reveal herself as the undead. So Bella has to do whatever it is she's running toward. I've said it before, Meyer can establish both mood and setting and the preface does my opinion justice. Hopefully she's cleaned up her characters too.

We can only hope...

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*Which is odd because he wouldn't have any knowledge of the events of creation  first hand, the Egyptians are already the dominating force in the world at the time which means that they've existed for centuries prior to the events of Exodus. Why don't the bible-literalists ever teach that controversy? 

**You would have to read the entire series from the beginning to understand why I am saying this. The short of it is that no one matters to Bella but Edward, that includes her father Charlie.

Thanks Julie

As the school semester draws to a close, we shall return to our journey in a week from Monday (May 16th).

Special thanks goes out to my old friend Julie R. who has been oh so generous to lend me a copy of the next book for investigation. Also due to the somewhat minor interest in my review of the movie, I will be interrupting the book for it when I accidentally stumble on to the movie playing from the beginning, I think it’s showtime or one of those channels.

Looking forward to writing summer.