The Truth (ch. 23)

So this one is again a week late, and I don't have the excuse of having lost the book either. No, this to week's post (actually last week's) is hard to write. It's hard because in writing these posts I try and say something interesting each update. Whether the section was extremely good or extremely bad, it doesn't matter that actually makes the posts easier. The worse, for me to read, usually means the better for me to write. And there are two kinds of bad: there is the bad that is bad writing (choppy dialogue, sentence fragments, etc.) and there's bad story telling (plot holes, contradictions, unbelievable events, etc.). This section is almost exclusively dialogue, which is promising when you consider that Meyer hasn't shown any adeptness at writing dialogue. Sure, the nerds will all claim that she is horrible at everything but I have one thing to say to them:

Fuck you. I've read these damn books, and I know you're wrong.

Meyer has what I call, "the Lucas/Whedon Conundrum." This is when a person is pretty decent at setting up a big picture type story but then when it comes to populating it with characters who have to talk to each other things begin to fall apart. At least Michael Bay doesn't think he's creating art, unlike Lucas and Whedon. I guess I should prove this conundrum. Lucas is responsible for the universe of Star Wars and yet seems the need to throw in a muppet every once in awhile. He can wrangle incredible actors and then give them shit characters. Whedon gave us Alien: Resurrection. Bitch all you want and tell me that the final creature wasn't his idea and I still won't care, because that movie is a shot by shot remake of the Poseidon Adventure set in space with monsters. Nothing new or original in it.

Meyer's got the same problem. Sure her universe isn't as interesting as Lucas' epic space battle, or Whedon's hellmouths, but she's got some potential here. It's when the characters have to live in this world that becomes the problem, especially when it is essentially our world only with fantasy creatures. Bella's reactions aren't realistic for discovering and fraternizing with vampires and werewolves. What's worse is that she isn't even realistic as a normal person. And all of that is painfully realized in this chapter. That's not even mentioning the return of Edward.

This chapter is titled the Truth, as if there were going to be some big reveal. Some fact that we don't already know, or a twist that would explain everything. Let's say Edward explains that he's been working with Jacob all along to trap Victoria, it would be corny but it would at least be honest. Yet nothing in this chapter is anything like a reveal. All we are told is that Eddie left because he wanted Bella to live a normal happy human life. While he was gone he was learning to become a tracker (more on that in a little bit) but he sucked at it, so he left. Then the thing happened with Alice's prophecy and we're caught up. We also learn that Edward is going to committ suicide when Bella dies of old age in the future.Then the chapter ends with Bella and Edward confessing their love and that Bella wants to be a vampire.

Does any of that, aside from the suicide thing, sound like--ahem--SHIT WE ALREADY DIDN'T KNOW? No? That's because the entire chapter is a recap of the fucking book. Remember three chapters ago when Bella rescued Edward (even though Alice would have been the smarter decision given her speed), and he didn't believe it? Yeah, when Bella wakes up from sleeping they have the exact same conversation where one of them doesn't believe they are alive. They even make the comment about how death isn't so bad if the other one is there. The only difference is that the roles are reversed. I can't tell if this is supposed to be clever or we are just at the point where shit needs to get wrapped up. It sucks in either case.

As I said earlier there are only two points of interest here and lets go with the suicide thing first. Edward claims that he won't live in a world without Bella. Yeah that's the type of boyfriend the young girls ought to pine for, the emotionally manipulative ones. He flat out tells her that he'll stick around until she dies of old age and then he'll kill himself shortly after. She views this as romantic, but I don't. It's bullshit. Why? For two reasons and both are plot based. One is that the Volturri are going to come for Bella. They said so, Alice predicted it (even though her powers shouldn't work on Bella), Bella isn't dying of old age. Secondly, Edward comments that the Italians count the years like days, so what stops him from doing so. Yeah seventy years is a lot to Bella, but to Edward it's nothing. And after she goes, he's free to move on to another high school girl.

Secondly is Edward's chosen other profession--that of Tracker. If we remember from last novel, James was a Tracker. This meant that he was able to hunt down and find Bella's mother's house with little to no knowledge of her beforehand. In fact, the Cullens were scared of her, and going back to that book there Edward yells at Alice, "he's a tracker Alice, did you see that? he's a tracker!"

Alright being a tracker is something you can see, but Edward is just going to do it? Is there a medal or something on his chest, a patch? Edward, as it turns out is pretty bad at it. Which is actually the highlight of the chapter, because finally there is something that this paragon of virtue and ability can't do. It's almost like character development. Almost. Because he is bad at it.

This is hard for me to write, but this is the one thing he should excel at. He has all of the senses of Wolverine, the speed of Quicksilver (I am not, nor ever was a DC guy), and the telepathy of Professor X. Yet in following Victorie he somehow ends up in Brazil. Victoria it should be noted has been travelling on foot and has spent a significant amount of time in this book in and around Forks. If he ever caught her scent, it should be impossible for him to lose it unless one of two things happened: either he didn't care enough, or she was bitten by James Madrox of X-Factor. Given the latter's impossibility only the former is left. Seriously, he ended up in Brazil. Of course if he wanted to protect Bella so badly he might have stuck around to deal with Laurent, but he let those shiftless werewolves do that didn't he.

No, this chapter makes no sense. And like someone who is going to argue that the moon landing was faked, reason and coherency have no place. It would have been better if "The Truth" was in the asking of the question, "so why didn't you just call me?" It really wouldn't matter who asked the question or who answered it, as long as it was out there.

Exodus (The New Moon Walkthrough Ch. 22)

We're back...unfortunately.

Recapping from last week's summary: Bella, Alice, and Edward are walking out of the castle de vampire in the town of Volterra. Well not really, they're walking out of the inner sanctum and back in to the real world where the building they were in transforms from the gray rock of a dungeon and into an ornate Renaissance mansion (or bank, or church, it's never really explained what kind of building this is supposed to be). No matter what it is they have to wait in the lobby until the sun goes down. The receptionist is there which elicits some awkwardness for some reason. It's kind of strange to me that there isn't a special room that they can wait in, but given the fact that reflected light seems to have no effect on the sparkling I guess it really doesn't matter. I don't know, but after a few hours it just seems like they would have been better off in the dungeon, for reasons that will be clear in a few pages.

How is Bella? We'll she's hysterical. Although it's unclear why she is so. One might say that she's freaking out for having escaped so close her own death, but...that doesn't work given her history in this novel and the last. Sure she was freaked out when she thought the wolves were going to eat her in the woods, but one good night sleep (that she had no trouble getting) and it was all in the past. She also approached the existence of werewolves with the stoic demeanor of the average person finding a five dollar bill in a jacket. Now, she's hysterical? Bella, please. Nope, the only reason she's like this is so that Edward can hold and comfort her. Is there a term for a condition wherein a person gets weaker around another?

How bad is she? Well she keeps hearing a rumbling noise that she can't pinpoint, "The ripping sound was the sobs coming from my chest."

Unless a small insect-like creature is going to burst through her rib cage I don't see how this is realistic. I have a three year old daughter and even at her utmost hysterics (because we won't play Mario Kart) she has never made a "ripping sound" when sobbing. I get that Myer wants us to believe how dangerous the situation was, but I just can't buy it. It's utterly inconsistent with her character thus far, but more importantly it's utterly inconsistent with the very idea of the character even though that idea is never communicated through the writing. I mean, it is but it isn't. We now how Bella perceives herself, but that perception is not reflective of the reality of her.

After being calmed down with some chaste kisses on the forehead Bella notices the human receptionist. The existence of the woman confuses her because apparently humans hanging around with vampires is wrong despite the fact that she is literally doing the same thing right now in the lobby. Bella wants to know if the receptionist is aware of what was going on downstairs, Edward answers that she does, but she's hoping that after a couple of years of working for them she will be turned. Pretty obvious if you ask me. Bella doesn't think so:

"How can she want that?' I whispered more to myself than really looking for an answer."

Really Bella!? Because every time the subject comes up you are practically on your knees asking for it. What should be holding her back? She knows their entire world, which, comparatively is more than you know. All Bella knows is the vampire life a bunch of vegan hipsters live in Washington. This receptionist though knows the entire hierarchy, all of the laws, who is in charge, and more importantly how they eat. Bella is rattled about the dining, but she forgets what Gianna, the receptionist, knows; the one's downstairs eating up a group of sex crazed tourists: they're the normal vampires.

Alice said it herself last book, the vampires are over evolved predators. They have specific bodily functions designed to capture and kill their prey--the attractiveness, the teeth, the speed, the strength, etc. If we buy into the myriad extra powers they have they are purposely designed to capture and kill humans. The Cullens are just the vegans of the vampire world--strange, annoying, pretentious, smug--the reason human beings have canine teeth is to rip meat. Now if the vegan wants to deny their nature and not eat meat, that's their choice--but they have to recognize that it isn't the normal choice. Just like a vampire who won't eat humans.

Bella still being worried about the future looks to Alice for guidance, Alice replies that she will see Jasper in 24 hours. Bella is relieved, "Lucky Alice, she could trust her future."

Actually no she can't considering that she's been wrong on important occasions. More importantly is that this is one of those lines that sounds clever when first read but upon repeated readings gets worse and worse, like "it is what it is." Yeah that sounded good when I first heard it back in 1995 in "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead" but now when someone says it to me it takes all the self restraint in the world for me not scream back, "OF COURSE IT IS! WHAT ELSE THE FUCK COULD IT BE!?*"

Gianna tells them that sun has set and they can leave now. For this Alice shoots her a dark look (get it?), but I don't understand why. It would be like yelling at the jail guard who is checking you out of prison having your death sentence commuted. Sure you may not like the person but what happened to civility?

Then there is the escape from Volterra. I say escape, as the chapter is titled "Flight," but it's misnamed. Getting to Volterra was a matter of urgency, getting from...is not. For instance, Alice steals a car. Why? Can't she just rent one? Or can they take a bus, or anything other than drawing attention to themselves. Why didn't the Volturri give them a vehicle? They travel from Volterra to Florence, and then hop a plane from Florence to Rome, and then from Rome back to the states.

There's an extra step in there: why didn't they just fly out from Florence to the US? Sure, neither airport in Firenze is an international but since they flew in from the US and landed in Florence we've already decided that geography isn't that important. How did they get tickets? They were in such a hurry that they had to steal the car, but they couldn't have stolen a plane. My favorite part is that in order to make the international flight, they have to go through customs, but they arrive at the airport in a stolen car? I hope, just hope, they paid in cash as well.

The transition from Italy to the US, is over. The Cullen family is waiting for them at the airport and Rosalie has to apologize to Bella. Why? Who cares. She's not an important character thus far, and the only reason we have for not liking her is that again, we've been told to not like her because she doesn't like Bella. I'm over it.

There's a weird conversation between Edward and Esme, in which Edward refers to her as "mom." I bring it up because I wonder if we are supposed to forget that Esme really isn't Edward's mom, but rather the girl Carlisle tried to set Edward up with but it didn't work out so Carlisle got her as a consolation prize. It was a nice touch in the last book that made Esme not Edward's actual mother, but we must have consistency. They are just pretending to be a standard family but they aren't that really.

Edward brings Bella home to Charlie, where he is not greeted with handcuffs or a hail of gunfire. Remember as far as Charlie knows his daughter just up and disappeared. She never called, she didn't leave a note. She asked Jake to do so but he took off before Alice and Bella did, so that didn't work out. Charlie is entirely justified in being angry, the only fault he has is that he's not angry enough. he should be tossing Edward on the ground restraining himself only with thoughts of his pledge to uphold the law. Still, if my daughter was kidnapped and dragged to Italy (this would be a legitimate thought in his head) to meet her exboyfriend and a week later they returned with her unconscious, he'd find out what the barrel of my Glock tasted like. The better move would have been to have Carlisle drop her off and explain things, not the incendiary move they decide upon. These vampires never really think things through.

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*Although being a Philosophy Grad Student, phrases like that actually come up in class (Metaphysics mostly) that don't mean the same platitude. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish.

About those last five pages...(New Moon Ch. 21.2)

Two weeks ago (I've been bad at this) I concluded by complaining that as chapter 21 ended, we still had five more pages to go. Then I misplaced my book, I don't know where it went but I assume that it has something to do with my daughter (you think I do this for myself?), she tends to hide things on me. Three year olds are like that. This week I knew that i needed to write something, anything really that was new in order to hang on to the relatively few readers that I have. Every week I re-read the previous post in order to get my bearing and re-establish the horrible memories that my academic brain had blocked out the week before.

Then I read this line from last post, " they walk by Heidi and some other people that are going to stand trial. It's a useless detail, utterly useless because we don't need to know who they are, nor get hinted at as to their fate. I'm willing to bet that we don't even need to know who Heidi is either.

Re-reading that line, and then checking the blog of the other person that also subjects themselves to this horrible horrible adventure i realized something: this is a lot more insidious than it sounds. Bella makes a point about Heidi being dressed revealingly, and that she's leading a crowd of people, a crowd so large that Bella had to press against the wall to let them pass.* They aren't in chains, they aren't in shackles, in fact they are being led by her so as far as we know they are coming of their own volition. By the time Bella and company get down the hall the screaming starts.

Ok, so I understood that my comment last week that they were going to be tried for some crime against vampiredom, but given the time that it took for them to get into the room and the time the screaming started (almost zero) I have to amend that statement. They aren't vampires, they are food. Bella doesn't register any kind of moral objection? Fine. I'll accept that because she was just almost killed and I hear that it can be pretty traumatic itself.

What I want to be concerned with is what those people thought they were going to do? I won't get into my fellow blogger's complaint that those people are going to go missing. That's probably why they were lured in during a tourist event. No one in that small town is going to miss tourists, if in fact anyone noticed that they were gone. They were being lured by a scantily clad extremely beautiful woman (it's not that specific but given the gushing descriptions that Meyer has attributed to all  the vampires in this novel I think it is safe to assume) through a sewer and then a large stone hallway I think they thought they were headed to an orgy.

How else could she do it? If a beautiful woman tells you to she wants to invite you to a party you might go. When she gets another person, you might be done, by the fifth person if you aren't getting skittish it means you are either oblivious or into it. What else could she have promised them? Why else would she need the tantalizing gear? Remember, these are the good guys, the bad guy is still in the woods of North Eastern Washington State.

I just needed to be clear. If I do the next book, I'm counting the accidental porn.


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*I apologize for the lack of quotations but, again, I can't find the book.

Pornography (New Moon Ch. 21)

Brendan Gill, a writer for the New Yorker once defined pornography as being a film in which you notice that the characters spend more time going through doors, getting in and out of cars, in other words--transitioning from one location to another then doing anything else.* While this sort of definition leaves out the more visceral substance of pornography it makes sense. The characters, aren't really characters at all, they are place holders for the action. There is no real plot development, no character growth, nothing that we could say that we learned--perhaps other than the bill for the cable guy is apparently open to interpretation. By Gill's definition we might actually be able to say that Twilight is pornography.

No it's not porn porn, but it's a type of porn. It's certainly fantasy fulfillment for a certain segment of the population. I would be open to debate on this topic because like the characters in actual porn, there is no development. The plot is merely a vehicle for certain situations to develop, and if I read this book to myself while someone plays bass in the background the similarities really work in my favor. We have had one character, pining for another, throw herself into the arms of a third, all the while ignoring any facet of common sense, and who (as Gill points out) constantly changes scenery. In fact the first four pages of this chapter detail a walk through two hallways, a couple of doors; to which even Bella remarks as to the endlessness of it. Which is pretty bad considering that Bella is the stand in for the author. When even the creator is sick of something in their world one has to wonder why it's there in the first place.**

"The stone antechamber was not large. It opened quickly into a brighter, cavernous room..."

I haven't pointed a good thing in a while, but I will say this: Meyer has used the term "ante" in "antechamber" more correct than a lot of bloggers I have read. "Ante" means "before" or "pre" not "against."

Once everyone has been collected, there is going to be a meeting of sorts. The vampire herald, Jane, enters in the room and is greeted by the chief (we assume, at this point we haven't learned who he is), "He drifted forward, and the movement flowed with such surreal grace that I gawked..."

And I was just done complimenting her too, "surreal" is a synonym for bizarre. It doesn't mean unbelievable, or incredible, it means strange to the point of absurdity, irrational--not anything like the way it's being used here.

The chief, Aro (seriously), is happy not only to see Jane ok, but also to see Bella, Edward, and Alice all alive and ok. He's happy, a little too happy but I guess this is an attempt to portray him as being eccentric. He congratulates himself on not killing Edward yesterday, chides Edward for wanting such, and expresses marvel at Alice's talent.

It seems that Aro's mutant power...I mean vampire power, is that he can hear thoughts as well. Only as long as he is touching the person in question. This limitation is buttressed by the fact that while Edward can only receive current thoughts, Aro downloads the entire brain. After a bit Aro's brothers come in, Caius and Marcus and instead of thinking that everything is wonderful they are bored. This is nice.

What often gets missed in tales of the deathless,*** is the immense amount of time they actually have. They don't just view the future as being a long time that they are going to live, they view their life as going through the rest of time...i.e. all of it. The alternate ending to the movie "Death Becomes Her," handled it well as the two women who had gained eternal life began to become bored. There was nothing they could do, furthermore they were already shallow superficial women to begin with, so if these vampires are really older than the Roman civilization I somehow doubt they give one fuck about whether or not a human and childish vampire were alive. This bores me and i only have sixty or seventy more years ahead of me.

Aro's mutant, er vampire power does save us from having to read a recap though, "But he (Marcus) just touched Aro's palm briefly and then dropped his hand to his side. Aro raised one black brow."

Aro has the story, somehow. Shouldn't he have touched Bella, Alice, and Edward to get the rest of the story on this one? What the hell does his brother know? That answer is as ridiculous as the situation itself. Marcus, the one that touched, Aro can telepathically determine relationships. That's it, he's surprised that it's so intense between Edward and Bella but that's all of the information the can possibly give to Aro.

They segue into a discussion about Bella, of course. Bella is immune to Edward's telepathy so Aro wants to know if she's immune to him. Fair enough, it turns out that she is. Then it's Jane's turn. Jane has a power that we don't know about, but apparently it's enough to turn Edward feral. Angry he is, much clouded are his thoughts as he launches himself at Jane--but is cut down on the floor sniveling. Jane's power stopped him but it cannot affect Bella. The conclusion is that Bella is immune to vampire powers.

Except that she's not. Alice can see her future, not just the general future but specific things. She saw Bella jump (or, sigh, fall) further is that Marcus can perceive her emotions as well. This conclusion means that either Aro is an idiot or the plot is literally forgetting what just happened. Either is possible.

It seems that one of Aro's brothers is actually the reasonable one though, Caius reminds Aro that their law still claims them. We don't know if he means all three or just Bella and Edward but the law is the law. What's at stake is that Bella is a human, she's seen too much, and she's not food. It's a security issue. Edward gots to get got as well because he won't leave Bella to die nor will he turn her. Aro asks him if he will eventually turn her and Edward locks up.

Bella pleads but since Edward knows best he won't answer. How to resolve this: cleverly I might add. Alice, who has previously expressed impatience at her brother's decision to not be locked down for eternity settles it. She walks over and places her hand in Aro's sharing with him the future she has seen. Aro is delighted, "To see the things you've seen-especially the ones that haven't happened yet!' he shook his head in wonder.
---But that will,' she (Alice) reminded him, voice calm.
Yes, yes, it's quite determined. Certainly there's no problem."

Very well done. It really works because given Aro's disposition we really can't know what she let him see. I've the feeling that he would be as delighted no matter what.

Too bad we have five more pages of crap before the chapter ends. They don't merely leave, they walk by Heidi and some other people that are going to stand trial. It's a useless detail, utterly useless because we don't need to know who they are, nor get hinted at as to their fate. I'm willing to bet that we don't even need to know who Heidi is either. Yet they finally leave the underworld. Hopefully for less door opening and closing.
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*In the interest of academic honesty, I have no idea where he said it. I know the quote from Roger Ebert's review of the first Underworld movie. 

**Right god?

***Because immortal doesn't mean the same thing. Vampires were still born after all.

Editing (New Moon Ch. 20/21?)

I realize that editing must be tough. I also realize that there is probably more to it than I realize. Some subtleties in bringing out the writing intent of the author that involves more than just deleting typos and adding conjunctions. That being said I know editing mistakes when I see one and for once this can't be solely blamed on the author. In fact, depending on how the author writes this could be an occasion where the author is completely free from blame, but this section has a good number of problems so we'll get to it as we go.

When we last left off, Alice and Bella were in a stolen Porsche heading from the Florence international airport (which doesn't exist) toward the town of Volterra in an effort to prevent Edward from exposing himself to the Italians thus getting himself killed by the chief vampires. He's picked this day because it's the feast of some saint or something who drove the vampires from the town a long time ago. I don't mind the fake holiday, this is fiction, and for once it's not divine intervention by the author to get the plot moving (eh, at least it's not that obvious of a device; would it really matter if there was a holiday or not?). It's here where we see some sloppy editorial oversight, and some lazy writing.

The duo approach the city gates stopped by a police roadblock trying to wave them off. Due to the holiday the have the city closed off to everyone but tour buses. Apparently in Meyerland, cities are like the planets of Star Trek. One holiday, one people, one thing to do. We can assume that they are taking the main road into the city, the via volteranna, and yes, if there was a parade they might close that road off. Yet, there's no indication of a parade, and the city isn't walled as Renaissance towns used to be either. It's pretty much an open city. We can grant the roadblock but not why or how. What about all the rest of the people that need to do business in the town? There's a college there as well, stores, restaurants; in other words it's a real place that people will need to actually go. If the roadblock shut off access to the palazzo that would be pretty reasonable. The St. Patrick's Day parade doesn't shut down all of Buffalo, Boston, Chicago, or New York; it just shuts down the parade route and a block around it. Remember too that those are parades that travel through cities much larger Voltera.

Alice pulls up the policeman. It's sunny outside but luckily the shadow falls on Alice while the light hits Bella. Alice is driving and while we can't nitpick where the sun is we can certainly gather that Alice is going to have a difficult time talking to the cop. The cop does the cop tap on the glass and Alice rolls down the window halfway, "I saw him do a double take when he saw the face behind the dark glass."

Why? Is it because her picture had been circulated as a car thief? Is it because she's as pale and blonde as German but doesn't smell like one? Is it because she's young but driving a Porsche? Nope, it's because she's pretty. I had forgotten that without vampires in the story the adjective use had dropped considerably, "he wished he had better news for the strikingly beautiful woman."

Here's a cop on a shit detail, who is literally falling over himself to please Alice. He should be on his fifth hot girl by now (if you've ever had to heard people from a location they didn't want to go believe me, you start filling in the time by counting either the extremely good or the extremely bad), I somehow doubt that if he did notice he would have have noticed that much in a girl that, remember, used to have no trouble passing for a Junior in high school.

Instead of using her feminine wiles, she bribes the cop. Yes this is an offense in just about every country, but it's a shit detail and she only wants to get through. Alright, I suppose he doesn't have a partner, or if he does he can just say it was a local. How much was the bribe? "His face was dazed as he retrieved his hand and stared at the thick roll of money he now held. The outside bill was a thousand dollar bill."

We know it's not US Currency she used, what could it have been? It's not a Euro, they don't have 1k bills either. This is a long running problem in the book. It should commit to either the real world or a fake one. Make up a country, a language, and a denomination; sure I'll pick on the book for doing that but only a little bit then I will have to accept it. If you are going to use the real world then use it, don't give the cop his salary in fake money, just one thousand ought to be enough to get you through a non-emergency road block.

One in the town they have to reach the tower, of which Google maps isn't too clear on if it exists. I don't care if it does or does not. Still, someone should, it's just not going to be me. There's a good sense of urgency in the next few pages. It actually works well, I would quote it but it's actually quite long. Long story short, she runs into Edward saving him from stepping into the light. It's a good thing that ambient light doesn't set off the sparkles.

They have a brief conversation about whether or not he's dead, and he replies after noticing Bella, "So maybe this is hell. I don't care. I'll take it."

Yep, it's hell and you're stuck with your whiny girlfriend forever. Mwa ha ha ha...if only.

Just previous to that he quotes Romeo and Juliet, again. Which is strange to me because that play, even the stereotype of that play has nothing to do with this story. No one was keeping them apart, aside themselves. There were no gang fights. No one committed suicide, or according to Bella even tried. Sure Romeo was going to step into the light, but that wouldn't be analogous to anything Shakespeare wrote.

"We're not dead, not yet! But we have to get out of here before the Volturi--"

And the chapter should end right here. The issue in chapter 20 is now resolved. See chapters are like little stories and once the little story is over the chapter ought to end as well. We climaxed with Bella saving Edward, we then move to the resolution conversation to give us the cliffhanger that keeps us up for, just, one, more, chapter.

Not here though. This is the sloppy editing I mentioned earlier. We could blame Meyer, but I don't know how she writes. Maybe she doesn't do chapters and types everything as one long manuscript. Possible. Although unlikely. Instead of ending here, we are introduced to Felix, another young vampire and a whole slew of the Volturi. It seems that they are upset with what Edward almost did.

Here's what I don't understand, and what Bella should be thinking about as they lead her, Alice, and Edward underground to their secret chamber. If they were going to kill Edward for almost exposing them, why haven't they done it? If they are going to spare him why haven't they said so? If she's the reason he broke the rules, why is she still alive? Why isn't any of this in the next freeking chapter?

The problem is that Meyer did so well in building the tension for the chase sequence through the palazzo that it's unnecessary to do it again here. We already had the tension, if you save it for the next chapter it builds suspense. It makes you a better writer. I cannot think of a reason that this is done here.

Flight (The New Moon Walkthrough Ch. 19)

"We made our flight with seconds to spare"

Have you ever been on a flight? Has anyone at any time ever gotten to the airport with seconds to spare and just made the counter? Oh you have? That's because it was pre-9/11 wasn't it. While I'm against shoehorning the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 into any story just for the sake of doing it, I'm also kind of for it when you reflect on how much it changed life in the US. Bill Maher openly declares that the security protocols instituted after 9/11 are less "war on terror" and more "war on travel." You can't just show up at an airport and buy a ticket with seconds to spare. You have to be there early, early early. Especially for international flights. Now, granted, two white girls from Washington State aren't exactly on the stop and frisk list, but their behavior would still raise some eyebrows. Besides aren't we missing something here? Like some explanation of where they are.

Last chapter ended with Alice and Bella taking off for Italy from Forks. Now, unless Forks has an international airport (it doesn't) we need some transition from where they were to where they are. Did they take the flight from Seattle or some other city? Is there a layover? I mean there has to be, no plane is going to make the trip from Washington to Italy without refueling. Odds are they stop in either NYC or somewhere in Canada. Ok, we're not there yet, but I'm willing to bet these details about flying aren't coming. Honestly at this point it would just make more sense if they borrowed from the George Lucas and the Muppets to "travel by map."

Alice does a curious thing while the flight is still ascending, she uses the phone, "Alice lifted the phone on the back of the seat in front of her before we'd stopped climbing, turning her back on the stewardess who eyed her with disapproval. Something about my expression stopped the stewardess from coming over to protest."

No that's not what happens at all, at least not in real life. The curious thing about this universe is that Meyer alternates between trying for realism with quasi-scientific explanations of certain things but then ditches all of that when she feels it convenient. The tidal pools from the first book showed at least some basic research into nature. Yet when it comes to plot convenience the real world doesn't matter anymore. If it were consistent, it would still be annoying, but at least it wouldn't be jarring. Here we are supposed to be getting the impression that Alice's phone call is important, too important to wait. She had plenty of time to make this call on their way to Seattle...or wherever so she uses the phone in the plane in defiance of every airplane's rule about not doing so.

It matters because the plane's phones won't work until the airplane is safely in the sky. The reason for this: radio transmissions have the capability of screwing up an airplane's radio tethering to from one control tower to another. Mythbusters proved this back in 2006. Shout conspiracy all you want, but no airline in the world lets you do it.*

The plane is in the air, Alice has hung up explaining that Emmet and Jasper are going to try and stop Edward from killing himself. His plan is a little convoluted and at odds with what we were told last chapter. Edward isn't going to ask the Volturi to kill him, he's going to force their hand by either killing a whole bunch of people or throwing a car through a window (someone saw Spiderman 2). Just like suicide by cop, he's going to expose the vampires and they are going to have to put him down.

That begs the question, who are the Volturi? It's exposition time! For around five pages we get the usual tired tropes about vampires: royalty, powerful, legions of guards, handpicked, yadda yadda. They are also old, three thousand years old in fact; why they are older than Jesus. As lords of vampiredom they enforce the rule, the only rule, the same rule that Woody and Buzz abide by--they can't expose themselves to the human folk. Despite the fact that they have no reason to hide. None at all. Just think about the world three thousand years ago. We're talking the end of the bronze age, the proto iron age is beginning. The Greeks don't even have their written language yet, (still using linear B-the losers) David is king of the Israelites which means weapon of mass destruction=sling, and the Zhou dynasty still has 800 years left in it. The point is that warfare is still a one on one physical affair and the vampires decided to hide from the world instead of setting themselves up as the godkings over humanity? Given their abilities they would have had no match. Perhaps one human gets lucky and cuts a head off or two, but that's it. He has to sleep sometime.

"Is planning to flout that in their own city-the city they've secretly held for three thousand years, since the time of the Etruscans."

Ah the Etruscans, the people that gave us the fascii, the bundle of reeds with an axe in it symbolizing the monopoly of the state over violence. (you can see one in the US Capitol building, it's a replica) Too bad the Etruscans weren't a civilization until the seventh century BC. Being accurate here, would actually make the Volturi seem more fearsome but whatever.

Alice discusses how dangerous and difficult this is going to be. Bella doesn't care because if they kill Edward, they'll probably kill her too and that's ok, because what is living without your sociopathic boyfriend who already dumped you? Alice, to her credit, gets angry, "Knock it off Bella, or we're turning around in New York and going back to Forks."

Ok, so the layover got mentioned. I wonder if it's an idle threat. Is Alice really going to sacrifice Eddie to teach Bella a lesson? Is there a way they can both die? These are the questions I want answered but am thwarted at every turn.

What's frustrating is that there are two side conversations that shouldn't be here in any respect. The first is that Alice mulls over turning Bella into a vampire. I suppose it's a long flight but given that Alice knows Bella's desire does it really make sense to get her hopes up? The second is more plot based.

Alice reports her visions of the future as soon as she gets them to Bella. Edward has asked the Volturi to die, they offer him a job with them because he's oh-so-special. Even though he really isn't, he has faulty telepathy. Then Edward begins to think of ways to expose himself as a vampire. The conflicting visions are good, because it represents the branching timeline given Edward's choice, that's actually-dare I say-clever. My issue is that I can't seem to fathom how far in the future these decisions are. We know from experience that Alice sometimes sees minutes ahead. I'm confused as to whether I should be feeling tension or despair. As they land we aren't told the time of day. It can't be day light out or else Alice is going to sparkle up the airport, but the sense of panic only allows us to assume that it's just Eddie that sparkles. It's too bad also that neither the Peretola airport nor the Sixt Autonoloeggio Firenze are international airports either. For that they are flying into Pisa at the Galileo Galileii airport.

This is important because they have to steal a car to drive to Volterra. They jack a yellow Porsche and now must speed down the highway to cross the forty miles in order to find and save Eddie from doing something incredibly stupid. It's not just the suicide either, it's his method. He's basically going to out every vampire in the world with this one act. All because he has some pain, selfish jerkoff.

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*Caveat. Certain airplines are attempting it, but very careful electromagnetic shielding goes into the plane to protect the cockpit. This is still in the experimental stage.

Can You Hear Me Now? (New Moon Ch. 18)

History time:

Back in 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola made a phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell labs. It wasn't just a normal phone call, if it were, I probably wouldn't be mentioning it. Motorola and Bell Labs (then owned by AT&T) were in competition to build the modern cell phone. When Martin Cooper made the call in 1973, he was effectively telling Engel, "we won." They had done it, built a phone that could be carried (sort of) around wherever a person went. This wasn't the first time, in 1946, a mobile telephone call had been made but the phone wasn't exactly portable, it weighed over 88lbs (40kg) and it was not a cellular phone but a radio telephone. The differences are minor but the point is that this technology is old.

Only within the last decade or so has the use of cellular phones become ubiquitous to the point that the United Nations has declared them to have spread faster than any other technology. This is evidenced by the fact that it seems more odd if a person doesn't have one than if they do. This will all be important in a little bit.

We are not doing the typical chapter summary this week. The reason is that I just realized exactly what the plot hinges on, what is now driving it, and it's utterly ridiculous. In brief here's what happens in the chapter that isn't the real important thing: Jacob comes over, yells at Bella for being a vampire lover, Bella explains that she loves Alice and isn't going to dump her* but can't they all be friends. Everything kind of works out, there's a scene where Jacob almost gets kissin' action until Alice gets a phone call. She looks scared.

Here's where we get going, keep in mind everything I said about the cell phone before.

In the first novel the vampires had cell phones. The poor Swans and Blacks even have Antonio Meucci's device in their houses. People have the ability to make phone calls in this book. I know that I keep hammering that position but I really want to be clear about that fact because it is very curious that no one even thinks to pick up the damn phone:

-Last chapter Alice told us that she had a vision of Bella jumping off a cliff. Instead of picking up a phone and calling her immediately she buys a ticket, gets on a plane, and comes down to save her--getting there too late. See what I mean? If Alice had simply had the vision (of which there are numerous problems but--I'm not going to get into that) then dialed up Bella to make sure she was ok everything would have been fine.

This is another problem I have, that I ought to have brought up earlier. Why did Alice have to break up with Bella when Edward did. I know it would be kind of weird, but Alice could have still been friends with Bella. Is Eddie the king of the Cullens? As much as I hate Ed and Bella, it might have been nice for Alice to continue to have her friend. It's not like Bella left Scientology and now the rest of her clan have to shun her (you can sub in Mormonism/Amish for Scientology there if you prefer).

Back to Alice not calling, maybe she didn't call because she saw that Bella was ok and just wanted to see her. It's a stretch because it goes against specifically what is said by her, but we can still pretend right?

Alice's phone call was preceded by a mysterious phone call that Jacob answers. What happens is this: the phone rings and Jake grabs it. By the way we are at Bella's house but it's the man's role to answer the phone. Jacob answers a few questions, then mutters a derogatory comment about vampires. What Jacob tells the person on the other line is that Charlie is not home, he's at the funeral.

This is the "plot." The person on the other line was Edward asking for Charlie. Why was he doing this? Because Alice told her family that she saw Bella die in the future, at which point she flew down. Edward, who apparently still cares for Bella but not enough to call her on the phone, called Charlie to offer his condolences I suppose--instead of doing anything at ANY POINT EARLIER TO STOP WHAT ALICE KNEW WAS HAPPENING. When he finds out the exact thing that he expected he hangs up.

At this point Alice gets a call from Carlisle. Here's where it gets stupid(er). Because Edward thinks Bella committed suicide, six months after they broke up, he is going to the Volturri (I'm not looking it up) to die. He's going to ask them to kill him, something he can't do himself for whatever reason, because he blames himself for Bella's suicide. This, despite the fact that it's been several months and she could have done so for any number of reasons (broken family issues, other people, realization that she's a horrible person) he can't live without her--even though he dumped her, moved away, and told her he was never going to see her again.

It's also been two days since Alice got to Bella's house. Upon arriving, why didn't she just call to check in, "hey Carlisle, yeah it's me. You know how sometimes I'm wrong with my predictions and don't see everything, well it happened again. Yeah Bella's fine, by the way I can't see werewolves in my visions and the Forks is overrun with trash now, those two statements aren't independent. bye bye."

The entire developing "plot" would be thus eviscerated. The phone call Alice should have made would have prevented Eddie from thinking Bella had died. No need to suddenly head to Italy to save him.

Never mind that the plan is stupid: couldn't they just throw a call to the Italians and let them know that Ed is operating under incorrect information, "Hey Viktor, yeah Alice Cullen. No, Cullen...C-U-L-L-E-N. Yeah, Carlisle's kid, sure whatever. Listen remember Edward, Edward. Kind of douchey looking, spikey hair, angsty for no reason...yeah him, the asshole. Listen he thinks his girlfriend whom he dumped committed suicide and thinks he's responsible...no six months ago...yeah he is self-centered...I know...listen, she's alive and fine...just let him know...I'll see you...I promise I'll visit...ok bye bye"

Boom. Book solved. Instead they have to go to Italy. Does Bella have a passport? She does. Why? Because she needed one to attend a failed attempt by her crazy mom to marry her boyfriend. Odd, that she would need a passport for that.

The thing about cellular phones now is that they have quick access to the internet, if you have the right model. Of course in 2006 they wouldn't have unless you had a BlackBerry or a Nokia Symbian, which was in the book was written. Why is that important? Because in 2006 you didn't need a passport to get into Mexico or Canada. All you needed was a valid ID, and a reason for doing so. The US used to have an open border policy which used to be a big deal given that the US/Canadian border was the largest unprotected border in the world. They stupidly changed that policy in 2009 to prevent...uh, something I'm sure. What I'm saying is that while having a passport let's you cross the border easier, it isn't essential and if you were only planning on going to Mexico for one thing you probably wouldn't grab a passport. Research Meyer.

All of chapter 18 could have been taken care of in two phone calls. Now, we have to chase Alice and Bella to Italy. Which, by the way, Bella decides to up and leave her father, who just loss a close friend, in the care of Jacob who doesn't have the time due to the hunting of Victoria. Nice girl.

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*American President Thomas Jefferson rewrote the bible removing all references to the supernatural, it would be interesting to do that with this series: what we would be left with is the story of a depressed angsty narcissistic girl who falls for a abusive sociopathic boy and his weird cult family. That would be the first book, the second would--as of right now--be about a love square between Bella, Jacob, Alice, and her ex-boyfriend whom we don't see anymore. Without all the vampires and werewolves it almost sounds quite compelling.