New Moon

New Moon
Stephenie Meyer
Atom Books

608 pages
2007

I had a lot of fun reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight (shortly due to be released in cinemas near you...), the story of Bella and the ... not-a-man-but-a-vampire ... that she loves, and I was eager to get straight into the next, much larger, book in the series: New Moon...

Except.

It's one of the most frustrating books I've read in a while...

When something goes dreadfully wrong at Bella's birthday party (she is majorly accident prone), putting her in danger and terrifying the vamp she loves, it starts a chain of events that leads to ... well, nothing. I enjoy Meyer's writing style very much, but nonetheless, nothing happens for most of the novel. Said vampire goes away, taking his entire family with him, to protect Bella (which is a very stupid thing to do, since she really needs protection at all time, being a danger-magnet) and poor Bella is left moping for a while. Well-written moping that makes you feel dreadfully sorry for her, but still an awful lot of moping, which gets annoying towards the middle -- particularly when Bella seems utterly unable to cope after Edward runs off (idiot vampire) and is nigh-suicidal most of the time, constantly putting herself in harm's way and crashing her motorbike into trees and rocks on an almost daily basis. Which is silly. From a feminist point of view, that part isn't great at all -- Buffy is much stronger, more independent. I do sympathise with her, though, which probably says something.

I won't even mention Jacob, who is essentially Edward, but not as cool, by half. I'm not sure what it is about werewolves, they're much maligned, but I can sort of see why. Oh, by the way, Jacob hates vampires...

It's the last third of the book where things pick up, as Alice, one of the vampires, arrives to bring some bad news to Bella, and they all go rushing off to Italy and end up meeting the vampire equivalent of the Mafia. That was fun. There were some good threads and threats set up there for the next book, and it does make one eager for the next book...

I should add that I have already read that book, Eclipse, and am reviewing this one a bit retroactively, which isn't a very good reviewerly thing to be doing; I expect that some of my thoughts on Eclipse (which I really enjoyed) are rubbing off on this book, which really wasn't that great. It is worth reading, though, if only to pick up the pieces and prepare for a much more action-filled sequel.

For more information:

Amazon UK
Amazon US

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