(NOTE: The following post(s) include discussions of plot points from a bunch of books already published but that have not been made into movies yet, much of which can be considered SPOILERS. So no carping at me for not doing inviso-text or something.)
I should start setting weekly "projects" for this thing more often - when's the last time I updated the very next day. Anyway...
New Moon: Since the whole point of putting myself through this was to try and get inside the head of where this "phenomenon" is coming from, I made it a point to hit up a quick sampling of fan opinions. One main recurring point: Apparently Book #2 "New Moon" is the "love it or leave it" installment - regarded either as the series high-point or a fundamental low; no middle ground. It doesn't take long to discern why...
(incidentally, tip for making it through these at top-speed: Every time Meyer starts in on a positive description of male beauty, flip ahead five pages. Trust me - ALL you're missing is about eighteen paragraphs worth of synonyms for the words "hard," "cold" and "pale.")
...anyway, the whole story turns on Bella (female lead) getting a paper cut, the blood from which makes one of the good vampires momentarily flip the hell out and nearly attack her (visualized with unintended hillarity in the film's teaser trailer with a slo-mo sequence of pale skinny dudes throwing eachother through a piano.) She lives, but Edward (male lead, vampire) pulls a Bruce Banner - i.e. throwing a masochistic "I've got to protect you from me!" hissy-fit and running away, for whatever reason taking the rest of his crew with him. Bruce Banner, incidentally, is a reference Edward probably wouldn't "get" - since if he did, he'd know that doing this is the surest way to garauntee that one or more of the two not-as-nice vampires still living after #1 turn up again. Anyway, Bella gets mopey(er) and (more-specifically)-suicidal over this; but perks back up by reconnecting with old-buddy Jacob, fun-loving grease-monkey and member of the local Indian tribe... who's spent the interim between books growing into what my mother's generation called a "hunk." Oh, and he's a werewolf. See: title of the book plus pages upon pages of amusingly clumsy foreshadowing.
This, I infer, is where the "division" in the fandom comes from: Edward basically VANISHES for about 90% of this installment, supplanted by his diametric opposite. Fangirls, help me out here: This is like Twilight's version of Kirk-vs-Picard or Mike-vs-Joel, right? You're either a "Jacob Girl" or an "Edward Girl," in which case "New Moon" is either oasis or desert? Are there 'nicknames' for the two 'sides?' Anyway, though for what I imagine are profoundly different reasons than the target audience, I'd have to cast my lot in on the "Jacob side." Not that he's any less a one-dimensional cliche than anyone else in the series... but having suffered through a book and a half (plus a movie) of this stuff I'm inclined to be sympathetic to ANY character who's checklist of motivations includes "wanting Edward to die."
Moreover, though, I can say with some certainty that I'd call this the highlight (such as it is) of the series. The cartoonishly-unlikable male lead isn't around to bother me, that's part of it, but it's kind of the first (and, it turns out, LAST) time that the series makes good on it's own apparent hook of reworking mythic monsters into teen-romance archetypes - i.e. the vampire is the rich classy suitor vs. the blue-collar "fun" werewolf guy, fire vs. ice, a gender-swapped Archie/Betty/Veronica thing... but with monsters. Okay. Not really my "thing," but at least I'm getting a rough idea what the point is. This is - speaking of foreshadowing - the closest I'll ultimately come to enjoying this...
...too bad it doesn't last. A 3rd-act plot-contrivance drags Edward back into the mix, but mainly serves to introduce the franchise principal supervillians: A vampire self-policing aristocracy called "The Volturi" (cute) who hail from the vampire city Volterra (oh, gawd... y'know, even as a five year-old noting how for example the Thundercats came from Thunderra or Crystar came from Crystalium I thought that kind of naming-scheme was dopey.) They've got more exotic names and better super-powers than everyone else, basically, and their main function here is to hand the good guys an ultimatum to either turn Bella into a vamp sooner than later or off her before she spills the beans to someone. "That's light Team Amelica! A TICKING CROCK!!"
But anyway... yeah, compared to the first one, this one I didn't mind - to the point that, until Act 3 rolled around, I was struck by the sinking feeling I had a lot of "perhaps I misjudged this" crow to eat. It's tempered, however, by the fact that the stuff I liked I think I liked for the wrong reasons - it's obvious that the book intends for the reader to miss Edward, whereas I couldn't have been happier to not have him hanging around. Also, now that this is officially a "fantasy world" story instead of just a "vampire story," a problematic flaw rears it's head: While the teen-romance stuff works in fits and starts... ALL the mythology stuff is bad. All of it. The vamp/werewolf backstories are dripping in tired cliche, and the new stuff (like the "shiny" vampires) is pretty awful. And since "mythos" tends to get MORE dense as these things wear on... well, spoiler alert: That's goin' where you think it is. Starting tomorrow.
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