New Moon (Twilight Saga, #2)

by Stephenie Meyer

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

The most important thing in Bella Swan’s life is Edward Cullen (eye roll). So much so that college is plan B, but now he is gone, in an effort to keep her safe. But she is not safe, there are vampires out for revenge and since the Cullen’s are no longer around, Bella is their target. In comes Jacob Black; young, handsome and willing to protect Bella.

If you have read my review on Twilight, you must be wondering why I decided to read New Moon. Torture, joining the social commentary or most likely peer pressure. If you follow me on twitter or have read my post on reading Twilight then you know the fun I had with live tweeting the entire book in all its weirdness. This is what happened again with New Moon (see below for a full read of those tweets) and I think this was the only reason why I decided to continue, because truth be told, I hated the books but really enjoyed making sarcastic remarks about them.

Let’s have a quick look at the book. I’m not going to go into deep analysis of New Moon; I would have to read the book closer for that and really I only skimmed it to race through it. This is not to say I didn’t read the book, I am well aware of the plot and the key themes but this book had so much padding that skimming was the only real way to get through it. There was a paragraph dedicated to the voice of Edward Cullen and almost a full chapter where Bella and Alice flew to Europe (nothing else happened on the flight).

Bella is as always so co-dependent that it makes me sick; when Edward left she latched on to Jacob. She tells herself that she is not capable of falling in love again, like a whiny heartbroken teenager that thinks this is the end of her life and yet she is happy to lead Jacob on. There even was a time when it felt like she was going to be co-dependent on Alice; this would have made it more interesting.

Jacob started off as a whiny little lovesick puppy following Bella around everywhere. Then when it was revealed he was a werewolf he turned into a real asshole, too cool to hang out with a girl because he was in a gang. He went from one extreme to another and I just hated Jacob, there was a joke made by one of my Twitter followers of this being character development and it is sad to say this is the extent of development in the entire novel.

Apart from the constant angsty whining (and I normally love angst) this novel never really went anywhere, it was just 500 pages of treading water. The major problems I had with New Moon are (and I’m picking my top couple out of a long list), firstly the lack of consistency. Twilight and New Moon seem to contradict each other in so many ways; in book one Bella got sick at the smell of blood but in New Moon she was bleeding all over the place frequently and never seems to get sick. Then there was the fact that Stephenie Meyer, instead of doing a little research, ignored any mythology and just made up her own. This really annoyed me, some slight changes in the vampire/werewolf mythology is acceptable if you are going to use it but to make a vampire sparkle so you can spend pages on how much Edward is like diamonds is ridiculous.

I hate to say this but I will probably read Eclipse and Breaking Dawn just to live tweet them, I don’t expect to like the books but I can’t help reading them. Obviously I pay them out but I do try to analyse them to see if there is anything interesting there; wishful thinking. I will need long breaks in between the novels but you can look forward to reading my thoughts in the very distant future. I doubt I will ever like this series but at least I have evidence to back up my claims.

Check out my live tweeting at http://storify.com/knowledgelost/reading-new-moon/

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/10/28/book-review-new-moon/