On the Crazy Train to Vampire Land

            Hey everyone on the internet. It’s Creative Karma again. That means it’s time for another book review.

            Like I promised, over the next couple of days I will be tackling the Twilight series. Last Wednesday I went over Twilight. Today it’s time to tackle the second book in the series New Moon.

            This time around I won’t be going into as much detail since you have the basic foundation for the way the characters work. The only thing that really changes is the amount of “face time” the characters receive in the story.

            Without further adieu, here is New Moon.

            This time the book really takes the readers on a ride. In the first book, it was all about Edward and Bella. This time the readers get thrown for a loop as Edward completely removes himself from the field. I won’t say why because if you haven’t read the story then I don’t wanna ruin it for ya.

            However, this allows the readers to really see the relationship between Bella and Jacob which is something the reader didn’t have. It was only ever implied that they had a friendship. Now, we get to see how deep the friendship goes.

            That is something I really appreciate about this series. They don’t just give a straight forward romance and stick with it. They have ups and downs and they let it fall together completely. At least they offer Jacob as a true friend to keep Bella from being completely alone.

            There are some issues I have with the Bella acts in Edward’s absence is that she is in a very deep depression. I get that a girl could be upset when her first boyfriend disappears on her. However, she is so depressed that she cuts herself off from all her friends. We may not see if her friends try to help her out but it is presumed that friends would help each other. This leads to my second issue, Edward and Bella were only together for what…half of one school year? Maybe the summer and a bit into the next? Even so, seems like a really short amount of time to be so depressed over the loss of a boyfriend.

            Now, Bella has completely alienated herself from her friends and the only one she has to turn to is Jacob. By the way, those school friends of hers. Time to start saying your goodbyes. They will be making their last large appearance in this book. In the next one they are the minority.

            So now that Bella has a friend to talk to and hang out with, she can hang out, talk about how she feels, get over Edward, and move on with her life right? Wrong. Despite how kind Jacob is being in trying to distract Bella from the loss of Edward, Bella spends all her time doing stupid stuff in order to have hallucinations of Edward. The picture of mental health.

            This continues no matter where or who she is with. You would think she’d try to just maintain a sense of normalcy but no. She’s too obsessed with Edward that she will do anything to see his ghostly figure again. This is really turning out to be healthy relationship.

            Unfortunately, this crazy train doesn’t stop here. Nope, we have our last stop. All of this comes to a crazy head when Bella decides to take up cliff diving. Now, to make this a stupid thing she goes alone despite the fact Jacob had offered to take her to do this very thing. Nope, she’ll do it alone and maybe die because she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Reeeaaalll smart move there Bella.

            Of course, the series doesn’t end here so we know she doesn’t die but she gets really close. Jacob saves her life and berates her for her actions. This being the normal part of this scenario. He takes her back to her home and we see the return of a Cullen. My personal favorite (besides Jasper) named Alice.

            Just to review for those that don’t know, Alice has visions of the future based on a line of choices a person has made. Until the choice is made the future remains foggy. Alice can always see Bella’s future except when she is around the wolf pack. This being said, Alice saw Bella jump off the cliff but didn’t see her being rescued. Like any sane person, this led Alice to believe that Bella was dead. So, she rushed back to Forks to see for herself.

            However, the problems start mounting immediately. Through Jacob’s hatred of the Cullens and the lack of correct and complete information lead Edward to believe what Alice came to confirm or deny. That Bella was dead. This is where we truly see that Edward, despite his disappearance from Bella’s life, still was just as in love with her as ever because he would rather be dead with Bella than alive without her.

            Now, you may think I’m crazy but everything after this is more logical. Hear me out first before you throw things at me.

            If there was someone you cared deeply about who thought you had died and it was up to you to go and prove otherwise so they wouldn’t kill themselves, wouldn’t you go? I know I would. And this is exactly what Bella does. However, unlike for most of us this requires her to get on a plane and fly with Alice to Italy. In Italy, is the group of vampires known as the Volturi who are more or less the vampire police. They were the ones that made the rules about what not to do and what the punishment would be for doing it. Rule number one: don’t reveal the existence of vampires. Ole Edward is gonna break this rule in order to make the Volturi kill him.

            As I said before, this book series wouldn’t have more in them if one of the members of the love triangle died. It just wouldn’t be interesting to most people anymore if they killed off Edward.

            But now they have a bigger problem. Here they all are together in front of the Volturi. Let’s see here. Aro, vampire. Caius, vampire. Jane, vampire. Marcus, vampire. Dimitri, vampire. Felix, vampire. Alice, vampire. Bella, human. Edward, vampire. Oops, Bella is a human that knows about vampires. Now, those that read the book know that the Volturi have a human working for them. However, they are more than willing to kill her or turn her if she either becomes more useful or a hazard. Edward on the other hand…not so much.

            This is the drama in the book that I actually appreciate. Emo girlfriends. Just no. But because you’ve fallen for a vampire and are discovered for it, that is something I can get behind. It creates a sense of urgency and fear. If they don’t agree to turn Bella by a set time then the Volturi will definitely make Alice’s vision of Bella’s death come true. I will ignore the fact for now that Bella is way too willing to become a vampire.

            If Bella hadn’t been as willing throughout the books and then this happened, I think it would have been much more believable and riveting. Then, it’s not just about Bella and her wants that have to come to pass but about her survival. Thanks to Alice’s visions, Bella is saved because everything is back on course for Bella to be a vampire one day. Obviously Edward is no longer thinking about staying out of Bella’s life.

            So after a less than thrilling anti-climax where they get to go home, we get to the end of our story where Charlie gets to be a dad for a page or two, Bella gets around Edward’s wishes by voting with the rest of the Cullen’s for her to join the family after she graduates high school, and a nice little time skip.

            The rest of the pages afterward doesn’t seem to be much of anything. One might think they could skip these pages and leave the book alone. But don’t do it. They are there for a reason. It’s in these pages that Edward finally has something over Bella. These pages make me laugh. All this time Bella has been completely eager to become a vampire. However, she’d rather have Edward change her into a vampire. Oh, but Edward gets an idea. He would be more than happy to turn her tomorrow if she agreed to marry him tonight. Makes me laugh thinking that Bella is finally out done.

            Personally, I would have taken the offer. However, Bella’s odd way of thinking has her completely against being married so young but she’s more than willing to be a vampire at nineteen. Kinda backwards isn’t it?

            Anyway, the book ends with no decision made and a nice little prologue which I will keep secret. To me it’s like the icing on the cake. Funny, drama, Charlie doing what he does best and Bella in actual trouble for once.

            Now, with all this said about New Moon, I do like the book. However, it’s still not my fave. Wait for my review of Eclipse for that. But this book changes things up. It’s not all about Edward and Bella. It shows us just how deep the friendship goes for Bella and Jacob. We get more details that wouldn’t have been revealed if this book never came out. Edward’s reactions my seem to come out of nowhere but if you read between the lines then you can see the act he was putting on in hopes that Bella would try for her own life without him in it. Sounds like a decent guy to me.

            However, this book has some serious negatives. Bella’s reactions to Edward leaving are WAY too over the top for me. It doesn’t feel logical or real. It feels like an overly obsessed emo girl going crazy over a boy who she barely knew much about and knew only for a short time. Bella’s friends are a little too forgiving in this book as well for all the psycho things she’s done.

            I don’t hate this book, but I don’t love it either. If I had to rank this book against the others then it would come in last place. However, there are other books I hate far worse than New Moon and with any luck you’ll hear about them soon enough. Now, this judgment might change with the next reviews but we will see how it goes.

            For what it’s worth, give it a shot. You need this book to at least understand what is going on in the last two books. Every book series has a book that’s not as great as the others and for the Twilight saga New Moon is that book unfortunately.

            Well, that’s all for now. Tune in next time for my review of Eclipse and you’ll see why that book is my personal favorite of the series. Until next time, I’m Creative Karma and I love me a Southern vampire.