New Moon reviewed

So we're in the second book of the Twilight Saga.  If you read the review of the first book....let's just say there was much pain and suffering as I struggled to read through the horrible writing, the abusive Edward who was the most interesting character and the horrible lack of build-up for the villains.  So why did I read this book and have plans to read the others?  It's not because of the movies even though I'll watch them eventually but it was because I saw the most awesome thing that happened in Breaking Dawn.  I'm not going to say what it is cause it's spoiler-riffic and it's so awesome that you're head might explode if not properly prepared.  Of course, for Breaking Dawn to make sense you would have to read New Moon and Eclipse so here we are.  So how much pain did I inflict upon myself while reading it?  Without further delay, let's dig into New Moon.

So it's a few months after the aftermath of the first book, Bella's 18th birthday is approaching which scares here cause she's stupid(more on that later).  So the Cullens, you remember the vampires who glowed like diamonds in the sun and were EXTREME!!!!111!!!, throw her a party and one thing leads to another and Jasper wants to feed off her.  This debacle leads to the Cullens and Edward leaving FOREVER which leads Bella in a horrible, but well-deserved, depression and eventually the realization that doing stupid things leads to Bella hearing Edward's voice which keeps here alive.  That and her growing relationship with Jacob Black, that Native American guy from the first one.  However, since Bella is, well Bella, it turns out that Jacob and most of his Indian tribe are WEREWOLVES....EXTREME!!!11....wait, these werewolves are normal werewolves except for the full-moon thing so they're more like the Teen Wolf werewolves except they don't play sports and they don't suck.

So this may come as a shock but I did almost like this.  I think the biggest strength was the relationship between Bella and Jacob.  Anybody that's literate knows that relationship between Bella and Edward isn't that healthy with the stalking, controlling and the pseudo-abuse.  I was also a bit bummed that Edward was the only interesting character from the first book and I prepared for the worst when he was only around for 1/3 of the book.  Luckily, Jacob is a much more interesting character this time around and Edward's a bit boring this time around, I don't know why.  But Jacob is nice, he's caring and he's not abusive or anything like that!  Even Bella seems to realize this and wants to spend more time with him and almost forgets Edward.  Then the whole werewolf thing comes along and there goes that but they still remain friends...until the Cullens return.

Another massive improvement in this is that the there's actually build-up for these new developments.  There's this new family of Vampires called The Voluturi that live in Italy and they are talked about in the beginning of the book!  Now compare that to the build up James, Victoria and Laurent at the first book....there was none!  They just suddenly appeared and messed some crap up but not in an awesome way.  Oh, Victoria and Laurent are back but Laurent just has a cameo cause things don't work out to well for him and Victoria...same thing as before, we're told she's doing stuff and she has a body count but we don't actually see her.  Alright, back to The Voluturi, the most dangerous vampire family with their evil powers and them being the enforcers of The Vampiric Rule with an iron fist.  They're not in there for that long but they do make an impression and they are pretty intimidating, I guess.  I want to see more of them.

So there is one very massive flaw...can you guess what it is?  If you can't, you haven't been reading this review cause I did mention I would mention Bella's stupidity later and here it is.  If you think that going out with a vampire that's abusive was the dumbest thing she could ever do, you are so very wrong.  There's the fact that she wants to be vampire so bad that her inferior brain can't comprehend why Edward doesn't do it immediately and  she can't picture life not as vampire due to her being the ungodly old age of 18 GASP HORROR SWOON CRY!  There's the fact that that she does dangerous things to hear Edward that culminates in her jumping off a cliff falling hundreds of feet to the jagged rocks below but this was the 1920's so human bodies were tougher then...wait, that was Grandpa Simpson.  Bella just jumps a 100 feet in the cold water where she almost drowns cause Edward is telling her to swim because she will never happy again.  That train of logic is why I have no intentions of ever getting married or anything like that.  What if I snagged a Bella?  The horror...the horror.

So I am in full self-loathing mode because everything about New Moon is much better than Twilight in almost every way and I almost liked it.  The writing is more natural and actually has evidence that somebody proofread it and deleted some of the unnecessary words from it.  There's actually a healthy relationship between Bella and Jacob but the Twihards are too stupid to get it and pretty much hate Jacob for not being Edward and snagging Bella.  The Voluturi are almost interesting and I want to read Eclipse, not because of obligation to validate my suspicion that Breaking Dawn might be The Marine of literature, but that I want to see what these guys are going to do next.  Hell, this book isn't even a chore to get through.  However, this book is held back by the horribly stupid Bella just like Limp Bizkit was held back by the horribly stupid Fred Durst.  Whether this volume is going rise above the saga like Significant Other rose above Limp Bizkit's discography remains to be seen but I wouldn't mind finding out.

6/10