The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner review

I realize this is shorter than usual, but a short review fits this short book.  I'm sorry just the same.

After reviewing Breaking Dawn, the last of the Twilight series, I thought of I was done with Twilight.  Sure there were the movies, but I don't review movies unless I see them in theaters...which I won't.  I was free to live my life care-free without a worry about torturing myself to read the series for reviews on this blog and then torturing myself when I found myself liking Eclipse and almost liking New Moon.  But then came this spin-off detailing a minor character from Eclipse and I mentioned that there there were some spin-offs that would be awesome...this wasn't one of them.  But hey, I'm always up for giving things a chance even if it's obligation so let's get this over with as we read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner in this shorter than normal review for a shorter than normal book.

Bree Tanner was a teenage runaway.  She had a boring life...minus the physical abuse from her father hence the runaway teen part.  However, one thing lead to another and Bree was turned into a vampire by Victoria, who's mostly referred to as she or her as something akin to a legend.  Anyways, new-born vampire life is just like that awesome 80's vampire movie The Lost Boys where you can party and kill with a relatively ineffective leader in Riley.  But there's a price to pay and it involves the blood of the Cullens with dovetails into that awesome battle in Eclipse!  Oh, and Bree falls in love with some Spanish guy named Diego.

The main draw of the book is to actually showcase the evil vampires for once.  No more of this "vegetarian" or love crap, now it's blood and death time.  There's always a time where someone is thinking "What were the bad guys thinking" and while it doesn't break new ground, it's a fascinating exercise in what the other side feels and does.  The attacks on the humans are satisfying bloody but not in that really weird way that Breaking Dawn was violent. 

But for all the goodwill the premise and the characters generate, it's almost undone by the love between Bree and Diego or more accurately, shallow stuff that creates the illusion of love.  It's unfair to blast it when it only lasts 40 pages and it's abruptly ended when things don't go so well for Diego...off-screen.  But when the resulting love has no connection to the plot and is even more boring than Edward and Bella there's a problem.  You take that out and you'd have a lean, mean pseudo-apocalyptic log of the last days of Bree Tanner with some nice action.

Free of Edward and Bella, plus the fact the book is less than 200 pages, this is pretty good.  Is this as good as Eclipse?  Absolutely not. The characters are infinitely more likable than the main characters in the main series.  The action scenes are short and brutal like they should have been.  For nothing else, it's a nice side story to the saga and ups the good Twilight books to 2.

7/10