Beyond Twilight: A Review of the Popular Teenage Series

There has been a recent rise in reading among the teenage crowd lately, especially girls, thanks largely in part to Stephenie Meyer'sTwilight series. The book, which is made up of the four books, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn tells the tale of Isabella Swan (Bella) and her vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen through the various ups and downs of their relationship set against a backdrop of small town Forks, Washington. This book series is a good read, especially for young teenage girls and should be get positive nods simply because, like the Harry Potter franchise over ten years ago, got kids reading again.

Undoubtedly one of the most drawing factors about the story is the love between Bella and Edward. Bella falls head over heels with Edward almost immediately while he himself seems standoffish at first. We later find out that this is because the way he feels for her startled him and he was worried about losing the control over his base instincts as a vampire. Bella on the other hand loves Edward with all her heart and soul to the point where she tells him that she wants to become a vampire to be with him forever. He resists, knowing the type of vampire she'll be for the first hundred years; one who doesn't have the composure shared by Edward and the rest of his family.

The driving force behind the stories is the love story between Bella and Edward and then Bella and Jacob who is a Native American boy who we later find out is a werewolf and therefore the sworn enemy of the vampires. Edward breaks it off with Bella for a brief period of time in the second book during which she begins to hang out with and care for Jacob and this is interrupted by Edward's return and their meeting with the Volutri; the Vampire Council. Of course this hurts Jacob and leaves things understandably awkward between Bella and him for pretty much the rest of the series as well as make the already present animosity between Edward and Jacob more tense.

The Volturi is also an most interesting things about this series of books. They are a set group of vampires who in their own (twisted) and dark ways try to keep the vampire world in a state of checks and balances; they don't want the humans to find out about them and therefore consider Bella a threat to their way of life. People could construe this as a metaphor for a society where the government decides what is best for the good of people and Meyer could have meant this as a commentary on a Socialist society. So they decide that the only way the will allow this relationship to continues is if Edward changes Bella. Once Jacob knows this he tries everything to save Bella's life even though it is what she wants. Ultimately, Bella is changed which is the beginning and storyline of Breaking Dawn.

In Breaking Dawn after fulfilling her promise to Edward to wait until she was old enough and had finished high school, they get married and go away for their honeymoon. It is during that time that Bella gets pregnant which is surprising because most vampires can't procreate and when they do, the mother ends up dying because the creature inside (as the child is referred to for most of the book) kills them as they are being born. Bella grows up a little more in this novel then she had in previous ones because she starts thinking about what is best for her child, and is even willing to die to bring her baby into the world. Overhanging this already stressful ordeal is the knowledge that the Volturi will soon be arriving to see if Edward made good on his vow to make Bella a vampire and how they will react once they find a vampire child one of the first recorded in centuries. Their main worry once the child is born and Bella is fine is what will happen once the Volturi came calling. Obviously everything turns out happily ever after for everyone involved with Edward and Bella living together and even Jacob getting his own love, ironically enough in the form of Bella's daughter.

Overall the series is enjoyable. Is it a fantastic piece of literature? No. Will people be studying it in college in twenty years, or even reading it with the same fervor as now? Doubtful unless some daughter happens upon her mother's battered and worn copy of Twilight and starts the craze over again. Does that negate the value or enjoyment of the novels? No, not at all. They are quite enjoyable on so many levels even to the point where adult women were reading it and falling in love with the character of Edward. The writing is easy to follow and Meyer does a good job of what not many authors can claim to do; the narrative flows easily between Bella and Jacob and their prose is obviously different enough for any reader to notice that they are reading the story from a different person's point of view. Many critics will argue over the weakness of Bella throughout the series and her "co-dependence" on Edward and to that I say "Have you ever been a teenage girl falling in love for the first time?" While yes, reading as a woman I will admit Bella was somewhat whiny and annoying at some parts; however had I read that as a teenager I probably would have sympathized with her on every single level.

Then there was the controversy with the pregnancy in the last book; do we really think that teenagers don't get pregnant in our country? Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin are testaments to that untruth and while yes I can see how people would get upset maybe a little, I say think about how responsible Bella was; her outlook changed completely once she found out she was going to be a mother and she started to think of her baby before herself and sad to say you have some "grown" women who aren't that mature once they find out they are pregnant. Plus, while it is true Bella was a technically still a teenager when she got pregnant she was married; she wasn't an unwed teenage mother (even though personally I don't have a big issue with that).

Another bone of contention that people have with the novels is that they don't think they're well written. Stephan King pointed this out when asked about the what he felt about the novel and some of the things are accurate. One of the best things about this novel is that it does present the act of physical love in a very vanilla and non-threatening way which is good because some people may not want their children to read about sex in their books. Pretty much every girl who reads this book has some inkling of an idea of what sex is but that doesn't mean that their parents want them reading a blow by blow (pardon the pun) description of it. Meyer did that well and that's one of the things I enjoyed is that while it got recognition and popularity from everyone even older women, Meyer still kept it a teenage book with material suitable for teenagers. King also goes on to say that the writing itself is poor and this can be true as well. However, Frankenstein is chock full of mistakes because that was the first book Mary Shelley wrote and if you read it from the point of view where you are criticizing the writing style and not the story you will see this. No the writing is not perfect in the series; however it's pretty good for an author's first attempt.

At the end of the day, the Twilight series was just meant to be an enjoyable read for teens and it does its job very well. Girls across this nation devoured the books and were waiting in lines for the midnight release of Breaking Dawn and more than likely finished that in one day. If nothing else, much like JK Rowling, Meyer needs to be commended for writing books that got the children of our nation interested in reading again.