Jenny-fa

(Suitable prologues to this post: my reviews for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and New Moon. The current subject is Eclipse, third installment in the series.)

Hands down, this is perhaps the worst book I've ever read.

Excerpt from back cover:

In the dead silence, all the details suddenly fell into place for me with a burst of intuition.
Something Edward didn’t want me to know.
Something that Jacob wouldn’t have kept from me.
Something that had the Cullens and the wolves both in the woods, moving in hazardous proximity to each other…

Something I’d been waiting for anyway.

Something I knew would happen again, as much as I might wish it never would.

It was never going to end, was it?

Indeed. When will it ever end?

And referring back to the post title, here is the reason I thought Eclipse was "inappropriately" titled, in the most acute sense of the word:

to eclipse

1. (transitive) Of atronomical bodies, to cause an eclipse.
   The Moon eclipsed the Sun.
2. (transitive) To overshadow; to be better or more noticeable than.
   The student’s skills soon eclipsed those of his teacher.

Um, excuse me? This miserable excuse for a novel is incapable of overshadowing anything, unless you count that talking-hooded-monkey-assassin short story that my brother wrote more than a year ago.

…

Oh, wait, now that I consider it… nope, even talking assassin monkeys are 500 times more entertaining and better-characterized than this load of shit.

To be short:

• Badly, sloppily written. Many recurring phrases "jump out" unpleasantly at the reader. (Stephenie Meyer sure likes her "masochists", eh? And how about when anyone does any smooching in this story, their lips always "crush" the other person's? And seriously, if Edward ever "tightens his eyes" again, I will kill Meyer for her repetitive lack of creativity.)
• Lifeless, hopelessly uninteresting plot. I confess to skipping multiple sections of that book without any regrets. In a series full of mythical, semi-human monsters, Meyer picks the most mundane and awful things to write about. Like, just to give you an overview, the frustrating, intolerable day-by-day diary of Bella's human pursuits that comprises more than two-thirds of the entire book? (I got up. I had breakfast. I smooched Edward. I went to school and snogged him some more.) Bella's unceasing obsession with her vampire sweetheart Edward, which borders on pathetic/obscene? (I know Edward will always be there for me, because he's always there… in my room. At night, in the morning… in short, whenever I spend any extended period of time in there.) Or that 20-page scene where Bella literally attempts to persuade Edward to, gasp, have sexual intercourse with her?
• The author's tragically off-target assumption that readers will find Bella's Edward fetish fascinating, (which, like a cancer, infects each and every page). Again, I cite the 20-page almost-sex scene. And Bella is so fixated on her lovely vampire friend that she can't bear a minute apart from him, even if he has to go to the bathroom (which he thankfully never does. Go to the bathroom, I mean).
• The mere incomprehensible fact that an adolescent vampire and werewolf are fighting over Bella. Uh, hello? What is so special about Bella? The only thing I ever got from the series is that the protagonist is an amazingly self-centered, stupid, moronic, weak, completely unremarkable, and blatantly unattractive pile of turd.
• Finally, the major degeneration of the characters, humans and nonhumans alike. I mean, the vampires in the story used to be interesting. Even if you hated the story, there would always be a few vampire action/horror scenes that were somewhat worth perusing. And even if nothing was happening, the appearance of a vampire would always liven things up. Now, in this sad and unenviable imaginary world, each moment (including those in the presence of a blood-sucking immortal) is always stubbornly, lifelessly, unrepetantly boring. And this is the book where a few vampires get their limbs ripped apart, which I assure you has never been described before.

And don't get me started on the rampant melodrama. The long-suffering reader should at least find the fact that Bella falls in love with Jacob mildly interesting. Or outrageous, depending on your point of view on the matter. But what does Meyer do? Turn it into a gigantic, clichéd soap opera, of course.

Oh, wait. "Bella falls in love with Jacob"? Whoops, forgot to put up my spoiler warning.

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT. BELOW PARAGRAPHS MAY REVEAL IMPORTANT PLOT ELEMENTS.

Ah, that's better.

Anyway, the moral of the story…? Don't bother reading this book, even if it's a free copy from the public library. Don't be fooled by Border's 30% off discount. And don't listen to those deluded fangirls who think the series is really something… because it's not. It really, really, really is not…