The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: The Story of Bella v. 2
You are a newborn vampire. You have unparalleled strength and agility. There is no creature in the world that can stand up to you. How would you spend your nights? Debating about whose cooler Spider Man or The Incredible Hulk? Sounds silly to you? Well thats how newborns spend their free time in The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer. I would say spoilers, but since we already know what happens in the end there isn't much of a point, but beware anyway.
This novella is about a character who shows up in Eclipse for all of five minutes before getting killed by the Volturi. For some reason Meyer thought we would be interested in her life. We probably would if Bree didn't have the exact same personality as Bella Swan. The benign book loving, the dependency on her "love interest" and the stuck-up attitude towards her peers.
When we first meet Bree she is with two other vampires who are having a debate over Spider Man and The Incredible Hulk right before they kill a lady. As they are feasting on her blood, Bree manages to resist doing so despite the burning in her throat. She does this because she doesn't want to get into trouble with their leader, Riley.
Now, I have a question. Aren't newborns supposed to be feral creatures with an unspeakable hunger for blood? So why is Bree, a three-month old newborn, able to keep such control?
Oh that's right! Because she's Bella freaking Swan.
From that point on my interest in the book took a dip. It would have been interesting to read about the events of Eclipse from a vampire who was wild and amoral, unfortunately we get vampire!Bella.
A few places down the road we are introduced to Diego, our love interest.
Diego is an eleven month old newborn and is therefore in more control than most of the others. Which brings up the whole "Why is Bree in so much control?" question once more. But, when we see that Diego takes an interest in Bree for just that reason, it becomes clear that this was Meyer's way of making a romance happen in 95 pages.
After the two of them satisfy their hunger on the "dregs of the street" ( a pimp and his two prostitutes ) they go off shopping at some music/book store in a poor attempt to give them both a personality. Ironically, a personality that is shared by...you guessed it Bella and Edward.
The book would have been far more interesting without the whole romance angle. Partly because Diego has loads more chemistry with Riley, even thought they have no scenes together, and because its development becomes so important that no time is taken to actually make us care about Bree as her own person.
They both go into their "tragic" pasts where Diego was a young boy from the "ghetto "who was trying to go to college and leave that life behind him before he became a creature of the night, due to Riley. Bree is turned into a sympathy sue as we learn about her abusive father and life as a runaway. Oh Woobie love.
Nothing remotely interesting happens until we find out that Riley (probably being told to do so by Victoria) has told all the newborns that the vampire myths are true, such as being burnt up in the sun (don't we all wish). This is done to keep them all under control and away during the bright day-light hours.
The smartest person in this book is our antagonist.
Diego and Bree, however, discover that this isn't true when Diego, being his adventurous self, goes out in the sun to discover that the light reflects off of them like a prism does. Which is supposed to be the explanation as to how they sparkle.
Unfortunately a prism does not reflect light it refracts light.
We do get a comment from Bree saying they are like "disco balls," which I'm sure was supposed to be funny, but seeing as how that joke has been done to death by the anti-fandom...eh...not so much. Diego wonders if Riley knows this and makes the decision to go tell Riley (because he loves him, its so obvious). They share a kiss somewhere around this part, but it wasn't that interesting.
Skip past irrelevant narrative we get to the "good" part: the preparation for the battle. It is here that Riley tells us about gifts and how rare they are in vampires (1 in 50), which is funny since more than half the vampires we meet in the books have some sort of gift. But when has continuity ever mattered in Twilight? Riley says they have an advantage in their own gifted person "Freaky" Fred, who has the ability to repel others (except Bree sadly). They plan to use his power to get the jump on the Cullens.
Alot of meaningless narrative happens between that point and when Bree surrenders to the Cullens. The only somewhat important things that happen are that Riley comes up with an excuse to allow the newborns to fight in the daylight and "Freaky" Fred leaves the newborns to go to Canada. We also discover that Jane knew all about Victoria and the army, but that just makes her that much more bad ass.
So during the fight the newborn army gets their asses kicked and Bree surrenders to the babe known as Carlisle. Jasper says they should kill her (God I love this guy), but Esme stand up and defends Bree, marking the first time she has ever been remotely interesting in any of the books.
As Bree waits with the Cullens she realizes that Diego has been killed by Victoria in a way that was described earlier in the book by Riley: "-when I take you to her and hold you as she tears off your legs and then slowly, slowly burns off your fingers, ears, lips, tongue, and every other superfluous appendage one by one" [pdf, page, 79]. This solidified Victoria as my new favorite character and my new love for Caius/Victoria.
>
After realizing Diego's death, Bree (in a very Bella fashion) is consent to die; especially after finding out that Victoria and Riley have both been killed by Edward, therefore avenging his death.
This irritated me alot for some reason. I guess its because for two books Victoria has been doing all of this army building and risking her life at the hands of the Volturi to avenge the death of her mate, James. Yes, she is supposed to be our antagonist, but that is still admirable. Bree doesn't even try to avenge Diego at all. But this is Twilight and the most aggressive females are pushed while the annoyingly passive ones are rewarded.
Then of course the Volturi comes and Bree dies.
The End.
P.S: Apparently Edward is a ginger kid.
Final Grade: C
This book was nowhere as awful as The Host (shudders), but it was just a dull read. There is nothing in this book that we either didn't know or was worth knowing. Bree was more sympathetic in the few seconds she appeared in Eclipse than in this book. They didn't develop her character at all, leaving her as a simple Bella v. 2. In a first person narrative your lead should be the most important character in your book. I'd rather have read a book from Riley, Victoria or Jane's perspective. Bree was just not interesting and this is the type of story that would have been done better by some talented fanfiction writers. Stephenie, Twilight is done. Move on...just not to a Host sequel. I'd only recommend this book to Twilight fans who enjoyed Breaking Dawn.
This novella is about a character who shows up in Eclipse for all of five minutes before getting killed by the Volturi. For some reason Meyer thought we would be interested in her life. We probably would if Bree didn't have the exact same personality as Bella Swan. The benign book loving, the dependency on her "love interest" and the stuck-up attitude towards her peers.
When we first meet Bree she is with two other vampires who are having a debate over Spider Man and The Incredible Hulk right before they kill a lady. As they are feasting on her blood, Bree manages to resist doing so despite the burning in her throat. She does this because she doesn't want to get into trouble with their leader, Riley.
Now, I have a question. Aren't newborns supposed to be feral creatures with an unspeakable hunger for blood? So why is Bree, a three-month old newborn, able to keep such control?
Oh that's right! Because she's Bella freaking Swan.
From that point on my interest in the book took a dip. It would have been interesting to read about the events of Eclipse from a vampire who was wild and amoral, unfortunately we get vampire!Bella.
A few places down the road we are introduced to Diego, our love interest.
Diego is an eleven month old newborn and is therefore in more control than most of the others. Which brings up the whole "Why is Bree in so much control?" question once more. But, when we see that Diego takes an interest in Bree for just that reason, it becomes clear that this was Meyer's way of making a romance happen in 95 pages.
After the two of them satisfy their hunger on the "dregs of the street" ( a pimp and his two prostitutes ) they go off shopping at some music/book store in a poor attempt to give them both a personality. Ironically, a personality that is shared by...you guessed it Bella and Edward.
The book would have been far more interesting without the whole romance angle. Partly because Diego has loads more chemistry with Riley, even thought they have no scenes together, and because its development becomes so important that no time is taken to actually make us care about Bree as her own person.
They both go into their "tragic" pasts where Diego was a young boy from the "ghetto "who was trying to go to college and leave that life behind him before he became a creature of the night, due to Riley. Bree is turned into a sympathy sue as we learn about her abusive father and life as a runaway. Oh Woobie love.
Nothing remotely interesting happens until we find out that Riley (probably being told to do so by Victoria) has told all the newborns that the vampire myths are true, such as being burnt up in the sun (don't we all wish). This is done to keep them all under control and away during the bright day-light hours.
The smartest person in this book is our antagonist.
Diego and Bree, however, discover that this isn't true when Diego, being his adventurous self, goes out in the sun to discover that the light reflects off of them like a prism does. Which is supposed to be the explanation as to how they sparkle.
Unfortunately a prism does not reflect light it refracts light.
We do get a comment from Bree saying they are like "disco balls," which I'm sure was supposed to be funny, but seeing as how that joke has been done to death by the anti-fandom...eh...not so much. Diego wonders if Riley knows this and makes the decision to go tell Riley (because he loves him, its so obvious). They share a kiss somewhere around this part, but it wasn't that interesting.
Skip past irrelevant narrative we get to the "good" part: the preparation for the battle. It is here that Riley tells us about gifts and how rare they are in vampires (1 in 50), which is funny since more than half the vampires we meet in the books have some sort of gift. But when has continuity ever mattered in Twilight? Riley says they have an advantage in their own gifted person "Freaky" Fred, who has the ability to repel others (except Bree sadly). They plan to use his power to get the jump on the Cullens.
Alot of meaningless narrative happens between that point and when Bree surrenders to the Cullens. The only somewhat important things that happen are that Riley comes up with an excuse to allow the newborns to fight in the daylight and "Freaky" Fred leaves the newborns to go to Canada. We also discover that Jane knew all about Victoria and the army, but that just makes her that much more bad ass.
So during the fight the newborn army gets their asses kicked and Bree surrenders to the babe known as Carlisle. Jasper says they should kill her (God I love this guy), but Esme stand up and defends Bree, marking the first time she has ever been remotely interesting in any of the books.
As Bree waits with the Cullens she realizes that Diego has been killed by Victoria in a way that was described earlier in the book by Riley: "-when I take you to her and hold you as she tears off your legs and then slowly, slowly burns off your fingers, ears, lips, tongue, and every other superfluous appendage one by one" [pdf, page, 79]. This solidified Victoria as my new favorite character and my new love for Caius/Victoria.
>
After realizing Diego's death, Bree (in a very Bella fashion) is consent to die; especially after finding out that Victoria and Riley have both been killed by Edward, therefore avenging his death.
This irritated me alot for some reason. I guess its because for two books Victoria has been doing all of this army building and risking her life at the hands of the Volturi to avenge the death of her mate, James. Yes, she is supposed to be our antagonist, but that is still admirable. Bree doesn't even try to avenge Diego at all. But this is Twilight and the most aggressive females are pushed while the annoyingly passive ones are rewarded.
Then of course the Volturi comes and Bree dies.
The End.
P.S: Apparently Edward is a ginger kid.
Final Grade: C
This book was nowhere as awful as The Host (shudders), but it was just a dull read. There is nothing in this book that we either didn't know or was worth knowing. Bree was more sympathetic in the few seconds she appeared in Eclipse than in this book. They didn't develop her character at all, leaving her as a simple Bella v. 2. In a first person narrative your lead should be the most important character in your book. I'd rather have read a book from Riley, Victoria or Jane's perspective. Bree was just not interesting and this is the type of story that would have been done better by some talented fanfiction writers. Stephenie, Twilight is done. Move on...just not to a Host sequel. I'd only recommend this book to Twilight fans who enjoyed Breaking Dawn.