Eclipse

[psubrat]

I started reading Eclipse right after I finished New Moon and figured I'd finish it in record time as well. Boy was I wrong. I got about 200+ pages in and needed to take a break. A very long break. We're talking days...actually, almost a week. Once I gained a little perspective, and some of my sanity back, I was able to fly through the rest of the book.

Things I liked:

• ... ... ... ... ... ... wait, let me think ... ... ... no, really, I'm sure I liked something ... ... ... I just need another minute ... ... ... OH! I know! I liked the end where Bella finally admitted she was a total bitch to Jacob. Yeah, I liked that part.
• Alice
• I enjoyed the Quileutes legend of how they came to be. I love legends and Meyer did a wonderful job painting the "campfire tales" setting.
• The fact that the Quileutes and Cullens worked together to defeat a common enemy
• Compared to Twilight, there were hardly any references to how beautiful, gorgeous, angelic, etc. the Cullens and Edward are

Things that made me want to claw my eyes out:

• Bella- This character has absolutely nothing going on for her. I can no longer empathize with her -- granted, I'm far from the target audience, but that shouldn't matter, there should be SOMETHING about her that would make me like her since she's the heroine of the story. For the majority of the book, I wanted to slap her silly or throttle her, or both at the same time. She is NOTHING without a man, whether that man be Jacob or Edward. And therein lies my biggest problem with her.
  
  - Her treatment of Jacob: "I don't like you that way, but hold my hand or put your arm around me anyway because I'm nothing without a man holding me." ::rolls eyes:: Oh, and don't forget to get pissed off when he kisses you because you send him MIXED SIGNALS. I kept yelling at Jacob to run away. And then he did, but only after Bella shattered his heart.
  
  - Don't even tell me that a coven of vampires, most of them being close to a hundred years old, couldn't put together the clues coming out of Seattle, but Bella could. That part had me rolling my eyes so hard they fell out of my head. It left me shaking my head going, "That makes absolutely no sense at all other than to have Bella suddenly look like she has a brain."
  
  - OMMIGOD! EVERYONE WANTS TO KILL HER! WTF? WHY? Seriously. I get that Meyer wrote Bella as feeling drab and lifeless...especially when Edward left her, OH THE HORROR OF IT ALL!!!!, but Bella continues to be a drab character and I cannot for the life of me understand why everyone wants to kill a character that has absolutely no charisma.
  
  - I should have kept tally of the number of times she asked or referred to Edward making her a vampire. She wanted to spend eternity with him by becoming a vampire, but she didn't want to get married? What. The. Hell? My mind boggles. At least she appeared to have started thinking things through about what she was to become, but it didn't seem to last long and then she was back to..."Edward, change me now!" Ugh!!
  
• The constant testosterone laden pissing match between Jacob and Edward. And yes, it quite literally was a pissing match with the way those two kept leaving their scent all over Bella in order to piss the other one off.
• Edward. So smug. So...ugh! Sorry, still not feeling the sparkly love.
• Jacob. WTF boy? Get a grip! She's obviously not that into you no matter what she might say or do to make you think otherwise. I think I wanted to slap him around just as much as Bella.
• Imprinting?? Are you freaking serious? ON A TODDLER????? Ugh!
• Plot? What plot? Oh! You mean that thing that showed up in the last quarter of the book? Did Meyer get paid by the word? If not, she should have renegotiated her contract. As I said, I enjoyed the legend telling, but to have it followed so closely by Jasper's never ending monologue about newborn vampires made blood shoot out of my eyes and brain slide out my ears. Hence the reason I had to take a very long break.
• The build up to Victoria's appearance -- for two books worth -- fell flat as a pancake for me. There was no taunting of Bella, no witty bantering, nothing...just Edward killing Victoria in a very clumsily written showdown.
• The sudden shift from Bella first person to Jacob first person at the end was like whiplash.

I'm sure there were other things that I didn't like, but for now, these are the things that stand out.

I've started reading Breaking Dawn, and already I'm pounding my head against the wall. If it wasn't for my obsessiveness, I would have stopped after the second book, but since it's a series, I'm determined to see it through to the end.