"I touched my face. 'Look,' I said. 'I love you more than everything else in the world combined. Isn't that enough?' 'Yes, it is enough,' he answered, smiling. 'Enough for forever.' And he leaned down to press his cold lips once more to my throat."
Blah blah fuckity blah.
I realized, while reading Chapter 18, "The Hunt", that I wouldn't be able to keep going like this. One painful chapter every few days after another. Like circumcision, I was going to have to get this done in one miserable shot. So I sat down for forty minutes and finished the remaining seven chapters. Forgive me, oh Lord.
I almost want to go back and delete what I wrote about "The Game," because what little good-will Meyer had worked up with that decent chapter was pummeled into the ether by the uninspired, flat, depressing last fourth of the book.
At the end of "The Game" a "tracker" (a vampire whose sole mission it is to track their victim) takes a liking to Bella. This is, of course, Bella's fault. Literally. It's explained to her that because she "smells" so good, the tracker (James) can't help himself. He has to kill her. I'm not making this up. Like a domestic violence victim, Bella's again told it's her fault that these things are happening to her. Nice, Meyer. Real nice.
After coming up with come cockamamie plan involving Bella going back to Phoenix to get away from the tracker and some other really unexciting stuff, Bella is finally lured into the tracker's clutches. How? He tricks her. The reveal of the trick is so clumsy and mishandled that I had to read it twice. "There's no way any editor would let writing this shitty slide," I thought. Wrong, Pezz. Wrong.
Anyway, after more unexciting garbage happens, Bella is rescued before she is sucked dry - but not before the tracker bites her hand. Oops! Now she's got vampire venom running through her. The only thing to do? Well, since Edward has seen Caddyshack II, he knows he can suck out the poison.
It's here, folks, where I tell you to get the kiddies out of the room, because I'm bout to get medieval on this book's ass.
Ok, let's back track a little. Edward originally falls for Bella because he's attracted to her scent. It takes all of his power not to feed on her the first time he meets her. He pledges to her that he won't, that he'll keep himself in check. By the end of the book she's begging him to do it. Now, even the most obtuse reader can see the whole feeding deal as a metaphor for sex. It's about the least subtle aspect of a book filled with unsubtle shit.
So here we have Edward, who wants to drink her blood (have sex with her), and we have the tracker who wants the same. Drinking her blood obviously stands in for taking her virginity. Who does it first? The tracker. SO, technically, the tracker pops Bella's cherry. Not only that, but he "poisons" her. He injects her with the substance that would turn her into a vampire. Or, another way to put it: he ejaculates in her.
Still with me? Good.
She's now on the floor, after being beaten and bitten by the tracker, writhing in pain. She's rescued by Edward and his family, who quickly dispatch with James. They realize her dilemma and consider the options. After consulting with one another it's decided the only thing that can happen is the aforementioned poison removal. Edward is reluctant, but his family is relentless, and he finally gives in. He finally does what he promised he wouldn't - he tastes her blood. But not before sucking out James's "fluid."
Let me recap how this book ends, just in case you missed it: not only does Bella get double-teamed in about a 5 minutes span, she's first raped, then practically the victim of a family gang rape AND a pawn in some weird vampire filching ritual.
Ain't that right, Twihards?
**************************************************
Welp, that's about it for the first volume of Man Vs. Twilight. The New Moon installment won't be done in the same way. I'll write an entry every 3 or 4 chapters or so. I think if I can keep the X-Rated analogies while reading the next one the experience won't be as painful.
Oh wait, the Epilogue you say? Fuck the Epilogue.
