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Eclipse novella Review

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Review: The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer

The background of the story:
In Eclipse, book 3 of the Twilight saga series, the 'bad' vampire Victoria wanted to build an army of vampire newborns in order to get even with Bella and the Cullens. To achieve her goal, she created a sidekick called Riley and put him in charge of training/controlling the newborns she had made. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner deals with what is going on with those newly created, confused and blood thirty newborn vampires, and focuses on one of the newborns, a young girl called Bree Tanner.

PS: In this review the word 'vampire' is being used very loosely, not that I actually acknowledge sparkling disco balls really deserve to be called vampires anyway.

The Story itself:
The story is told from Bree Tanner's perspective, and focused on the last few days of her 'second life', Bree had to depend on her new vampiric convent/group for survival  even though she felt no companion toward her peers. The leader of the newly formed convent, Riley, encouraged the newborns to be ruthless and had a hidden agenda. Then Bree befriended Diego, a fellow newborn and together they figured out Riley and the creator of the newborns, a red haired female vampire, had been lying about the true nature of their kind . With the upcoming battle drawing near, the two young vampires must decide their path, and a wrong decision would be definitely enough to cost them their lives.

*plot spoiler warning*

The Comment:
First of all, the fact that I already know the main character Bree isn't going to make it in the end doesn't bother me much. What I really wanted to find out  is that would Smeyer manage to show us how things are like with the newborn vampires, like she claimed she would beforehand.

Let's start with the good parts:

It's difficult not to compare Bree Tanner with Bella, although neither of them impress me much as characters, still if I must choose between them, I'd rather deal with Bree.

First, as the main character, Bree is much more tolerable than Super Mary Sue Bella. Even though Bree ranted about the situation she had found herself in, but unlike Bella who whined about being sent a fancy car for a birthday present, Bree's ranting kind of makes sense because her ranting suits the situation she was in: She had a hard life, as a newborn vampires she had to associate with a bunch of ruthless street kids turned newborns, who according to Bree, weren't shy from murdering each other for sport, no one was there to help her, she had to watch her back constantly to avoid getting killed. Hell, can't blame her too much for ranting, right?

Plus, Bree didn't go "OH EDWARD YOU'RE SO BEAUTIFUL!!!" on us, so there's no useless long description on Edward's beauty popping up everywhere. Thank Goodness! Everyone can breath a little easier now!  

The book is a quick read and the pace is an okay one. Maybe the lack of useless proses on describing Edward's beauty really should be credited for The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner being a much more effective, economic novel than the rest of the Twilight series--without those tiresome purple proses taking up spaces, naturally the short novel/novella becomes understandably thinner than Smeyer's usual sets of thick brick made of wasted papers. For readers, it's such a huge relief.

Even though the embarrassing sparkle is still there, still at least the vampires in the book actually kill people and drink human blood. *deep sighs* Finally we can see Smeyer's vampires acting a little like traditional decent vampires. Since we are reading a book by  Stephenie Meyer, from the very beginning I don't dare to ask for too much, I also know I have to lower my expectation, so to me seeing those newborns go about hunting people, already it looks like such a huge improvement!

In the middle of the story, there's one scene about Digeo and Bree discovering the fact that their bodies would sparkle under the sun. And Bree admitted vampires look like 'disco balls' under the sun. Vampires=Sparkling Disco Balls! How embarrassing! Is there anyone out there LOL too?  It's good to see someone in the book actually pointed that embarrassing part out so directly.

After listing the few good things, now it's time to get down to the bad parts.

Firstly, there's little to be known from Bree, her character has no depth from start to end. All we can ever see is Bree the Newborn, but there is so little to be seen from Bree the confused, desperate young girl. As a newborn, Bree showed hardly any feeling toward her victims,  although newborns are supposed to be plagued by blood thirsty and cared for nothing other than getting fed, still the total lack of guilt and second thought makes Bree quite difficult to relate to. Alright if Bree the Newborn is difficult to relate to, then if we had the chance to learn more from Bree the Young Girl she once was, then we might still be able to feel more from Bree as a character. Sadly Smeyer gives us very limited detail which doesn't help much for us to know Bree better. We only know she was a starving street kid when Riley picked her up, her father used to beat her before she ran away. That's almost all I've ever known about her and it's far from enough to build an memorable character.

Supposedly newborn vampires are out of control, plagued by bloodlust and can't think straight, but in Bree's case, there's too little out of control moment and her thoughts were way too rational and coherent to match the insane-newborns claim.

As to the rest of Riley's gang, we know them ever less. Most of them were stereotyped into your usual teenage bullies and/or losers, they are as one dimensional as they can get, to a point they are hardly worth mentioning. Those newborns were supposed to be street kids and outcasts, but for teenagers from problematic backgrounds, those newborns talked and behaved in a way that is immature and unrealistic. They talked about superheros, video games and ninja like 12 years old would, plus there's absolutely no 'Fxxk', 'axxhole', 'bxtch' whatsoever in their language. Smeyer, who are you kidding anyway?

Among them only a freaky kid called Fred stands out a bit, and Fred had a talent of making himself unnoticeable. It's not a bad idea but Fred got little else to do aside from brooding at the corner making himself unnoticeable and let Bree hide behind his back.  

Talking about Bree hiding behind Fred's back, it reminds me how unluckily Bree, like the rest of Smeyer's "heroines", is weak and must have a guy to take care of her. She never fought for herself, never stood  up for herself or the other people, if my memory serves me right, she didn't even had the gut to tell the bullies to back off. Instead she needs The Reliable Guys (namely Diego and Fred) to look after her now and then. *deep deep sighs* I guess that something just never changes with Smeyer.

The male lead (if we could call him that) Diego, is a little bit more vivid as a character---even it still doesn't say much. He was a good guy who had been put into a bad situation, he had more self control than the other newborns, and he was getting suspicious of Riley even though there was still matural respect between him and Riley, all of the above are fine, but Diego's internal struggle between suspicion and trust toward Riley would have created some good dramas if only Smeyer spent more time to build up Diego's relationship with Riley first.  

Supposedly Bree grew to love Diego during their time together.......it's just totally unnecessary for Bree to 'love' Diego. The friendship between Bree and Diego is believable enough and I can see a certain degree of fondness there but.....love? To a point that Bree was ready to give up her life once she learned Diego was dead? (the guy was killed off screen) Okay it's just getting ridiculous. What's so wrong about them staying friends? The whole development (or to be frank, the lack of it) from friendship to love is too sudden and it's difficult to believe in.

And once again according to Smeyer, losing a loved one means life isn't worth living anymore and we should give up fighting and prepare ourselves to join our dead loved ones ASAP after they passed away. *sighs* Good message for the teens, isn't it?

Finally there comes the battle scene......or again, the lack of it. Bree ran into the battle field LATE and everything was nearly over, she surrendered to the Cullens only to find the Cullens weren't the hateful enemies Riley had painted them to be, then The Volturi arrived, finishing Bree off. The End.

Since I don't care about Bree one bit so I don't care much about the ending. The ending isn't so very bad but it's nothing impressive neither. Although it bugs me that in that novella, The Volturi gave Victoria a green-light to attack the Cullens. Supposedly it's a plot to foreshadow The Volituri's malice toward the Cullen clan, but it doesn't even add up with the fact that The Volituri had let the Cullens go so easily in Breaking Dawn!  

The Final Word:
One hell of a forgettable novella, it's not too terrible but there's hardly anything there to keep you interested. If I weren't to write a review out of it I won't even spend time to read it from start to end.

Here's the simplest way to express my feeling toward Twilight as a whole, click here: fav.me/d2gq0yf

PS: On the book cover, I saw that "One dollar from each book sold will be donated to the American Red Cross". I just have to wonder, why would Stephenie Meyer, a woman who can literally swim in the money she'd already gained, looks so half-hearted when charity is concerned? One dollar from each book goes to American Red Cross? That looks like a bit of a joke.
my review on The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner.

Twilight rant [link]
New Moon rant: [link]
Eclipse rant: [link]
Breaking Dawn rant: [link]

My anti Twilight pairing O_O: [link]
My thoughts on Twilight the movie: [link]
The Host rant part 3: [link]
The Vampire Diaries v.s Twilight: [link]
Meredith Ann Pierce's 'Darkangel' trilogy review [link]

Manga/Anime: Sekai ichi Hatsukoi review2 [link]

House of Night Book 4 review [link]
House of Night Book 1 Marked review [link]
House of Night Book 2 Betrayed [link]
House of Night Book 3 Chosen [link]

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Evermore and Shadowland double reviews [link]
review: Fallen [link]

The Hunger Game Book 1 review [link]
Book 2 Catching Fire review [link]
Book 3 Mockingjay review part 1 [link]
Mockingjay review part 2 [link]

Wicked Lovely book 4 review [link]
Wicked Lovely book 2 and 3 reviews [link]
Wicked Lovely Book 1 review [link]

bookreview Beautiful Creatures [link]
Book Review: Selina Penaluana [link]
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p-soldiers's avatar
I've never read any of these books, but it sounds like they're just made up while the author is writing (hence, characters act in a way that's contradictory to their later motivations, because they didn't have those motivations when she originally wrote a scene).

It's a shame, because a lot could be done with the story.