Best book in the series. And that is sad.
Eclipse is the third instalment in the bestselling supernatural-romance hybrid saga Twilight. Taking place just a few months after the events of New Moon, in this book a killing spree has begun in Seattle, to try and offer some fear into the story. Now, I could list all the things that are wrong with this book. And here they are. True to Twilight form, the story takes ages to rev up, about one hundred pages, and it is all about the feelings that Bella has for Edward. We get it; you are obsessed with a freaking vampire. No need to tell us for a century-worth of pages in every single book. Secondly, there is very little sense in Bella’s decision to put off her inevitable vampirism, considering there is the very real possibility that the vampires doing the killing in Seattle are after her! Really, if bloodthirsty vampires were after me, I would embrace vampirism as soon as (in)humanly possible. God, that pun was terrible.
However, for everything that Eclipse does wrong, it does a thing right. The writing is a Titanic-like spectacle – a romance set against a conveniently epic background – and attracts both romance and supernatural-lovers alike. The exchanges between the werewolves and the vampires are brilliant and suitably amusing, and it is good to see that Stephanie Meyer knows her modernist vampire mythology (for those of you who do not: Vampires hate werewolves and vice-versa.). And without revealing too much, we finally get a full-on battle scene! I was starting to lose faith in the idea of a good fight scene, which would have been disappointing (vampires and fight scenes were made for each other), but Eclipse finally puts in that missing piece.
There are people who do not like the Twilight quartet, and it is easy to see why; Twilight has reduced the modern vampire to a non-threatening “lover-boy” creature, with very little to no blood-thirst whatsoever. Eclipse finally changes that, revealing to us the bloody back-stories to some characters, and showing to us that Stephanie Meyer actually can retain some modicum of vampiric dignity in the Twilight Saga, and the book is all the better for it. I am giving it a decent 7.5 out of 10.
