Download Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) (Kindle Edition)

January 11, 2010 by admin
Filed under Kindle Books

Is it just me, or am I the only person out there who is mildly revolted with the thinly-disguised Mormon ethos present in all of Meyers’ works?

I read these books because, as an illustrator, I want to know what’s going on in the teen lit world, and anytime somebody gets labeled something histrionic (’The Next J.K. Rowling’), I’m curious. Unquestionably, this author has worked very hard to crank out some seriously long novels that are seriously packed with – well, not really plot, or action, and a great deal of thin, meandering dialogue – so I’m not quite sure what’s in each book, but I do not doubt for one second that the passion of her romance writing is bizarrely gripping. I read all three of these books faster than whatever book I last read in the airport, and that’s saying something. What does it say? Well, she certainly knows how to move at a literary clip.

What does astonish me are the swarms of fans comparing her to Jane Austen (!!) and the utterly irresponsible path the books have taken in embracing what I presume to be a Mormon dictate: get married right out of high school, education is secondary to marriage and love, and never, ever stand up for yourself in front of a man. Women in the church are still subjugated no matter how liberated they may think they are, and this truism is decidedly present in the so-called arc her protagonist takes.

I am also amazed that the author herself can state that her religion defines everything she writes, and yet nobody seems to mind – or know – that these teen romances are then ‘defined’ by it. They aren’t only for sale in Christian bookstores, are they?

I’m always glad when young people get excited to read. I love the statistic about juvenile crime dropping on the days when Harry Potter books are released to the public. How can that not be to the good? But why on earth do young women have to be spoon-fed the idea that sitting around and waiting for a boy to sweep them away is how their life should be defined? It makes me sad that packaging up that notion in a glossy cover fools girls into thinking it’s not only great literature, but what they should strive for.

EDIT: I am gratified to have gotten repeated comments on this review, regardless of negativity. I am also gratified for my judgments to have been corroborated by the author herself in the conclusion to this series, ‘Breaking Dawn.’ Therefore, my assessment of the subtext was correct.

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