Adventure Begins Here - The Renegade Wizard

Once upon a time the fields of interactive books were plentiful and selection abounded. As the 80’s progressed and gave way to the 90’s, though, videogames became more advanced and Choose Your Own Adventure-style literature became less remarkable in terms of what it could offer instead. Videogames started to have protagonists with identities, plots, supporting casts. Not to mention they had a more visceral feel with the way you directed every dodge, every magic spell, every roundhouse kick to an enemy’s head. These days an interactive book has to be pretty special for anybody to take much notice. Like oh, Thrusts of Justice.

Unfortunately, The Renegade Wizard isn’t that special.

You’re Toby, the squire of a famous knight who’s part of an army being assembled to capture a, well, renegade wizard who’s finally been cornered in his underground lair. Totally unexpectedly, as soon as your brave and righteous forces get within a day’s journey they’re annihilated by a sneak attack by orcs and the wizard’s dark magic. It’s up to you, the spunky underdog, to seek out the evil wizard in his lair and shine the beacon of justice in his sneering face.

I have nothing against the author for throwing his hat into the ring by trying to give those of us nostalgic for our Fighting Fantasies and Lone Wolves something to snack on. It’s just that most of the bog standard fantasy cliches I can think of are thrown at the reader and expected to stick, with no effort on display to make them fresh in any way. It’s left to one person to do the job an army couldn’t. That person is a relative nobody you wouldn’t logically expect to be up to hunting down an evil wizard. Your mentor makes a heroic sacrifice so you can go on and continue the quest. You have the chance of venturing into an ancient section of the caverns to find something powerful to aid your quest…but no-one who’s ever gone in there has ever returned.

When you corner the evil wizard, he gives a speech about what fools his colleagues were in the Circle of Wizards (or whatever it’s called in this fantasy world). Your character responds with a trite speech about the need for law and order and how if wizards set themselves up as gods then blah blah blah. Near the end you’re even given a rival in a character you’d probably barely even remember if I hadn’t just mentioned this.

The writing is just so dry, and at times verges on the redundant. For instance, “the language of the forest: identifying tracks left by animals of the forest,” and “A bookshelf dominates one wall, heavy with books.”

The gaming part itself isn’t exactly bad, but is just as generic as the rest of the book. After being handed your impossible quest, your mentor suggests you get help from either a barbarian, a wizard, or an elf ranger lady. Anyway you get a basic skill, like a bonus to combat rolls or the ability to read runes (yeah, read runes. No magic), along with some helpful item like a shield or a bow, then your tutor turns you loose on your quest. Because while they’re perfectly willing to train you to do it, none of these guys much care about stopping a megalomaniacal wizard, it seems.

Combat and skill checks and whatnot are fairly basic, with you trying to beat a certain number on dice, the higher your result the better. It’s easy enough to learn and keeps thing from getting bogged down on account of mechanics, but because of the blandness of the writing it feels like a chore dying over and over again to learn where enemies are so you can avoid them, and finding sources of healing and better weapons to cope with the ones you can’t avoid.

There's also the mechanic of “Hero Points” that can turn any of your failed rolls into a success and an enemy’s successful roll into a failure to represent those improbable strokes of luck the heroes always have in grand adventures. While not strictly original (the James Bond RPG back in 1983 had the same idea, and there might well be even earlier examples), it’s a cute mechanic. They aren't unlimited, though, and you'll want to be choosy about when you spend them as you get deeper and deeper into the dungeon.

Lastly, “Adventure Begins Here” is apparently the name for a proposed series should this book do well enough (according to its entry at Amazon). Not the choice I would’ve made.


You can skip this one without any regrets.

Captured by the Engines

It was supposed to be a date like any other. A computer programmer was taking his girlfriend out, until suddenly a black Thunderbird, its radio pelting Beach Boys music into the night, appeared and herded them into an alleyway. The next thing the programmer knew he was looking down at his leg.

Which was on the other side of the alley.

Soon the car’s showing up all over, even appearing on the third floor of a hospital to finish off one of its earlier victims who survived their initial encounter. What is this strange car? Why is it killing people. And how in the hell could it just appear halfway up a hospital building? And why does the scorched rubber of its murderous tires always turn to skin and blood by the time it gets to forensics…?

I know this sounds a lot like a certain Futurama episode, but it actually works pretty well. The descriptions of the violence are fairly macabre. The author also puts some appreciable effort into fleshing out its characters before chucking them in the meat grinder, as it were. Too many other fictional murder sprees don’t really bother, in my experience, and the entire experience suffers for it. Thankfully Captured by the Engines etches its world well. The characters, not just the ones who get run down, are memorable (I found the taciturn medical examiner, and her banter with the local sheriff, to be particularly good), as are the various key locations the story revisits. Like the Pyramid of Cars, which became eerier than you'd expect a pile of rusted old junkers to be.

I won’t say the mystery aspect’s great, since doing a good mystery’s an art that seems to have died off in recent decades, but I found it easy enough to stick with the book to the end.

In fact, the mystery sucks. You’ll have figured out what’s going on long before the characters do. You will. I guarantee it. Hell, you’ve probably already figured it out just from my little summary.

And I caught a couple editorial oversights in my read-through. Like “principle office,” near the end. That one frankly baffles me. I sort was willing to let that go in the books about ReBoot, but that’s because that’s a series with lots of silly wordplay already. This was a story about gruesome vehicular homicides.

But…if you’re willing to give the book and its ideas a chance, you’ll probably come away fairly pleased with it. As I noted it fleshes out its characters and world pretty well. When a street gang named the Desperos was briefly mentioned, I had to stop and think, “Desperos? Like the Despero?”

Because the guy looking into the classic car murders is Batman. Did I mention that? Because he is.

So, yeah. Batman. And the villain of this is an obsessive maniac like most of his. As you’ve already guessed it’s nobody from the comics, but I thought he was a decent villain all the same. Disturbed, but powerful and unique. I found him memorable, and a little frightening.

All in all, a decent if perhaps overly predictable read.

Breaking Down Book 3, Bella, Chapters 19 - 23

Chapter 19 - Sometimes An Ugly Caterpillar Turns Into an Ugly Butterfly

* We’re back to Bella for the remainder, looks like. While switching the perspective character was an interesting idea, this seems like a wasted opportunity. Why switch it back to the one we’ve had all this time if you’re going to do that? Why not Edward? I mean, even if she finished and released Midnight Sun, Meyer wasn’t planning to retell the entire series from Edward’s perspective, was she? She was already running out of celestial phenomena to name books after.

Let’s see, the epigraph from this one’s from a book by Orson Scott Card, whose work is even more distantly related to Meyer’s than Shakespeare’s. Not only because of the sci-fi, but because of having actual characters and therefore, actual character drama. “Personal affection is a luxury you can only have after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.” Oh cut it out, Steph. There’s no danger to anybody we’ve spent time with and you know it. It’s almost endearing the way Meyer keeps trying.

There’s another preface about some nebulous danger that terrifies Bella. “No longer just a nightmare, the line of black advanced on us through the icy mist stirred up by their feet. We’re going to die, I thought in panic.” The Volturi are coming for Bella’s little miracle. Nope, they still aren’t scary, and even if they were, ripping the Cullens’ heads off would only be an improvement.

If only that was it. Meyer actually undermines the drama even more than usual if we just look down the table of contents right before this part. Know what the last chapter’s called? “The Happily Ever After”. Oh wow I am. So filled with. Suspense I could. Just choke. To death on. It.

* The chapter itself is a trip through Bella’s psyche as she undergoes her change into a vampire. Flowery descriptions of her thoughts, her feelings on her relationships and the pain she’s going through abound (and of course how the most painful pain is the pain she’s causing others), but let’s not kid ourselves. Steph can’t make her characters’ thoughts compelling when they’re awake. Why would it be better when they spend pages and pages trapped inside their own heads?

In fact, let me use the bulk of the summary from the guidebook: “Bella wants to stay alive for Edward, Jacob and Renesmee, Bella burns but forces herself to remain silent to lessen Edward’s anguish.” Then Bella wakes up.

* Before I move on to the next thing, a bit of advice to any budding authors out there: try to make sure you can write a stimulating conversation between two characters before you try to get all artsy with internal monologues.

Chapter 20 - Masturbating To Yourself Is the Most Pathetic Thing In the Universe

* “Everything was so clear. Sharp. Defined.”

Thanks for being the author willing to go that extra mile, Steph.

* “I could see ach color of the rainbow in the white light, and at the very edge of the spectrum, an eighth color I had no name for.” That sounds like senses acute to the point of driving one insane. Then again sparklepires are probably just that awesome. She even starts calling out measurements of time like “a sixteenth of a second,” or “a sixty-fourth of a second.”

Or maybe I’m just one of those assholes who grew out of thinking omnipotent characters with no shortcomings were interesting. When I was ten.

“The dust was so beautiful that I inhaled in shock…” Nice to see being turned into a sparklepire hasn’t robbed Bella of her ability to act completely melodramatic…She's shocked by the beauty of dust motes. Seriously. This is how we're being introduced to the wonders of seeing the world through vampiric eyes. The beauty of dust.

* Then she comes fully awake and sees Edward beside her. “The greater part of my senses and my mind were still focused on Edward’s face. I had never seen it before this second. How many times had I started at Edward and marveled over his beauty? How many hours--days, weeks--of my life had I spent dream about what I then deemed to be perfection?…I may as well have been blind.” Her senses have expanded but what they’re used for hasn’t changed a bit. So all we’re hearing is the exact same thing she’s refused to shut up about this whole entire time, taken to a new plateau of perception.

Joy.

I know you think every book has its audience, Steph. And I know vampires stay exactly as they are when they become vampires, so maybe Bella literally can’t stop now (although Steph also outright declares in an interview from the guidebook that Edward’s become an optimist by the end). But…maybe you shouldn’t write a series of thicker-than-phonebook novels where everything else, including the plot I have no doubt you were so proud of, is secondary to constantly looking at and examining one single thing?

* Becoming a vampire immediately makes your human memories foggy, it turns out (“My mind spun out, spiraling back to my last human hour. Already, the memory seemed dim…”). Which would seem to confirm my earlier attack about Edward’s extremely romantic gesture of the wedding gifts he gave to Bella. The ones he inherited from his family, that were indeed from parents he hardly remembers having.

Edward assures Bella everything’s fine, and because it’s Bella, she immediately starts dissecting that blanket assurance to figure out if it covers absolutely everything and everyone she can think of. She thinks about her daughter and wonders where she is. “I tried to remember her face--I knew that she had been beautiful.” I said this in the “Seven Deadly Sins” article, but to say it again, this doesn’t sound like Bella showing how much she loves her kid. It sounds like exactly the same thing she’s been saying about all vampires since before she knew they were vampires.

“What about Jacob? Was he fine? Did my long-suffering best friend hate me now?” Does it maybe indicate anything to you, Bells, that your HUSBAND can’t do anywhere near the things for you that the guy you were always arguing with could? Is there maybe something wrong with this picture?

* Edward touches her face, and “The feeling was tingly, electric--it jolted through my bones, down my spine. Trembled in my stomach…Wasn’t I supposed to lose this? Wasn’t giving up this feeling a part of the bargain?” When did we hear that?

Oh, wait. “I was a newborn vampire. The dry, scorching ache in my throat gave proof to that.” That’s the ONLY thing that could mean? “And I knew what being a newborn entailed. Human emotions and longings would come back to me in some later form, but I’d accepted that I would not feel them in the beginning. Only thirst. That was the price, the deal. I’d agreed to pay it.” She agreed to jump off a cliff to hang onto Edward. Literally.

Of course, even becoming another species has no consequences if you’re Bella. “But as Edward’s hand curled to the shape of my face like satin-covered steel,” (boy that’s a romantic image, isn’t it?) “desire raced through my dried-out veins, singing from my scalp to my toes.” Ditto on the dried-out veins.

* She also finds out exactly what he meant when he said vampires are easily distracted. “These emotions were so much stronger than I was used to that it was hard to stick to one train of thought despite the extra room in my head.” She doesn’t have trouble sticking to the train of thought concerning Edward, which was the only one she ever stuck to before anyway. And even emotions are amplified by being a vampire? What the hell, does everything have to be amplified a hundred times by being a vampire?

She also mentions how a different part of her brain seems to monitor her thirst and if she gets distracted enough talking to people, she forgets the thirst is there. If anything I have to say Meyer tries too hard to explain how being a vampire works, without trying hard enough. She explains how Bella has all these new mental functions, but a chapter later she’s either completely adapted to them or Meyer couldn’t be bothered with them anymore. Because Bella sounds exactly the same as always, but now she’s incredibly beautiful too and measuring time in fractions of seconds.

* But probably the most galling thing about this part is the focus on how Bella is defying expectations for a newly-converted vampire. They try to explain this as her being the only known person who ever wanted to be a vampire and all the time she had to mentally prepare herself, or maybe THAT’s her special vampire power, but I’m still calling it the work of a chickenshit author.

Why spend a lot of time on something unpleasant like that, or having Bella give in to her urges, slip out and have the Cullens hunt her down and bring her back before she can blow their secret or kill someone? She wouldn’t have to actually do it before they caught her, just come really close. But noooooooo, let’s spend chapters talking about the exact same things as always taken to an even higher level. Let’s not show something unpleasant we’ve been building up to this entire series, let’s not ask Steph to make good on a threat.

* Around here, we find out here that the little Cullen is half-human and half-vampire. And her name’s Renesmee, a portmanteau of the parents’ mothers’ names. Because such a beautiful, wondrous, miraculous little angel couldn’t have any other kind of name. Urg. If cool things actually HAPPENED once in a while instead of us simply being ASSURED the most sedate vampire story in the world is the most awesome experience in the history of mankind…you could get away with this stuff a lot more easily.

* They’re about to go and hunt when Alice stops them and makes Bella look at herself in the mirror (she also dressed Bella up in this ridiculous luxury dress while Bella was out. “Tightly fitted ice-blue silk? What did she think I would need it for?” It was probably the most fun Alice ever had). Bella goes on and on about how the woman in the mirror looked like “a carving of a goddess”. Even if she’s still refusing to believe that’s her, she’s still wanking to vampires, and now she’s wanking to herself. Ewww.

* Edward expresses a little frustration that he’d hoped her becoming a vampire would let him read her mind, but he still can’t. “I felt better at once,” she thought. I’m not sure what to think about that. On the one hand, she shouldn’t be okay with how Edward violated her privacy with impunity, but on the other hand, every time it came up, she seemed downright grateful that he did. She even threw a tantrum near the end of the last book about how unfair it was that he couldn’t read her mind and she had to resort to talking to him.

* “ ‘I guess my brain will never work right. At least I’m pretty.’ It became easier to joke with him as I adjusted.” If she’d ever cracked a joke, and if that didn’t sound like exactly what she’s been telling herself for as long as she’s been telling us how perfect Edward is.

Actually Bella attempted to crack a joke once that I remember, in the first book when she pretended she was presenting herself to Edward as his next meal. He wasn’t amused, and I remember saying that was the fantasy equivalent of a racist remark (not to mention how it was almost a self-deprecating jab at how bullshit the idea of Edward losing it and attacking her was). You cut-up, Bells.

Chapter 21 - Vampires Have Perfect Recall, And Bella Can’t Remember What She Was Told Two Minutes Ago

* Edward suggests jumping straight out the window for them to leave the house. Bella notes “We have all eternity,” and he doesn’t want to take the time to just go downstairs and go out the back door like a normal person? He reminds her that he just reminded her about Jacob and their warm-blooded daughter being downstairs, and that was the whole reason he suggested they go hunting first. Dumbass.

Besides, you have superpowers now. You’ve been waiting for this moment since the day you found out Edward was one too. Why would you not have a little fun with that? Because she doesn’t. After this chapter, anyway. The only significant difference is now she’s starting to acknowledge that she may in fact be pretty. Goes to show how small-minded Bella really is, because based on all her moaning about getting older, that’s all she wanted to be a vampire for.

* But no, Bella doesn’t have any fun with her new abilities. In fact she starts torturing herself with “One mistake, and he’d (Emmett) be rolling on the floor. Then the jokes about the world’s only clumsy vampire would start….” Are you really sure you want to spend the rest of eternity with these people? Not just the rest of your life, but the rest of all life on the planet?

Bella does jump, and Edward compliments her. “That was quite graceful--even for a vampire.” And she figures that since nobody laughs, he must’ve been serious. Or maybe they’ve had, you know, decades to work on their poker faces and you’re an idiot. Naaaaaah, not a chance.

* Let’s see, Edward effortlessly jumps a river, Bella calls him a “show-off,” and in response “heard his invisible laugh.”

Pancho, I think your wife’s off her pills again. She’s starting to see laughter.

* Bella’s worried about still being clumsy as a vampire, but “I was more worried about the forest getting hurt.” Even if she hadn’t been saying shit like this all the time, she’s a Cullen now, both in name and now in body. The Cullens are criminals. They probably eat endangered species when they’re out doing exactly this. Do I think a couple trees matter to them? Especially when vampires don’t have to breathe unless they want to?

Do I doubt Bella could rein them in? Not at all, with the way the entire world bends over backwards for her. But except for one example she doesn’t, and since there’s no foreseeable danger on the horizon for the family after what happens at the end, there would seem to be no need to expose Bella to that side of their business again either. And since by then she’s got nothing to distract her from staring at Edward and having him grind her marble back into the ground for the rest of eternity, why would she care enough to go digging and find ways to make them nicer?

“Hoping very much that Esme was not particularly fond of any specific trees across the river…” What are you, a complete retard?

* Anyway Bella automatically has perfect poise and coordination as a vampire. I’m not really sure how that works so I’ll say it’s the author not wanting to bother with Bella having to learn anything. She even has automatic knowledge of dendrology because she can identify trees just like that. This is heading past awesome fast and into fncking stupid.

Also “I kept waiting to feel winded, but my breath came effortlessly.” When Bella woke up as a vampire she noticed breathing was voluntary. She already knows this. Again, this is something I probably wouldn’t care about if not for all the hoopla of how smart she is.

* Bella smells a hiker and gets the urge to attack them, but doesn’t. Because then the author would have to expend effort to keep her “likable” and “relatable”.

* Anyway Bella kills this mountain lion. “My teeth were steel razors; they cut through the fur and fate and sinews like they weren’t there.” Hey, this is starting to sound like a book with scary vampires like it wants you to believe. But it’s starting to sound (once again) like something I’d be hesitant to let my kids read.

* Hunger sated, Bella and Edward stare into each other’s eyes and, you guessed it, think about how totally, eternally in love they are. “My old mind hadn’t been capable of holding this much love. My old heart had not been strong enough to bear it.”

SDT, Meyer. For that matter, Bella’s been telling us about every single thing in the most ludicrously over-the-top fashion possible for this whole exercise. Now I’m supposed to imagine something BEYOND that because she’s a vampire?

No, Steph. No.

“Maybe this was the part of me that I’d brought forward to be intensified in my new life….Maybe I would just love Edward more than anyone in the history of the world had ever loved anyone else.”

By the way she compares this to “Carlisle’s compassion and Esme’s devotion.” Other people get super-powers, and they have the power to be good parents. And you thought Aquaman got shafted.

By the way, SDT that stuff too.

* Then they decide Bella’s fed enough to safely see her child for the first time. AFTER some making out, of course. Which is way better than when Bella was human, of course. Because they’re inflexible statues going at it now.

Wait, what?

Chapter 22 - Vampire Underarm Odor Saves Relationship, Film at 11

* As Edward leads his bride back he assures her that their daughter “is like nothing else in the world.” There was “the sound of an almost religious devotion”.

“I felt a sharp pang of jealousy over this stranger. He knew her and I did not. It wasn’t fair.”

…it’s NOT FAIR that he got to spend time with their kid, while she was BECOMING AN ENTIRELY NEW SPECIES? RECOVERING FROM HAVING MULTIPLE BONES BROKEN AND FNCKING DYING?!

And she’s going to be this immature…forever. Sounds like she’ll be a dynamite mom, huh?

* Their little angel sleeps easily at night, it turns out. “The only parents in the world who don’t need sleep, and our child already sleeps through the night.” Boy aren’t you guys specially perfect.

* She learns Jacob’s still there, and asks why. “Why should he have to suffer more?” Wait, more? Does that mean his suffering before was okay while she was pregnant and she needed him around, but now that she’s got everything she wanted, NOW it’s too much?

Oh, and “I cringed at the dim memory of shame and guilt. It seemed odd now that I had needed him so much then. That sense of absence without him near had vanished; it must have been a human weakness.”

Fuck. You. Stephenie Meyer.

Yes, I complained that she was a selfish bitch for continuing to ask him to stay and be there at the same time she was making goo-goo eyes at Edward. I still feel that way. But…to imply that needing someone sometimes is a “human weakness” and that she’s something better now because she doesn’t have it anymore…fuck you, Steph.

* They run back to the house and Edward warns her not to breathe, because Jacob’s outside and she might be tempted by his scent. “I tried not to panic as I froze mid-breath.” Panic’s a human weakness. She said that other thing like all those are gone now.

This turns out to be some kind of test to see if Bella will attack him, before letting her near her child. She thinks it was Edward’s idea: “What was with Edward? After all that we’d been through, shouldn’t he have been able to feel some kindness for my best friend?” Why, exactly, would that make them friends? Because that’s how it always works in the movies? Jake did all this over her, and she had to know he probably resented knowing she was never going to come to her senses with Edward.

“But what was Jacob doing? Why would he offer himself as a test to protect Renesmee?” Aaaaaand here we see the problem of a hack author having multiple perspectives in the same story. Even more than these being predictable as all fnck, we were around to see important stuff that Bella wasn’t. We know why Jake’s putting himself out like this for Renesmee’s sake. It gets grating really fast listening to Bella go on and on about how she doesn’t understand why Jake would be doing this.

Settling into their old jibing routine, Jake calls Bella a “freak show” (that’s 50 more points for you, Mr. Black). “ Edward growled. ‘Watch yourself, mongrel.’ ” Is Edward even physically capable of relaxing and having fun? Is he the only one allowed to insult Bella? I remember him doing that a lot in the early days. Says a lot about her and these books as a whole. That can make for interesting relationships, actually, but you have to know it’s just playful, and not constantly be reminded by the character themselves how worthless they are.

* Bella insults Jacob’s wolf BO and Edward whispers “I love you” afterward. Again, this wouldn’t necessarily make the characters assholes…but they are assholes, and it’s hard for the wisecracks to seem purely playful after all this.

Bella realizes that she and Jake can be friends with certainty now because he’s so disgusted by her vampiric scent that they could never be lovers. Seriously. “Maybe now I could truly be his friend, since I disgusted him enough physically that he couldn’t love me the same way was before. Maybe that was all that was needed.”

I have not the words.

* They head in and Edward assures his wife “I know you can handle this.” Me too. Quit pretending you can do suspense, Steph. You can’t. You’ve got to be willing to do bad things to characters you like. I have yet to see that and we’ve only got about half of the last book to go.

* The look in the baby’s eyes was “not at all childlike; it was adult, aware, and intelligent.” What does that say about everyone else?

I guess now’s as good a time as any to talk about the kid’s rapid maturity. She’s growing up insanely fast both mentally and physically. My question is…why? Shouldn’t having parentage from an unchanging vampire slow down her growth? I truly think Meyer decided it would be the other way around because Renesmee being some kind of mongoloid monster baby wouldn’t fit the image she had in mind for her book, and because “fnck it, this is my story, I can do things however I want.”

* Alice complains that Bella ruined the dress that was completely impractical for running around the woods at super speed picking fights with wild animals. Boo hoo. Idiot.

* Carlisle calls Edward “irresponsible” for letting Bella near hikers at this stage of her vampirism. What do they normally do about hikers? I mean, the whole thing that makes the Cullens “special” is that they run around in the woods and eat animals instead. They must have something in place to avoid this, right? I mean, if we’re to believe they still have to resist that impulse around people, it’d be tremendously stupid of them not to. Right?

I can’t shake a suspicion that this remonstration is really just an excuse for Edward to tell Bella she’s “stronger than anyone I’ve ever known”. Meaning in terms of restraint.

* Bella does get to hold her kid, and everybody’s all fraught with tension and stuff. “No one but Jacob and Renesmee was so much as breathing.” For like the third time in this article, no one but Jacob and Renesmee has to.

* After seventeen pages, Bella finally realizes why Jacob’s so protective of her baby. Seventeen pages building up to something we already knew about. Then she angrily chews him out for it. I’d like to remind everyone out there that a couple chapters ago, she was the one who told him it would probably just happen like magic with no thought or input from him. Which it did.

He protests he had no control. “ ‘Why should I listen?’ I hissed.” To prove you have any of those redeeming qualities everyone else seems to think you do? I dunno.

Esme implores Edward to stop Bella from attacking. “She’ll be unhappy if she hurts him.” Bella will be unhappy if she hurts Jacob. Well there you have it folks, if it matters it has to do with how it affects her. Just because Jake can heal quickly…it probably still isn’t pleasant to do so.

Not that this makes the whole coupling up with babies thing any less ewww. It was invented by a human being. I’m allowed to critique it.

* Nobody moves to block Bella, though. Her restraint is so great that all she’s done is yell at Jake, after all. It’s only when she finds out he nicknamed the baby Nessie that she loses her shit and jumps at him.

She can  resist the urge to take a human life because that’s what vampires do, but her best friend who’s stuck with her through thick and thin giving her kid an unflattering nickname sends her into a homicidal rage. Now imagine this exact same bit in something with a sense of humor about itself. That could’ve been awesome.

Chapter 23 - Bella’s Looking To Be A Crappy Mom, But As Usual It’s Okay

* Open on Edward apologizing to Seth for not acting faster. Guess why.

All I’ll say is for Bella being a stupid cunt to stand out, she’d have to not be a stupid cunt all the time.

Oh, and for what it’s worth Bella gets the feeling that while he heaps praise on her restraint, Edward was secretly wishing he could’ve been the one to smack Jake around a little. Oh yes, they’ve bonded, haven’t they? I do understand it, though. What’s to respect about either of them?

Also a bit of news “pleased me a teensy bit in a petulant way”. That being that Nessie bites Jacob all the time, and which is how they know he’s not venomous. How do they know what happens if a vampire bites a werewolf anyway? Why would it be the same thing that happens to a human?

* Some updates on relationships between various characters, but it still doesn’t count as development and we all know everything turns out perfectly, so who cares?

Also some of the vampires are out hunting. They’re safe to do this because off-screen the rest of the Quileutes found out Jake had imprinted on the baby. “Binding, because the most absolute of all the pack’s laws was that no wolf ever kill the object of another wolf’s imprinting. The pain of such a thing would be intolerable for the whole pack.” So it’s not for any moral or traditional reason, but to save themselves the horror of being subjected to Jake’s wangsting that his bros attacked his baby-girlfriend. God the resolutions for big issues in this book suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

Also some stuff about how alpha wolves can still talk to each other in wolf form and stuff like that, but none of it matters. In any case, the danger of the Quileutes is negated. “One big worry down.”

Ha ha ha oh you’re serious.

* Another threat looms on the horizon, though, and that’s what are they going to do about Charlie. They haven’t made up their minds between Bella pretending to have died from a “tropical disease,” or letting him arrive at his own conclusions. “Technically, the vampire rules would remain unbroken.” And if the Volturi are really so ruthless and protective of secrecy above all else, they don’t seem like they’d be the kind who care much about the letter of the law.

In the interests of fooling Charlie about the disease thing, they plan to leave for a while to make it believable and the author’s just SO UPSET about it. I mean, Bella is. I’m sorry, I stand by that. The author doesn’t want the bother of spending a significant amount of time elsewhere, and uses Bella’s fragile emotions and everyone’s inexplicable devotion to her to avoid it.

And just so you know, Bella automatically plans to take her kid but leave Jacob. Even though I see no reason at all the Cullens couldn’t buy him a ticket on a separate flight to the same place.

On the other hand Bella’s still got “enough petty ire in my system” to be grateful for the chance of “having Renesmee away from him.” So you haven’t solved your differences, because you’re being an even bigger bitch to him now than before. And yes, I can still feel that way while still being disgusted by imprinting.

* Time to check in on Nessie, and Bella observes how her “skin glowed like backlit alabaster.” Is that going to mean anything to adolescent and teen readers?

Bella tries to figure out exactly how fast her daughter’s growing. “My vampire mind had no trouble with the math.” So she’s good at math because she’s a vampire. The list of things they can do just gets sillier all the time…

* We find out Nessie’s special vampire power, which is to transmit her thoughts to someone by touch. Meaning while even she isn’t old enough to talk yet, she doesn’t need to because she’s telepathic. And yes, this works on Bella for some reason. I really don’t care how Steph explains that Edward’s power counts as an attack like Jane and Alec’s, but Nessie’s doesn’t. She probably didn’t even think about it until someone else brought it up.

In case you were wondering what Nessie shared, it’s how beautiful she thinks her mom is. Bella refuses to believe it, of course.

Besides how pretty mommy is, “It looks like she’s going to give you a rundown of everything you missed,” Edward informs our protagonist. Have her fncking be there! Maybe storytellers have done it that way for centuries upon centuries because hearing a story about someone hearing a story is stupid? Bella not being there isn’t a framing device, she just isn’t there for anything you might want to read about.

* More dressing up the perils of the series instead of creating any when Edward brings up that Jasper’s a little resentful of how quickly Bella’s settling in to being a vampire. “But that’s unfair,” Carlisle interrupts. “Everyone is different, everyone has their own challenges.” Can you actually name one Bella’s had, Mr. Doctor Leader Dad Guy?

Bella realizes how afraid she is to face her father. “And here I thought I would be so fearless when I was indestructible.” So what “human weaknesses” does being a vampire solve and not solve? Was Bella just wrong about that before, like with everything else? And if I may add, this is another thing we already knew about because Bella was panicking at some danger in the preface.

* Getting near the end, as the Cullens talk about an extremely minor friend of theirs who has a mysterious power, Bella realizes the only reason they sit in chairs s as part of their attempt to blend in as humans. She realizes that she could stay standing up until the day the sun goes cold if she wanted to. I mean, seriously…this is how you choose to explain that vampires are tireless? When Bella notices her in-laws sitting down? Not when she’s chasing down prey or trying to elude an enemy or something where it would make sense? Yeah, being a sparklepire sounds stupider every time something else gets mentioned about it.

* More healthy treatment of the topic of sleep, and watching other people sleep. Bella can even see what Nessie’s thinking as she dreams, and is pleased with being tied with Jacob for how often she shows up. That doesn’t sound like a feeling of smug superiority at all.

“For the first time, I understood how Edward had been been able to watch me sleep night after boring night, just to hear me talk in my sleep. I could watch Renesmee sleep forever.”

That would’ve almost not been creepy if she hadn’t mentioned Edward doing it to her.

* Thankfully we go out on Bella being pissed off. At Alice telling her happy birthday, because it’s her 19th. Bella spazzes out because she refuses to think of herself as getting older.

I’m kinda starting to like Alice again. I’m getting the feeling she does this crap on purpose, and guilts Bella into accepting it by acting like her best friend.