I would like to personally extend a huge thank-you to the io9 team for bringing the most up-to-date and accurate Scifi news and reviews possible. And for giving us an amazing collection of the best Twilight critiques possible. Find it here:
Twilight Makes the Best Fanwank Ever via io9
ts actually refreshing when an undercurrent idea hits the main stream. Stephenie Meyer’s first book in the Twilight Saga quatrology takes an idea that has been stewing in the underbelly of fantasy thought, namely the idea that vampires can be rather excellent chaps when they’ve forced themselves to stop drinking human blood, and brings that idea into the shining, prismatic light of the bestseller list.
Now I know there are those who would say that the idea of “good” vampires has been around for at least a few decades, but the blood-sucking (yes, the vampires in Twilight suck blood, but the ones we like don’t suck human blood at all) members on the side of the protagonist take this farther. They try to be good and peaceful. None of them draws a modified robotic katana and slays other vampires while taking hits of a human-blood drug replacement. Yes, I’m looking at you Wesley Snipes.
So, as I launch into the bloody meat of this review (yes, I know I’m not that witty), let me start by saying that the humanity expressed in this book is more real than in a lot of other Fantasy novels with only human casts. Part of that realism comes from the fact that the “good” vampires in Twilight do not serve as a foil to the humanity of the non-vamps, but express incredible depths of humanity themselves.
