Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer’s much-anticipated follow up to her highly successful novels Twilight and New Moon, continues the saga rich with vampires, werewolves, and Bella Swan, the girl who loves them both. Picking up right where New Moon left off, Eclipse is filled with danger, intrigue, fighting and plenty of suspense.
While the plot is riveting and the book is a page-turner that is almost impossible to set down, Eclipse differs from the first two books in the amount of background and character development Meyer provides. Not only does Meyer delve more deeply into the mythology of the werewolves and vampires, she also picks out individual characters on both sides and explores their personal backgrounds. While these details provide a more complex understanding of the Twilight universe, they also serve to foreshadow future events and they give the novel a depth it would otherwise have been lacking.
Without the extensive thought and care put into this novel and its mythology, the overlying plot wrought with villains, love-triangles, an indecisive heroine, and an almost unrealistic Prince Charming, it would read like a script for a soap opera. However, since Meyer has put in the time to create a complete alternate universe and the details to back it up, instead of feeling contrived, the characters and events read as if they were real, an impressive feat in this particular genre of novel.
As is, Eclipse is an entertaining read that leaves you wanting more, much like the previous two novels in the series.
- Posted by Erin