New Moon: B

There are two fundamental notions at work in New Moon that have, in the past, grounded two very different genres of pop culture. The first is the age-old adage that love can come in the most unexpected of places - the saying itself being the obvious harbinger of the romance novel - while the second is that eerily unclassifiable theory of the banality of evil - obviously the surface emblems of such wide-ranging works as American Psycho and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Together, the two flavors intermingle to varying degrees in New Moon, the story of Isabella "Bella" Swan’s love for a baroque and occasionally sullen family of vampires in small-town Forks, Washington. It needs to be mentioned that previous, far better written, mainstays of English literature have approximated the gothic overtone of star-crossed love (Wuthering Heights, Romeo & Juliet) but this second book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series isn’t out to turn doomed love into a soaring, tragic metaphor - when it says it’s a "love story with bite," it means it. Literally.

Moon is, in so many obvious (and some very subtle) ways an improvement over Twilight. For starters, the affectations of a young writer attempting to capture an even younger world (rural high school) are dropped the majority of the time within the pages of the sequel - thankfully allowing a little more of Meyer’s bottled creation to sprawl and breathe. Also, and building upon the just previously-mentioned new amenity, the author brings in practically another whole dozen characters to give her dreary little town life. Yet, one wonders, why would Meyers need anyone to replace Edward Cullen - the youngest of the vampire clan and Bella’s professed true love? After all, both she and her heroine spends hundreds of pages oozing over his perfection, so why only seek to distract the reader from him? The answer is tied into directly what makes Moon a better book, both stylistically and conceptually: the Cullens, fascinating as they are, are removed from the equations. Well...from Forks, anyway.

See, Edward constantly worries about Bella’s safety within his household, and around his brothers and sisters (who all have big, old-fashioned names like Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett). So when her eighteenth birthday party at the Cullen mansion spirals terribly out of control, he and the rest of his relatives leave town - to save the damsel in distress. See there, though, that’s the catch: in Meyers bewitching post-modern way, Bella would rather risk life & limb than be seperated from her soul mate. She is, though. And the subsequent 300+ pages of aftermath and turmoil give New Moon a healthy jolt. The occasionally oppresive repititions of the young romance at Twilight’s heart aren’t given time to blossom here - angst and heartache do instead - and the empty hole left by our entrancing supernatural family is filled by a couple of surprise guests. After some tricky manuevering, Stephenie Meyers guides her vision into an unforseen twist that’s so catchy, the reader almost forgets the pain of Edward’s absence.

Almost. That’s the second catch, and what will go on to power the final two volumes of the Bella-Edward love story. Since he is so tied to her, and since she is eventually so tied to certain people who despise him, when he returns, certain things do not go well. And though the expected last 100-pages of climax (Meyers does, if anything, structure her books in obsessively predictable patterns) have nothing to do with this animosity - and all to do with a vampiric "royal family" - the aftermath is all but fauning over it. This I can understand. After all, the saving grace of the series is that the muffled, lush, gothic atmosphere of Twilight was finally given room to take (some) flight in its follow-up - the sucess of which is due entirely to Bella’s emerging emotional conflicts between the Cullens, her own mortality, and...well...another pack of super-interesting creatures. So I can completely get behind any attempt by the author to play-up our hero’s turmoil. In fact I welcome it: turning away from these books is difficult to do, but I feel so much better afterwards when they’re actually of measurable, consistent, quality.