Two or three weeks ago my daughter was begging me to buy her the fourth book in a teen vampire series called Breaking Dawn. It was in hard cover and only the good discount attached to it prompted me to give in to her. I got over my vampire/fantasy/love/sex/whatever thing years ago when the vampire stories went from character development to violence and sex. I read many vampire stories, including Interview with the Vampire. Never read the others though, I just didn’t like the character Lestat enough to want to read more about him. I wasn’t even a fan of the Buffy series. (Loved the original campy movie though) I was generally underwhelmed with the direction most vampire stories go nowadays and I wasn’t really all that thrilled my daughter was big into a new set of vampire novels. The mysterious yet seductive cover images didn’t help me warm up to them, but I figured since she checked out the first from her middle school library, they couldn’t be too bad. I still wasn’t interested in reading another vampire story in a genre lacking some originality.

However, two weeks ago I came across an article talking about this book series and how the author was Mormon. This caught my attention. A Mormon writing a vampire story? I was instantly curious to find out how she would treat the subject and grabbed my daughters first book called Twilight.

*chuckles*

By chapter three I was hooked. I love narrated stories and so I tend to like first person narratives, these books read from the perspective of the main female character. The characters were interesting and I was immediately intrigued by the idea of vampires who one, who don’t burn in the sun and two, choose to not drink human blood in an effort to keep their humanity. I love a good romance story, and these books had that tempted but restrained passion that comes from not jumping into bed together on the second date. A recent article in Time referred to it as the ‘erotics of abstinence’. I couldn’t agree more. To see what I mean, read pages 361 thru 363 of Twilight. (Men, if you ever did this to the female love in your life as a means of persuasion, you’d win every time. *wink* )

I have read all four books now. Loved each one. These are characters you care about and want to know more about. I enjoyed the new twists of vampires who can be in the sun, don’t sleep at all and who aren’t bothered by crucifixes, holy water or garlic. I enjoyed the humor, the interplay between characters and I felt Stephanie Meyer was honest to her characters in the direction she took them and LOVED the romantic aspect of the books. Now while these books are not literary masterpieces, I was able to lose myself to the descriptions and mental pictures that Stephanie Meyer weaves through her four books. She is very descriptive and I could feel what the character was feeling.

What also took me by surprise was the LDS themes that were present. First and foremost is the idea of Agency. YOU can choose how you deal with a situation, that you can overcome the “natural man” and make better choices. Of course there is no premarital sex in these books. The vampire coven which Edward, the male lead vampire, belongs to are very much a family. And Edward and Bella deal with loving each other forever and having a family forever. Eternal love and Eternal families is a huge part of LDS theology. It, in its own way, is very much a happily ever after part of our theology. Being married to the love of your life for eternity with your children around you, what could be better? That’s the main purpose of our temples.

There’s only one thing about this series that weirds me out. (Insert creepy twilight zone music) This stay at home Arizona mom dreamt up the story the exact same week that my ex and I were agreeing to divorce. Now, this might not seem like much of a coincidence to anyone else, but considering she describes the type of dedicated love that I’ve wanted all my life to give and receive, that she just happens to dream it up the same week my marriage falls apart, the same week I felt as if my chance at that type of love was dying….. well, its just a little trippy to me. Coincidence? Definitely. Still weirds me out though.

The flip side though is that I’ve enjoyed discussing this series with my daughter. We’ve been able to have long talks about relationships, love, hate, loss, desperation, sacrifice and a host of other topics all within the folds of this story. We’ve come to understand each other better. I even think that she can understand better how I could get pregnant with my youngest.

We both now can’t wait for the movie of the first book that is being released in theaters Nov. 21st. And we are both sad that Stephanie put a hold on finishing her character development exercise of Edward known as Midnight Sun. This is basically the book Twilight from Edward’s perspective. She had let a few people use her partial rough draft to help with character development for the movie and someone leaked the copy on the internet. Understandably upset, she has put that project on hold and kindly released what pages exist so far in the rough draft on her website so as to stop the rape of her material online. It will be a long time, before she ever feels like finishing it. But, while other projects will fill her time, I think ultimately she will finish it. Only my personal opinion, and maybe wishful thinking on my part, but you can tell she loves the character of Edward and I don’t think she’ll be able to keep him silent forever.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 8:02 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.