Waiting On Wednesday #145: Starflight, by Melissa Landers

This is a weekly event hosted by

Jill @ Breaking the Spine!!

It showcases future releases which

we book bloggers

are eagerly anticipating!!

Here's my choice for this week!

Starflight

(Starflight, Book 1)

Melissa Landers 

Hardcover, 320 pages

Disney Hyperion

February 2, 2016

Dystopian Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction,
Young Adult Fiction

Life in the outer realm is a lawless, dirty, hard existence, and Solara Brooks is hungry for it. Just out of the orphanage, she needs a fresh start in a place where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. She's so desperate to reach the realm that she's willing to indenture herself to Doran Spaulding, the rich and popular quarterback who made her life miserable all through high school, in exchange for passage aboard the spaceliner Zenith.

When a twist of fate lands them instead on the Banshee, a vessel of dubious repute, Doran learns he's been framed on Earth for conspiracy. As he pursues a set of mysterious coordinates rumored to hold the key to clearing his name, he and Solara must get past their enmity to work together and evade those out for their arrest. Life on the Banshee may be tumultuous, but as Solara and Doran are forced to question everything they once believed about their world--and each other--the ship becomes home, and the eccentric crew family. But what Solara and Doran discover on the mysterious Planet X has the power to not only alter their lives, but the existence of everyone in the universe...

Why I'm waiting on this one!

Oh, drama in outer space! Just my cup of tea!
I have always loved SF, and now I've come across
a great-looking YA science fiction novel! 
This is my LUCKY day!!  
Of course I'm adding it to my
TBR, right next to Across The Universe
and A Million Suns!!
I'm also very excited because Landers is
the author of the Alienated series!
(My birthday's in February, and
I think I'll give myself a little present.....) 
  

What do you think of my choice?

Leave your link below, so I can
come check out your pick(s)!

Book Review: Life and Death, by Stephenie Meyer (10th-anniversary edition of Twilight)

Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined
(Twilight 10th-Anniversary Edition)
Stephenie Meyer
Hardcover, 442 pages
Little, Brown, Oct. 8, 2015
Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction
Source: Amazon

Book Synopsis:

Celebrate the tenth anniversary of Twilight! This special double-feature book includes the classic novel, Twilight, and a bold and surprising re-imagining, Life and Death, by Stephenie Meyer. 

Packaged as an oversize, jacketed hardcover “flip book,” this edition features nearly 400 pages of new content as well as exquisite new back cover art. Readers will relish experiencing the deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful love story of Bella and Edward through fresh eyes. 

Twilight has enraptured millions of readers since its first publication in 2005, and has become a modern classic, redefining genres within young adult literature and inspiring a phenomenon that has had readers yearning for more. The novel was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 USA Today bestseller, a Time magazine Best Young Adult Book of All Time, an NPR Best-Ever Teen Novel, and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. The Twilight Saga, which also includes New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella, and The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide, has sold nearly 155 million copies worldwide.

 

This is going to be my first "rating-less" review ever, on A Night's Dream of Books. Why? Because I love The Twilight Saga, and admire Stephenie Meyer, too much to ever give any of her books a negative rating, although, in this case, I do have to point out several things about this novel that are simply not positive at all. However, I am not going to give this novel a rating. That might seem paradoxical, but there it is. I am also not going to post this review anywhere but here, on this blog. I think there's enough Meyer-bashing going on elsewhere, such as on Goodreads and Amazon. I certainly don't want people to think that I'm joining the ranks of the Twilight and Stephenie Meyer haters, because that just isn't true at all. In fact, it just will never happen!

It's well-known that some people really enjoy knocking Stephenie Meyer and her books, no matter how many copies have been sold, no matter how much devotion has been poured out by fans all over the world. There are people -- and a lot of them are female, which I find pretty hard to believe -- who just love to hate her books, and don't mind spending as much time as they feel they need to in writing scathing reviews of them.

I am not one of those people. I belong to the much larger group of devoted fans, those who have read the books more than three times each, who have held home Twilight marathons whenever the need arises, who collect as much Twilight memorabilia as they possibly can. Yes, I am one of the obsessed ones, and I really don't care who doesn't like that. I love The Twilight Saga, and that's that.

Having said all of the above, I must sadly confess that I actually thought of returning this book almost as soon as I began to read it. The only reason I didn't, though, is that it's another piece of the Twilight universe, and we fans are always starved for more.... In fact, I bought this book, which is part of the 10th-anniversary edition of the original novel, almost as soon as it was released.

My conclusion is that -- and I am very disappointed to have to admit it -- this novel simply doesn't have the appeal of the original one, Twilight. Meyer calls it "a reimagining" of the original novel, with the genders of all the characters (except for Charlie and Renee) reversed. Edward has become Edythe, and Bella has become Beau. The other Cullens are also now of the opposite gender.

I do think this is an interesting experiment, but it just doesn't work, and the reason is that Meyer didn't change the original novel enough, and in the right ways, for her experiment to be successful. 
  
The things I'm going to point out have already been mentioned by other reviewers, on both Amazon and Goodreads, and I'm also mentioning them because I have to admit that I totally agree.

Transforming Bella into Beau is probably the most awkward aspect of this reimagining. Bella's clumsiness and lack of athletic ability simply are not endearing when they are applied to a guy. This might be the result of gender stereotypes deeply ingrained in our culture, but the fact remains that these qualities make Beau very unappealing to females. If they had been balanced by something else -- like, for example, the ability to write exquisite poetry, or some other intellectual attribute -- then that would have been fine. But instead, Beau turns out to be a very boring, as well as weak, male version of Bella. As such, it's hard to believe that Edythe would be as interested in him as she is, in spite of the attraction of his blood.

As for Edythe herself, she was more believable, but she, too, suffered in the transformation. Meyer should never have had her do the very same things Edward did, such as stealing into Beau's room at night to watch him sleep, and  carrying Beau on her back. This last was ridiculous in the extreme, and just not believable. Edythe is described as being shorter than Beau, so this became very awkward when I tried to picture it in my mind. There was no question that, as a vampire, she had the necessary strength to carry him. The differences in height, though, made this totally ludicrous.

All the other characters were off, too. They came across as very shallow, wooden versions of the originals. Alice, who was now Archie, did not possess any of the fun personality quirks the original character had. True, these could have been more in the nature of male traits, but Archie simply had none. I couldn't see how he and Beau were going to become such good friends. 

I was really surprised to see that I was put off by this re-imagined story, since I'm all for women and girls being portrayed in non-stereotypical ways. The same goes for men and boys. Yet, this gender reversal struck me as very awkward. I actually think that Meyer should have changed the original story much more than she ended up doing. She did change the ending, but that, too, was unsatisfactory, in a romantic sense, even though, in a literary sense, it did work. Also, perhaps it was more believable than the ending of the original novel. I have to say that it was much too sad, though, and it did nothing to make me enthusiastic about the future of Edythe and Beau's relationship.

Other reviewers have mentioned the silly, unattractive names of the gender-reversed characters in this version, and again I must agree. I especially dislike the conversion of "Rosalie" to "Royal". What was Meyer thinking? As one reviewer pointed out, she could have changed the name to "Ross" instead. Also, instead of using "Archie" as a substitute for "Alice", why didn't Meyer choose "Alan", for instance?

The most important problem with this version of the original novel, though, is the poignant, bittersweet quality of the romance, which was present in the original, but totally missing in this alternate version. That certain quality that makes the hardcore Twilight fan  sigh happily as they read the meadow scene, for instance, simply was not there in the re-imagined version. I have to sadly conclude that certain aspects of the female experience of love are not there for males, so, when you transform lovers into the opposite gender, such experiences simply do not ring true.

There's another aspect of the original version that's entirely missing from this one -- the effectiveness of the vampire metaphor. This was referred to in an Internet article I read some time back. Male vampires represent the baser instincts in a man. It's very powerful and endearing when a man controls these instincts, which could lead to violence, in order to protect the woman he loves from himself. This is the underlying reason for the popularity of vampire romance novels, and is especially true of The Twilight Saga. But, when you reverse the genders, the metaphor doesn't apply, because men don't have as much to fear from women, in regards to violence specifically,  as women do from men. The metaphor contributed to the poignant, bittersweet aspects of the original "Twilight", as well as of the rest of the books.

Interestingly, this failed literary experiment opens up a whole slew of questions about what it really means to be a man or woman in love. Perhaps we do need to move beyond gender stereotypes. However, it's an undeniable fact that romance novels are, for the most part (excepting such writers as Nicholas Sparks), written by and for women. Therefore, it's only logical that these books should reflect the female experience of falling and being in love.  Equality notwithstanding, men are simply not wired emotionally the way women are. This is an undeniable psychological fact. If you're going to reverse genders, then you really need to make some major changes to your story, especially where the male protagonist is concerned, if you still want the story to appeal to a primarily female audience.     

I have decided to keep this 10th-anniversary double edition, in spite of the fact that I didn't enjoy reading the re-imagined version of Twilight as much as I did the original. Still, it has made me think about male and female roles, especially where romance is concerned. It has made me wonder whether the romance genre is one in which these roles cannot be arbitrarily reversed without losing the romantic feeling altogether. So this means that I might be writing a future blog post dealing with the widespread appeal of romance novels among us females. Can we be committed to equality between the sexes, and still love romance novels? It would be very interesting to explore this issue further.

Meanwhile, I am left with the thought that I need to read the first novel of The Twilight Saga yet again. I need to recapture the original magic. And I'm wondering just what that magic consists of. So I might go into a more detailed comparison of these versions of the story as well, also in a future post. 

In short, reading Life and Death has not made me hate Stephenie Meyer or The Twilight Saga at all. That's totally impossible for me! Instead, it has actually reaffirmed my love for these books. It has also made me think about gender roles, and whether it's a totally good thing for these to be entirely reversed. Meyer is to be credited for trying out something new and bold, something that represented a literary risk for her. That she hasn't entirely succeeded in making this reimagined version as compelling as the original is something that can be overlooked, in light of the tremendous impact this series has had in the literary world, as is evident from the short excerpt from her Wikipedia biography below.            

  

Stephenie Meyer is best known for her vampire romance series, The Twilight Saga. The Twilight novels have gained worldwide recognition, and sold over 100 million copies, with translations into 37 different languages. Meyer was the bestselling author of 2008 and 2009 in America, having sold over 29 million books in 2008, and 26.5 million books in 2009. Twilight was the best-selling book of 2008 in U.S. bookstores.

Meyer ranked No. 49 on Time Magazine's list of "The 100 Most Influential People in 2008", and was included in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list of the world's most powerful celebrities in 2009, entering at No. 26. Her annual earnings exceeded $50 million. In 2010, Forbes ranked her as the No. 59 most powerful celebrity, with annual earnings of $40 million. (Source: Wikipedia) 

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