I was taken to see New Moon last night which I shall reserve my opinion for another time when I am not so pressed for time. (Got to go to work.)
A question came up regarding the Head Vampire Guys in Italy: Volteri/Volturi.
When our hero and heroine leave the Volteri room and the tourists are brought in and obviously slaughtered for a vampire snack, in the book is this covered better?
One would think that a group of tourists that all go missing suddenly in Italy in the same area every now and then would attract ALOT OF ATTENTION.
Sparkly vampires. Creepy stalker centenarian vampires who crave teenage girls. Teenage girl who thinks that creepy stalking is romantic. Teenage girl whose name should really be Mary Sue instead of Bella Swan.
My sister says they don’t actually don’t do it like that very often, and when they do, they spread out quite far. She says she always assumed they did it specifically to freak out Bella. But she also says she doesn’t remember for sure.
I really don’t understand the appeal of reading a long turgid piece of crap to see if it is really as terrible as everyone says it is. I’ll take people’s words for it. Sure, I might miss the occasional brilliance that the hoi polloi was too stupid to appreciate, but there’s a lot of good stuff out there.
The books are execrable. But I’ll tell you what I tell everyone: speed-browse the scenes where Edward and Bella are talking to each other (spend no more than 2 seconds per page), and you’ll save yourself some grief. In fact, skip those pages, I’ll summarize them for you:
Bella: Please, let’s fuck! Edward: I am suffering like no one has suffered before. I watch you at a distance and follow you everywhere and smell your clothes but I’m sorry, we can’t fuck. And in case you didn’t realize it, I’m suffering. Like no one has suffered before. Bella: Do me now, PLEASE! If you don’t do me now, I’ll tell myself I don’t want you, and go do something incredibly stupid like find another guy. Edward: I’d be happy if you did that, really. Unless the guy’s name is Jacob, in which case I’ll become incredibly angry. And I’ll suffer even more than before, even though that doesn’t seem possible. Plus if we did fuck, I’d hurt you. Bella: Okay, how about you make me a vampire, and then we fuck? Edward: I am suffering like no one has suffered before. I watch you at a distance and follow you everywhere and smell your clothes but I’m sorry, we can’t fuck. And in case you didn’t realize it, I’m suffering. Like no one has suffered before.
(I’m embarrassed to admit I know the answer to this one. Please remember I have a teenage daughter and have been know to read ad circulars just to have something to read. I’m not picky when desperate.)
The Volturi don’t do the whole bus load of tourist things very often, but when they do, one of their agents will load the bodies back up in the bus and go roll it down a mountain or something so it looks like an accident. (Unless of course medical officers in the area are good at spotting things like victims that don’t bleed and stuff like that. We won’t worry about those things though . . . . Oh look Edward sparkles!)
Which is actually plausible, since some of the humans do know about the Volturi - they work for them, hoping the Volturi will change them into vampires, but mostly they just get eaten. I could see a Volterran (is that the right word) human medical examiner looking the other way, either because he’s afraid he’ll get eaten he doesn’t, or he wants to be a vampire.
Not that I think Meyers was actually thinking that far ahead.