#46 Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer (Atom)

702 pages. Much like Harry Potter, as the popularity of the Twilight series has grown, so has the length of the books, and (alas for the purposes of this challenge) the last by Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn, is the longest yet. So it’s absolutely bizarre that nothing really happens.

Oh, there are a few incidents. This is the book where Bella becomes a vampire, an event which has been so foretold in the previous three instalments there’s no fear of a spoiler there, but there are a few other twists which might keep the most avid fans fleetingly entertained.

That won’t be the case for anyone else, though. I’m all for building up a bit of tension and suspense, but Meyer never comes up with any sort of climax, merely a situation which fizzles out just when things look like getting dangerous – or what some might consider to be interesting.

A review of Meyer’s next work, the novella The Second Life of Bree Tanner which I happened to notice, points out the problems with the Twilight series better than I can, chiefly that the whole world the author has created, featuring hugely powerful vampires and shape-shifter-like werewolves, is incredibly sanitised.

This is a book when the heroine’s greatest power when she turns into a fearless vampire is to be, well, normal. It might be a great message to send out to young girls, who will form the majority of the book’s readership, but it doesn’t make it readable.

Other will no doubt quibble at the quality of prose, the meandering plot, the length, of time, it takes, for anything, to happen, but one final point if I may? Meyer also experiments with the structure of the book (you get a chapter by Bella, and then one with Jacob, for example), but you can tell things are running out of steam when she contrives to introduce a whole series of new vampires with special powers, seemingly for the only reason that the original ones seem a bit boring now.

Back in March, the Friend of the Wench took umbrage at my middle-of-the-road rating for the third Twilight book, Eclipse. I don’t foresee any such problems with this review…

So, rating time:

#46 Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer (Atom) - 4/10

Next up: Psmith, Journalist, by PG Wodehouse (Century Hutchinson Limited)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#34 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (Penguin Books)

The fact that I'm currently reading another novel by Cormac McCarthy, hot on the heels of books by Bret Easton Ellis and Mark Twain, might indicate the destination for my current holiday - I've got a bit of an American theme going on.

Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is often overlooked in favour of its sequel, the celebrated classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and that's exactly why I've returned to the former. I read Huckleberry Finn many years ago, but omitted its forerunner, the tale of Tom Sawyer.

Tom Sawyer is often referred to as more of a children's book than Huckleberry Finn, and the 'adventures', a series of mischievous scrapes and escapades involving the protagonist and his chums, which invariably end in trouble - and Sawyer receiving some form of discipline - certainly appealed to this reader's boyish side.

I can't help feeling that the above is damning Tom Sawyer with faint praise, however, because it's a far weightier book than some give Twain credit for. For all the pranks and episodes, including the famous whitewashed fence story, you're never far away from a feeling of lost childhood innocence, and the awareness that inequities in your youth will be repeated tenfold as an adult.

Twain even refers to this in his preface: "Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account."

With murder, slavery, starvation and the dangers of alcohol never too far away, there is a much more serious side to the book, and even taking into account the fact that Twain was writing in 1876, I find it difficult to believe that Stephenie Meyer or JK Rowling would use as many long 'adult' words in their own books primarily targeted at younger readers, but which have garnered a large adult readership.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of the most enjoyable books I've read so far this year, and was much needed after a run of novels in the past month or so which, while perfectly fine, have never really scaled the heights.

So, rating time:

#34 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (Penguin Books) - 8/10

Next up: All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy (Pan Books)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating