![]() Even the naughtier baby vampires hardly indulge in the sort of wilder pastimes open to preternaturally strong, nocturnal adolescents outside the reach of the law, preferring to imitate Spider-Man by climbing up walls singing his theme tune. Apparently it's common practice among fledgling bloodsuckers to pull each other's limbs off, but these can be swiftly reattached with the aid of vamp saliva – perhaps a design feature of future spin-off action figures. This is a promising set-up, but the combination of prose which is as clunky as ever and some frankly farcical vampire traits make it harder and harder to see the army wielding any kind of menace. In fact, Bree is a thinly-disguised, bloodsucking version of Meyer's first Twilight heroine, Bella Swan – geeky, dependent on males to protect her and think for her, and utterly devoid of black-hearted, kick-ass joie-de-vivre.īree is one of an army of fledgling vampires created by villainous Victoria, one of Bella's nemeses, to take down the Cullen coven and destroy their pet human. OK, she exsanguinates a prostitute here and there, but she spends most of the novella offering her new vamp boyfriend, Diego, high fives and double-wrapping the books with which she whiles away the daylight hours, because she "hates water-damaged pages". While starving on the streets she carefully avoids becoming a "junkie ho" before getting suckered by the promise of a cheeseburger, and subsequently being turned into a vampire. Despite a few gritty touches, there's never any danger she's going to get into real trouble after running away from an abusive father in her early life. We're promised a wild, amoral, bloodthirsty teen protagonist, but what we get is Bree. One of Meyer's notable weaknesses is that she can't bear any of her narrators to have pasts or morals blacker than dove-grey. ![]() ![]() Any readers frustrated by the mundane suburban detail of Meyer's previous Twilight books – vampires who play baseball, drive Volvos and give each other tasteful, thoughtful gifts – might be tempted to perk up. In Stephenie Meyer's introduction to her latest Twilight tale, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, she whets her fans' appetites by suggesting that in this novel she's "stepped into the shoes of … a 'real' vampire – a hunter, a monster". ![]()
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