The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide by Stephenie Meyer

The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide

I think the main audience for this book are going to be people who are already fans of the Twilight series. If you are the kind of fan who has read the books more than once, checked Stephenie Meyers website and read the extras she has there, then this is not the book for you. Much of what is written is already on her website and if you were capable of keeping characters and plot lines straight the first time through this is not going to add much to you experience. The majority of the book is a list of all the characters and then details about their personal backgrounds. Very little of this is new (and often it is a direct transcript from the books). There is some interesting extras about Alice and one or two other characters but most of what there is, is repetitious and leaves you with more questions than answers (eg. the Denali sisters mother creating an immortal child - the books tell you she does it, so does the guide, neither tells you why.) However if you are the kind of fan who struggled to keep the characters and themes straight and would like all your information in one place (although the Stephenie Meyer website actually has a lot more of the extras and out-takes than the book does), then you'll find this book very useful.

A lot of the book appears to have been compiled not by Meyer herself but by two fans from the Twilight Lexion. The amazon.com website has a lot more reviews and it would be sensible to check these out before committing to the buying this book at its current full purchase price (I wouldn't have regretted buying it had it been half the cost). I thought there would be a lot more explanation and "secrets" but there is very little. There are a lot of character profiles giving eye colour (very little variation with vampires of course), physical build, date of transformation (often just detailed as "unknown" - which struck me as odd, surely the author should know?) And them some facts about them, as previously mentioned, most of the facts are things you already know from reading the books, or just stuff that is irrelevant to the plot. I guess the real idea of this guide is to allow you to imagine the physical characteristics of the characters more fully, rather than actually allowing you to know more secrets about the Twilight-Saga-world. 



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