Stephenie Meyer is yet to get over her blockbuster novel series Twilight. She sounded very excited while announcing about Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined on the occasion of 10th anniversary of Twilight. Stephenie has experimented with her twilight book by the characters gender reversed or swapped. In Life and Death the iconic Twilight tale is told through the eyes of a human teenage boy in love with a female vampire. Was it worth reading is the question I kept asking myself.
Well, being a die hard fan of Twilight series I couldn’t resist myself from reading it. I think this will be the case with most of the Twilight fans. All the characters of the twilight book were swapped except Charlie and Renee and Stephenie has given her own reason for it. So Bella has now become a boy called Beau and Edward is now a vampire girl named Edythe.
In the similar way rest of the characters in the Twilight book has been gender swapped. The author has changed the names but for the sake of convenience has named them with the same letter as in the Twilight series. Apart from this there is no real difference. She follows the same story-line, dialogue, incidents and events. NO major change. Only a couple of deviation in order to suit the gender swapping. Otherwise it felt that Stephenie has re-edited the same book and has changed he and she, names of the characters and she is done. Although in the beginning she has given the percentage of the various changes she has done to the book.
The book Life and Death could be described well a proverb : “Old Wine In A New Bottle”. Why at all she cared to write it. Well answer to this may be to bask on the success of the series and earn some quick money. Considering the story might has faded from the memory of the readers so with few changes here and there it will appear to be new.
So coming back to the previous question was it worth reading. And the answer is NO. Not worth a read at all. Instead of writing this Stephenie should have completed Midnight Sun which she is planning to do so now. So soon we might read Edward’s version of Twilight. But her new experiment really sucks. She could have at least changed the story lines or incidents. It was very boring to read the same thing again. There was no novelty factor in the story and the reader will instantly know what is coming next. Now that doesn’t help in turning the page in eagerness to know what will happen next but skipping does helps.
The Verdict: Instead of wasting time in reading Life and Death it is better to watch the Twilight series movies.
Apart from this there is also a news about Midnight Sun. Well Stephenie has started working on it and is expected to release officially soon.
