The Twilight Companion: The Unauthorized Guide to the Series

by Lois H. Gresh

Overview

Everyone's in love with vampires, and if his name happens to be Edward Cullen, then readers of the wildly popular Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer can't help but be crazy about him. For all those who adore Bella Swan, Edward, and the rest of the Cullen family and can't get enough, this companion guide is a must-read and a terrific gift. The series follows an unlikely couple: Bella, a teenager, and her boyfriend Edward, a vampire that has sworn off human blood. But their love is ill-fated--being a vampire, Edward must keep his passion in check, lest he is driven to suck Bella's blood.

With legends, lore, and myths about everything from vampires to werewolves to immortality, a bio of the author, and a ton of insight into the four-book series, this companion guide will give millions of readers the information that they've been waiting for since book one.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429983334
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Publication date:	10/28/2008
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Lois H. Gresh is the New York Times bestselling author of many books, including The Hunger Games Companion and other fans' guides, as well as science fiction novels and stories. She lives in upstate New York.

Lois H. Gresh is the New York Times bestselling author of many books, including The Twilight Companion, The Hunger Games Companion, and other fans' guides, as well as science fiction novels and stories. She lives in upstate New York.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

I BEG YOU: Please Suck My Blood

Throughout the first three books of Stephenie Meyer's extremely popular Twilight Saga, heroine Isabella, aka Bella Swan, desperately wants vampire Edward Cullen to suck her blood. She wants to be a vampire with him, young forever, in love forever, and for that to happen requires that Edward mix his blood with hers and taint her with the gift (or curse) of vampirism.

It's a theme of many vampire movies and books, though in the case of Twilight, it's done a little differently. Bella's vampire friends, the Cullens, aren't like other vampires we've met, nor are her werewolf friends like the werewolves we've encountered in other tales.

These vampires and werewolves have souls and consciences. They care about humans. They don't want to kill people, and indeed, they will sacrifice themselves to protect their human loved ones.

In most vampire lore, the blood-sucking guy doesn't have much in the way of compassion. He can't resist slurping up as much blood as possible from the necks of beautiful, young women — men and children as well, though most traditional vampires seem to have a preference for the blood of young women. It's alluring to them, just as the young women find the vampires highly alluring.

It's as if the vampire grabs hold of the girl, her very soul, and she can't escape his clutches. This is the typical way of the vampire, whether he's a creepy, ancient, gnarled monster as in the 1922 film Nosferatu, which I'll tell you about later in this book, or a suave, handsome charmer like Bela Lugosi, who starred in the 1931 version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Of course, there are the in-between vampires, who are actually disgusting, batlike, ancient monsters who can look like young, handsome guys whenever they want. One example is Dracula in the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Don't worry. I'll tell you all about these various other vampires in this book, and then, we can compare them to Edward Cullen and his family. What does Edward have in common with the original Count Dracula and all of the other vampires who came before him? How is his family different from theirs? Historically, do vampires and werewolves fight as they do in the Twilight Saga, or are they friends? These are only some of the questions we'll answer in this book.

But of all the questions we contemplate, perhaps the most burning one is: What is it about Edward Cullen that makes him so desirable, hot, and sexy?

At seventeen, if you encountered Edward Cullen in your biology class, would you fall for him? If you saw him in the school cafeteria, would you instantly be drawn to him? Probably. I know I would! After all, Stephenie Meyer describes him as "devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful."

As for Bella Swan, what girl wouldn't want to be her?

Here she is, an ordinary gal, moving to some godforsaken, gloomy, remote town to live with her father. Her mother has remarried, and it's time for Bella to give her mom some space. Now, I don't know many girls who leave home to live with fathers they don't know just to give their remarried mothers space, but Bella is special.

So she moves to Forks, Washington, where it always rains, and while attending the small rural school as the new kid, bam, she snags Edward Cullen, an incredibly handsome dude with the most appealing personality you could possibly imagine. You may know what this is like: you see a guy, and he has the sweetest smile and a shy way about him, yet you can tell that he also has the hots for you. You get to know him, and not only is he madly in love with you, basically worshipping the ground you walk on, but he's compassionate, understanding, kind, and wonderful in all ways. He is Mr. Perfect. Any girl would want this guy, and any girl would want to be Bella, who is the object of Edward's desires.

Bella makes lots of friends, and even has another boy, Mike Newton, constantly chasing her. Mike is cute with light blond hair; he's friendly, and he's extremely attentive and nice to her. Bella doesn't know how to handle Mike because he's attracted to her; she doesn't want to hurt him, yet she's not romantically interested in him.

We all know what this is like and how difficult it is to ease someone away without hurting his feelings. In ninth grade, there was a guy who sat next to me in band, and he ended up asking me to the junior prom. I was horrified because I really didn't know him at all, and he was just a guy sitting next to me in band. It's not as if I daydreamed about him or wanted to get to know him at all. To prove that point, the extent of our conversation had been limited to the following:

"Turn the page."

"Uh-huh."

That was it, turning sheet music to the next page. So I ended up giving an excuse of some kind and not going to the junior prom.

When you're a junior or senior in high school, it's okay to be rejected, if it's done in a kind way. The guys are still resilient, and they just move on and try to score with another chick. They don't hate you for it. They barely remember you after you turn them down.

In the end, Mike doesn't hate Bella for turning him down, either. He pines for her endlessly, but of course, she hooks him up with a friend, and things work out for the best.

Bella is a wonderful character: she's an ordinary kind of girl, just like you and me; she has a nice personality, very caring and considerate; and she's also loyal and devoted. And if that weren't enough in the way of positive characteristics, she's intelligent, too. So who wouldn't want to be like Bella?

*
The book you hold in your hands was written from one Twilight fan to another. I'm assuming you've read all three of Stephenie Meyer's terrific books in the Twilight Saga: Twilight, Eclipse, and New Moon. I'm also assuming that, by the time this book is in print, you might already be holding her fourth Twilight book and turning to page one. I bought it and read it as soon as it was available. After all, I wanted to know if Edward gives Bella her dream, to be a vampire and "live" with him forever. Or if maybe, Edward found a way to be human again, just seventeen, so he and Bella could truly live happily ever after, though not forever. This is what we were all dying (sorry to use that word when writing about Bella and vampires) to know.

But there are other matters at hand. For example, reading the first three Twilight books, especially the first one, made me start wondering, just what is it that attracts us girls to these gorgeous guys? Why can't we resist molten copper eyes and big muscles? Why is it so important that we feel special to our guys? Remember, Edward's been "alive" for more than a hundred years, yet he's never fallen in love, not until he runs into Bella Swan, that is. Stephenie Meyer has us all wondering: why is Bella so special to Edward? This book is going to delve into these questions, guiding you through vampire lore, seeking to discover whether vampires have always been this way with their girls, or if it's only Edward who falls in love once — with Bella.

We'll also think about vampires themselves and why they've appealed to women throughout the ages. I'd rather think that we are mesmerized by them than think that we all want our blood drained. But honestly, unless it's a real vampire with those intoxicating eyes and supernatural powers, this remains a very valid question. Since Bela Lugosi in the 1931 Dracula film, women have been glued to vampire movies and books, and there has to be a reason. We'll attempt to figure out what that reason might be.

If you fall in love with a vampire, you don't have a rule book to follow. Your mother can't give you advice, and neither can your dad. There's no book telling the new bride of a vampire what's expected of her, how to act around the in-laws, whether and how she can even have children, and so forth. If you have a baby with your vampire man, there's no baby book or pediatrician equipped to tell you about raising a baby vampire. Can you take the baby to a playground without risking the lives of a bunch of toddlers? I wonder if vampire babies need milk, or whether a diet of nothing but blood suffices to build strong bones and brains.

Beyond all that, which is a lot, if Bella and Edward continue to be a couple, as she desperately wants, she's going to have to learn a lot about protecting her man. Again, there's no guide to the health of a vampire. There's no American Vampire Health Association. No Red Cross for Vampires (though it would be amusing to have a Red Cross for them). Heaven knows that no insurance company would give a vampire dental coverage. So, if you fall in love with a vampire boy, you need guidelines about protecting him from crosses, garlic, holy water, and certainly, wooden stakes. You'll have to learn how to sew black capes, or at minimum, where to find the best buys in black capes. Unless your vampire man is more like Edward, who never wears the archetypical vampiric black cape.

We never see Edward sleeping in a coffin, but it's quite possible that, should you fall in love with your own vampire, he's going to want a deluxe coffin. Or at least, a coffin that's comfortable, and remember, his coffin will have to last for hundreds and maybe thousands of years.

And then there are the bats: you'd better get used to them, having hundreds of bats flocking around your head at a moment's notice. Not to mention wolves howling outside your window for the rest of your life. Get used to it.

These are all subjects that I was thinking about as I read the Twilight series. I kept thinking, Poor Bella, she's in love with a vampire. If Edward doesn't finally turn her into a vampire, too, she's going to have to contend with all of these strange things.

Now, if Edward does turn Bella into a vampire in the fourth book, then she'll have a host of other, far stranger things with which to contend. What really happens when you're turned into a vampire? We'll attempt to address these sorts of questions, too.

And I'm just touching on the subjects of this book. There are so many more! Such as:

If you're Bella and your man is Edward (or just fill in your name and your boyfriend's name here, and pretend that your real boyfriend is a vampire), well, then, how will you survive Christmas and Easter with him and his family? And what about Halloween? Are you really willing to give up almost all of your favorite holidays to be with this guy?

How can Dr. Cullen, Edward's adoptive father, get away with being a practicing physician when he's really a vampire? It's hard to get and keep a medical license, and the government requires tons of paperwork and validation. Dr. Cullen was born in the 1640s and certified as a physician shortly after transforming into a vampire. My guess is that it would raise a lot of suspicion in medical circles if this guy showed up at Acme Hospital in 2008, seeking a job as a doctor.

Obviously, as Twilight fans, you all know that there's more than vampires to these stories. There's also ... Jacob. He's a werewolf. In fact, his entire family consists of werewolves.

Jacob is Bella's best friend. He really helps her through some very hard times, such as when Edward leaves her for an incredibly long time. Bella professes to love Jacob, though not in the romantic way she loves Edward. Jacob, and even Edward at times, thinks that Jacob is the boy for Bella. Making matters stickier is that, in the Twilight Saga, vampires and werewolves are enemies.

All of this leads me to wonder, as Bella sometimes does, why she seems to fall for monsters instead of ordinary human boys. What's next? I wonder. Will a seventeen-year-old Frankenstein monster move to Forks and befriend her?

In real folklore, werewolves are quite different from Jacob and his family, just as in real folklore, vampires are quite different from Edward and the Cullen family. As the vampire craves human blood, so does the werewolf. Both are generally compelled to prey upon those closest to them. A werewolf bite, so goes the popular tale, turns the victim into a werewolf, though most often, werewolves bite to kill and cannibalize their prey. Pretty ugly, huh? It's hard to imagine falling in love or having best friends who are creatures who, after nightfall, attack children and young women, boys and men, and gobble them all up. But in Twilight, both vampire and werewolf are portrayed as more human than monster.

So, if you're a fan of Stephenie Meyer's books, you've come to the right place. Here, you'll find answers to all of your burning questions about vampires and Edward, werewolves and Jacob, and what drives girls like Bella to love them.

CHAPTER 2

SEXY VAMPIRES: They're Beautiful, Strong, and Immortal, So What's Not to Like?

There's an old and famous theatrical production called Fiddler on the Roof, in which girls find their husbands through the efforts of a matchmaker. This matchmaker tends to be an old woman who makes her living by convincing parents to marry off their daughters to the men she picks. I can just picture the Fiddler on the Roof matchmaker saying things like, "Listen, Charlie, the boy is wealthy and can take care of your Bella. He's handsome, strong, and intelligent, and he loves her. So what's not to like?"

Of course, Charlie is Bella Swan's father, the police chief of Forks, Washington. Bella's mother, Renée, left Charlie and Forks, and took infant Bella with her to Phoenix, Arizona, where Bella's grown up. My grandmother's name was Rena, which is very similar to Renée, and oddly enough, I had an Uncle Charlie, too. Had I grown up in my grandma Rena's house, then moved in with my uncle Charlie when I was in high school, maybe I could have met a handsome guy like Edward and befriended a family of vampires. Probably not, but the similarity in family names is kind of creepy, don't you think? Of course, my name isn't Bella or Donna, or even Belladonna, it's just plain Lois. On the other hand, when I did get married — long after high school, of course — all the males in my husband's family were named Jake, short for Jacob. I'm not kidding. There was an Earl Jake Senior, Junior, the Third, and even the Fourth, and an Uncle Jake; and all of those Jacobs were just in our immediate family. Please excuse me for a moment, while I check my neck for bite marks.

(pause)

(pause)

Okay, I'm clean. Sorry to delay this chapter to check for family vampire ties, but with so many parallels in family names to Bella's family and friends, I figured it was wise to make sure.

So we all know that Bella moves to Forks, where the high school has a total of three hundred and fifty-eight students, including her. This is a small school, no doubt about it. In my class in high school, we had approximately seven hundred kids, and in the entire high school, all grade levels, tenth through twelfth, there were about two thousands kids. Where my own children went to high school, each class had about fifty (my daughter's class) to eighty (my son's class) students, for a grand total of maybe one hundred fifty to two hundred forty kids in the entire high school. Forks High School is about the same size, slightly bigger, than the high school here where I live. Small.

And where I live is also a lot like Forks. Always overcast, gloomy, rains a lot, has many ice storms.

Given how much I seem to have in common with Bella's family and how my little village is so similar to Forks, it's beginning to feel very odd that I'm not friends with any immortal creatures.

I'd better watch my neck.

In any small town, be it Forks or where I live, the people are a lot like the ones Bella encounters. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone's grandparents grew up in town. People gossip far too much, and they hold grudges forever, often for generations. Most small towns, granted, don't have werewolves holding grudges against vampire families literally forever, but still, the creepy, gloomy, small-town atmosphere that Stephenie Meyer portrays is dead-on accurate. It's part of what makes her novels so intense, so alive, so realistic. It's part of what makes us believe that Edward could be real, and that he and Bella could actually go to school and hang out in Forks just as they do.

Bella first sees the vampire family in school. The boys are all gorgeous. As are the girls. In fact, the entire Cullen family is so exquisite that Bella cannot take her eyes off them. This is common in all vampire movies, in that the human cannot take his or her eyes off the vampires, all of whom are gorgeous.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Stephenie Meyer Twilight Companion"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Lois H. Gresh.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

chapter 1 I Beg You: Please Suck My Blood,
chapter 2 Sexy Vampires: They're Beautiful, Strong, and Immortal, So What's Not to Like?,
chapter 3 What to Expect When You Fall in Love with a Vampire,
chapter 4 Bella's Awakening: What Really Happens When You Turn into a Vampire,
chapter 5 Vampire Quiz!,
chapter 6 Good Vampires and Bad Vampires,
chapter 7 Sexy Werewolves: They're Furry, Strong, and Sensitive New Age Kinds of Guys, So What's Not to Like?,
chapter 8 What to Expect When You Fall in Love with a Werewolf,
chapter 9 Werewolf Quiz!,
chapter 10 Good Werewolves and Bad Werewolves,
chapter 11 Vampires and Werewolves: Can They Ever Be Friends?,
chapter 12 Favorite Twilight Characters and Vampires and Werewolves Throughout Time,
chapter 13 Protecting Your Vampire, Part 1: Everything You Need to Know About Fangs, Sunlight, Crosses, Garlic, and Holy Water,
chapter 14 Protecting Your Vampire, Part 2: Everything You Need to Know About Coffins, Black Capes, Bats, Wooden Stakes Through the Heart, Decapitation, and Fire,
chapter 15 Vampire Test!,
chapter 16 Living Forever: Is It All That It's Cracked Up to Be?,
chapter 17 Mental Telepathy and Seeing the Future,
chapter 18 Romance Quiz: Could Edward Be the Man for You?,
chapter 19 The Final Twilight Book: All the Answers You've Been Dying to Learn,

Editorial Reviews

Fans can't get enough of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. This carefully orchestrated companion book brings you up to date on Twilight's legends, lore, and plot wrinkles, offering tantalizing aside about all the ghoulish myths that fueled these runaway bestsellers. The Stephenie Meyer Twilight Companion also contains a biography of the author and information about all the major characters.