I wasn't too excited to read this book, but when you walk by it at Fred Meyer and it's only eight dollars you get to thinking, wouldn't it complement my collection of Twilight paraphernalia (autographed posters, action figures, board games, candy bars...) and, isn't it my professional duty to read it, and, I guess I really want it after all - and all in the two seconds it takes to snatch it off the display stand.Bree Tanner was a minor character in Eclipse who was a member of the vampire army Victoria created in her attempt to kill Bella and defeat the Cullens. Spoiler alert: she dies.
In the introduction to the novella, Stephanie Meyer writes that it was difficult to write from the perspective of a newborn, who lacks self-control and thinks of humans only as weak and tasty. And yet, when the story begins, Bree is three months old and thus the crazy newborn pain and thirst that we didn't get out of Bella in Breaking Dawn, we don't get out of Bree either.
Instead, Bree is one of the smartest of Victoria's newborn vampires, in that she keeps her head down and follows the rules. Then she meets Diego, who has been around long enough to start asking questions. Their figuring out what being a vampire means was, to me, Meyer's response to the people who abuse her mythology. In a sense, the whole story was a kind of response to criticisms, particularly that she couldn't create a character she liked and then let her be violent, suffer, or die.
I enjoyed the book and read it the night I bought it. For me, the most interesting part was the end when the Cullens make their appearance. It's been a while since I read the series, and since then my personal imaginings of what the characters look like has been completely lost to the actors who play them in the movies. I don't remember if there was a perfect red-haired man (*cough*Conan*cough*) I thought of when I first read about Edward; when I came to the description of him in Bree Tanner all I could think was, "Edward had red hair?"