Just in time for the theatrical release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Bluewater brings you FEMALE FORCE: Stephenie Meyer! Named USA Today's Author of the Year in 2008, the celebrity author is responsible for ushering in a new vampire-centric fan base. From her beginnings in Connecticut and Utah, to her fame and fortune as today's hottest author, witness her story being told by the most famous vampire of them all!
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About the Author
Writing is so much more than a creative outlet for me...if I go a day without writing I feel off-beat. That is to say, I feel off-track, like there's something essential that I've missed for that day.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Forceless "Female",
This review is from: Female Force Bestsellers: Stephenie Meyer (Paperback)
Let's be honest here: Stephenie Meyer has had a pretty boring life. She basically got married, had kids, and wrote a fantasy series about sparkly vampires.
So needless to say -- with no scandals, divorces, addictions, adventures or the like -- "Female Force Bestsellers: Stephenie Meyer" is a pretty boring experience. But it's not just boring. It's surreally bad and poorly done, with ghastly art, a breathlessly dramatic style and a horrendously contrived framing device wrapped around a thoroughly unexciting life story. According to the author Ryan Burton, Meyer was an oh-so-special and down-to-earth girl ("It seemed as though every OTHER girl was... DIFFERENT"), and of course way smarter than her peers (both in high school and college, she alone is raising her hand). She went to Brigham Young University in Utah, and a spider got eaten by a vampire. Whoops, that was the framing narrative, so forget about that. Anyway, she met some guy she had once shared a sandbox with, and they got married in less than a year. Three kids later, Stephenie had a dream about spying on a thuggish-looking vampire trying to make out with some blonde chick in a field (and she frankly looks like a dream voyeur spying on teenagers). She constructed a story around that dream, and ended up selling it -- and of course, it became a megahit and was adapted into a movie, took the world by storm, blah blah blah. Because the unadorned life story of Meyer would take up about five pages, Burton frames it: A shark-mouthed Dracula living in a cliche Transylvanian castle (complete with graveyard and howling wolf), who is apparently telling Meyer's life story to a gang of grunting naked nosferatu. Not only is this hilariously cheesy, but it provides the unintentional message that Meyer is carrying out the will of evil monsters. The biography oozes along at a glacial pace, with two whole pages devoted to shopping the manuscript around. The most mundane facts are written in a breathlessly melodramatic style ("Stephenie was 21 when she married Christian... also known as PANCHO") with lots of details that only her most fanatical fans would care about (who cares where the name "Stephenie" came from?). There's even a transparent attempt to equate Meyer with her self-insert Bella Swan (oh, how different and smart she is!). And the artwork is simply ghastly -- Meyers has an evil grin, sinister eyebrows, freakishly tiny hands, and she looks EXACTLY the same from the age of four onward. Her husband's head looks like a mediocre Picasso work, and the Twilight fans appear to be a bunch of large-breasted grannies, mad-eyed adolescents and... coffee shop singers? And as the final hilarious conceit, it's sprinkled with topographic maps, and a bizarre page in which UTAH appears in the palm of Meyer's hand. In short, the art makes the entire comic seem like a Stephenie Meyers acid trip. The funniest part is that they don't even get Meyer's characters right -- both Bella and Edward are washed-out blondes with wormlike lips, and Edward has spiky little fangs. Wha? There's also a very halfhearted little add-on about the history of Forks, Washington... but frankly it's dead boring. Protections for endangered salmon? A steam engine? A fire in 1951? Not exactly thrilling, and it's all rendered in old photographs with bad photoshopping. "Female Force Bestellers: Stephenie Meyer" reads like a bad drug trip, with spider-chomping vampires, horrendous art and lots of surreal extras. Good for a laugh, but nothing else.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Quite disappointing.,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Female Force Bestsellers: Stephenie Meyer (Paperback)
Being a fan of both Twilight and graphic novels, I had high hopes for this one; but after reading it, I'm quite disappointed (in fact, I just sold it online; and cancelled the order I'd made for the one about J.K. Rowling).
Reasons? First of all, I thought the price was too high for what you got; so I started with a feeling of being cheated. Next, I thought the "story" with the Lugosi-like vampire presenting Meyer's life cheapened the presentation, and wasn't as funny as the authors obviously thought it was! Twilight, and Meyer, deserved better. The only bit I did enjoy was the section with photos of Forks; but that probably wasn't enough to make the book worthwhile. All in all, only one for Twilight completists, probably.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not Quite Ready for Prime Time: Good Idea, Mixed Results,
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This review is from: Female Force Bestsellers: Stephenie Meyer (Paperback)
Readers should know that there are several editions of this comic book available. The most interesting, by far, is the edition with the additional pages focusing on Forks, Wa., the setting for Meyer's Twilight series.
The idea itself is intriguing, but the authors and artists fell short of the mark. Though the production values -- the full color printing, binding, and cover stock -- are commendable, the contents don't quite measure up. This edition is comprised of two sections: the bio on Meyer, and "The History of Forks." Of the two, "The History of Forks" is by far more interesting, though severely truncated. (It could, and should, be longer.) 1. Editorial: There are major misspellings. On the back cover, we get "Stephanie" instead of "Stephenie." Inside, we get "Christian" instead of "Christiaan." (We also get "Chirstian" instead of "Christiaan.") The art for the bio section, by Dave MacNeil, is stiff and lacks animation. In some cases, the art is simply awkwardly drawn--more suitable for computer modeling than art in a comic or in a book. The pictures of Stephenie varied throughout, with the result that in some cases, it was difficult to determine where she was: notably, in a classroom scene, she's the figure with a "sun" design on her shirt--she is, alas, unrecognizable. The editing and writing, however, leave much to be desired. As is often the case with bios on writers, the most interesting part of their lives STARTS when their first book is accepted for publication. Before that, life is often pedestrian. Still, what you should glean from Meyer's pre-Twilight days is that she is a Mormon, which is significant: It explains her religious worldview and, to a large extent, colors key elements on the Twilight story. Also, there's no mention that, when she was growing up, Meyer's father read popular fiction to her, but her mother favored literature--classic romantic fiction, notably Jane Austen's books. Moreover, there's no substantiative explanation of what Meyer took from her college days: a deep appreciation of literature, which resulted in Twilight, a fusion of a classical romance story and pop culture (werewolves and vampires). The book begins with a hoary device -- having a traditional vampire narrative the story, a la Uncle Creepy, Cousin Eerie, Vampirella, or the narrators from the EC comic line of yesterday -- and it should have been jettisoned: There's not enough room in a 32-page comic book to waste pages with such a device. (The art by Dave, here, is better than in the rest of the story. Clearly, he is on firmer ground when not hamstrung by illustrating contemporary people.) In addition to the wasted pages upfront on this creaky device, there's three pages later in which we see the vampire eat a spider: again, irrelevant to the story at hand--Stephenie Meyer. Meyer fans, well acquainted with the oft-told story of how she came on the idea for Twilight, will likely wince when they see the art for the dream sequence. Meyer got the idea for Twilight in a dream, a meadow scene between a vampire boy and a human girl. Then, and later in the series, she never envisioned the vampire boy with fangs. In this comic bio, however, the vampire boy sports traditional fangs--the kind of disruptive error that hardcore Meyer fans will notice and, to sure, roll their eyes. Moreover, there is absolutely nothing about the movies, which kicked her career to a higher level: the first movie, which was low budget from a little-known studio, changed the game for everyone: It firmly cemented Meyer's visibility in pop culture. (The media coverage of NEW MOON built on that success, as well. Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't know this woman's name?) The big part of Meyer's success is the Twilight phenomenon, which gets very short shrift in this book: 3 pages. No mention is made of how Meyer assiduously worked the Internet to her great advantage, by charming webmasters and webmistresses, participating on message boards, setting up her own website, giving out her personal e-mail. Meyer, in short, kick-started things online in an attempt to communicate her great enthusiasm for her series--a genuine, unaffected effort on her part that paid off handsomely: Fans, used to standoffish celebrities and authors, were jazzed that here was an accessible author, someone to whom they could relate. Granted, in 32 pages, there's only so much ground that can be covered, but had the pages devoted to the vampire as narrator been dumped, and the writing and editing been tighter, the fascinating story of Meyer's success could have been told, even in this economical fashion. *** Happily, the short history of Forks, by Darren Davis (text) and Matt Bellisle (art), is much better in every way. The snapshots of Forks certainly have their place in a book like this, and I'm happy to say, this is, for me, the highlight of the book. While the bio proper of Meyer comes off as patronizing -- a Dracula-like figure? Please give me a break! -- the history of Forks strikes me as being respectful and, insofar as I can tell, accurate. Incorporating a sepia-like coloring and antiqued look, this short section is worth your time and attention. Bottom line: If you want a bio, wait until a full-length bio comes out: text, not art, best serves the telling of a biography, anyway. For hardcore Meyer fans, this is more a curiosity and a collectible more than it's a worthwhile addition to your bookshelf. -- George Beahm, author/photographer of TWILIGHT TOURS: AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO THE REAL FORKS, and BEDAZZLED: A BOOK ABOUT STEPHENIE MEYER AND THE TWILIGHT PHENOMENON.
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