The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: A Novella

If you're anything like me, you have forgotten who the heck Bree Tanner was, and needed a quick reminder when you heard about "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner." The novella is a spin-off from "Eclipse," the third book in the "Twilight" quartet by Stephenie Meyer. Bree was one of many street kids who were turned into vampires by Victoria's puppet, Riley; Bree herself appeared for not two seconds near the end of "Eclipse," and was then killed by the Volturi.

I'll go with that information first: Bree is absolutely the most random character to write a spin-off book about. To be sure, it's intriguing to think about the lives of Riley and Victoria's newborns. Unfortunately, Meyer only devotes a few scant sentences to Bree's backstory, revealing only that Bree ran away from home after her father began beating her, and was close to starvation when Riley found her. This is rather disappointing, since Bree's intrigue mainly stems from the fact that she was a normal person, not too long ago.

To make matters worse, Bree is not a terribly interesting character in herself, and since the purpose of the story was to explore Bree Tanner, this essentially makes the novella itself a failure. What's new or interesting about Bree? She has a somewhat-angsty backstory, she's a vampire, she's kind of street-smart, and she stays out of everyone's way. Even reading from her perspective, I didn't feel like there was a whole lot going on in that head of hers. Meyer does not even touch on the prospect of an altogether cruel person forcing teenagers into a bloodthirsty immortality, which would have been a chilling theme to explore.

The plot of this novella is, in fact, a step down from Meyer's novels. Most of it consists of flavorless revelations (since we, the readers, already knew about them), rambling conversations, short fights, and painfully forced street-kid dialogue. There is also a relatively un-engaging new character, Diego, a quiet, intelligent vampire who figures out much of Riley's manipulation; he and Bree become good friends over the span of a few hours, which does make sense, as they basically had to in order to survive. Diego might have been a decent and sympathetic character, but unfortunately, Meyer felt the need to rush in a pointless love story that is barely explored, which only makes the characters' interactions seem forced and unrealistic. The remaining percentage of the book (not taken up by the above) consists of Bree and Diego wandering around eavesdropping.

While there are a few decent scenes in the book, such as where Diego and Bree discover that they do not burn in sunlight, there is not much to the novella itself. There's a good idea in there somewhere, but at the end of the novella, we don't know much more about Bree than we did in "Eclipse," and the final 30 or 40 pages of the book can basically be skipped over, as they consist of some boring vampire training and the awkward tie-in to the end of "Eclipse." So what exactly made this novel necessary? It feels like than advertising for the up-and-coming film adaptation of "Eclipse." For such a short book, it seems to drag on endlessly once you get to around 100 pages.

Essentially, "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner" was an idea that could have been interesting, but it feels dragged-out and rushed, and would have benefited from some careful thought to its characters and plot.