New Moon Chapter One: Bella is old. OLD!!

New Moon begins!

Bella is pretty sure she's dreaming, mainly because she can see her dead grandmother. She smiles at grandma, and grandma smiles back. Edward calls Bella's name and approaches in the sunlight, which concerns Bella, because dead grandma doesn't know she's dating a sparklepire. But something is wrong with this dream...grandma seems to be mirroring everything Bella does. And then Bella notices the mirror frame around grandma, and realizes that it's not grandma at all: it's OLD BELLA!

Bella wakes up. It's her birthday, and she's now 18, which makes her OLD...er than the age Edward got turned into a vampire at, which was 17. You see, all through the summer they enjoyed together, Bella has been fretting -- it's her best skill -- about what will happen as she ages and Edward does not. Will he stop loving her and leave her for a younger, less clumsy love interest? Wouldn't it be better to be a vampire and love him forever, even if it completely ruined her life and made her dependent on animal blood? What's so great about being mortal and human anyway?

As Bella heads off for school, it becomes clear that this is going to be one of those "let's recap everything that's happened so far" first chapters, the kind long book series' often resort to (Harry Potter was a sterling example of this, although after the 4th book, Rowling stopped using them because they had become extremely unwieldy). There are vampires! They are perfect! They go to high school! Bella loves Edward! Bella is clumsy! Edward loves Bella! Edward is perfect!

Let's focus on new stuff. Despite Bella's objections, Edward and Alice insist on her coming over to their house after school for a birthday celebration. The other Cullen kids were pretending to be a year older, and have graduated from high school yet again, leaving Edward and Alice as the only two remaining high school vampires. Alice and Bella appear to have become pretty close, which you really can't blame Bella for; as previously documented, Alice is pretty awesome.

A quick moment of repeating things: Edward is godlike. Mike Newton has become more attractive over the summer, and has tried to emulate Edward's look, but Bella is quick to point out that this is impossible, because he is NOT EDWARD. Imitators need not apply.

Back to new plot. Bella has a job, because she doesn't have much money and could use a little extra spending cash for the rare moments when she's not busy swooning. Contrasting this is the great wealth of the Cullens. It was certainly implied that they were well off in the first book, but now it's made rather explicit: they use Alice to crush the stock market, making them super wealthy. This makes Bella uncomfortable, because she already feels inadequate next to the god-pire that is Edward, so she won't let him pay for college (or anything else).

Edward and Bella watch Romeo and Juliet at her place before going to the party. Edward points out how difficult it is for vampires to kill themselves; he considered trying it if Bella had died in the events of Twilight, and came to the conclusion that the only way to do it would be to head to Italy and try to provoke the Volturi.

Who, you ask? Bella does too, because this was a not-so-subtle way of introducing them into the Twilight mythology! It seems they're the closest thing around to vampire royalty, and pissing them off is never a good idea. I'm sure that none of this very subtle exposition will be important to the plot of New Moon. At all. There's no way that I could already predict that Edward will head to Italy to piss off these Volturi by the end of the novel, so let's not even mention it.

Back to what's happening right now though, it seems that Charlie (Bella's dad) also loves Alice. I mean, who wouldn't? But in his case, it's mostly because Alice helped her shower when she was recuperating, something that would have been painfully awkward had Charlie had to do it himself. I kind of like Charlie too -- he doesn't really do anything, but he's a really laid back guy who likes the Mariners and fishing. It's a nice contrast to the rest of the absolutely ridiculous characters that populate the Twilightverse.

Edward and Bella eventually make their way to the party. Edward really wanted to give Bella an Audi for her birthday, but she wants to lose her vampginity instead. Edward really isn't really to take her mortality from her quite yet, so that's off the table...but it doesn't mean Bella won't whine about it. A lot.

The party is a huge success, with every available Cullen -- including Rosalie, who hates Bella for no good reason -- showing up. Bella's first gift is a brand new stereo for her car. Bella's second gift is the paper cut she gets when she tries to open her next present. Bella's third gift is a huge leaping bear hug from Jasper, who really, really wants to make that boo-boo all better by sucking all of her blood and killing her.

This last gift doesn't go over very well with Edward, who pushes Bella out of the way of Jasper's attack, breaking some glass that cuts Bella's arm rather deeply. This is rarely a good thing when in a room with seven vampires, and unfortunately for Bella, this is not one of the exceptions to that rule.

At least if they eat her, she'll stop whining about getting old.