It's a brand new world for Twilight's sixth chapter: the beginnings of Team Jacob.
Bella and her loser friends go to La Push for the day. Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me, since I've been itching to visit the Pacific Northwest for a few years now, but Meyer's description of the coastline isn't half bad - dare I say evocative.
The kids from Forks are soon joined by some young Quileutes from the nearby reservation. One of them is a boy named Jacob. As in, this is how Meyer introduces him: "All I caught was that one of the girls was also named Jessica, and the boy who noticed me was named Jacob." The second time she mentions him: "three teenagers from the reservation perched around the circle, including the boy named Jacob." That's the thing about Meyer's oft-maligned writing, it's not bad per se, it just doesn't sound right. There's something oddly entertaining about the writing of ESL students; they know the language well enough but their sentences verge on idiosyncratic. Meyer's work, however, simply begs for an editor.
Jacob isn't a total dip like the rest of the Forks bunch and somehow manages to let Bella's good side shine for once. She even manages to joke around with him. Is it because he has an actual personality, or is it because he has "a very pretty face"? I'd say it's 50/50.
Unfortunately, Bella ruins everything by attempting to flirt with Jacob in an attempt to pry information about the Cullens out of him. Once again she constantly reminds us that it's "a stupid plan" that is "sure-to-be-pitiful" and that Edward does it better. It's as if she wants us to hate her.
The plan works, though. Jacob is apparently a sucker for a clumsy face so he gives her some info on the down-low about not only the Cullens but the Quileutes. Not only do tribal legends claim that the Cullens are vampires, they also state that the Quileutes descended from wolves, effectively making them werewolves - and the natural enemies of vampires. Not that Jacob would ever believe that. Those are just old ghost stories, right?
In a book saturated with stupidity, I have to grudgingly admit that turning a Native American tribe into a pack of werewolves is pretty ingenious, given that American cultural history has always (possibly apocryphally) painted Native Americans as being one with nature. But really, again with the werewolves vs vampires thing? Was ripping off Underworld too enticing to pass up? Maybe I'm just not as in touch with current trends as the kids are these days but it's always seemed like a half-baked rivalry concocted just to put two mythical creatures in opposition with each other. Guess I should start writing that spec script about Frankensteins vs mummies.
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