No sex, please. I may be a vampire but this is Twilight – Sydney Morning Herald

Yet for at least a generation we have had a well-established culture of smoulderingly handsome immortal killers, and the books, comics, TV series and films keep on selling True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vampire Diaries and, of course, the Twilight series, of which Midnight Sun is the latest, a retelling of the first book, Twilight, from the point of view of the vampire, Edward Cullen, eternally 17, supernaturally handsome and dangerous.

Stephenie Meyer started writing Midnight Sun 12 years ago but held back from publishing it.Credit:

Stephenie Meyer began writing Midnight Sun 12 years ago, at the height of her Twilight series' popularity. She shelved it after the first draft was leaked and also when Fifty Shades of Grey came out as a fervid fan-fic homage to Edward. Unsatisfied with the chastity of the Twilight pair who abstain until married, E.L. James took the mystical-romance/dangerous-love concept and turned it into prosaic bossy-billionaire-bonking.

But Twilight appealed to something else, a need that seems more acute a decade later as young women are pornified, commodified and objectified more than ever. For although the series never approaches the feminism or ironic cultural literacy of Buffy, it speaks to a need for an ordinary girl to be given respect, protection and close attention from powerful, ethical males.

Indeed, Bella is the opposite of the super-strong Buffy: intensely vulnerable, physically fragile and clumsy, she is in constant need of rescue and this elicits Edward's protectiveness. Her strongest characteristic is an obstinate refusal to contemplate life without him.

His first impression of her is that she smells so appetising that he can barely restrain himself from murdering her. (Ah, young love, eh?) He manages to restrain himself and protect her from human rapists, runaway cars and other vampires who also find her aroma irresistible.

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Tortured with guilt about his urges, he tries to warn her: "There was no help for it. I was going to have to be obscenely graphic. Dancing around the facts would only confuse her, and she needed to know this. I took a deep breath. 'You know how everyone enjoys different flavors? Some people love chocolate ice-cream, others prefer strawberry?' "

Meyer describes Edward's frankness about desiring Bella's blood in highly sensual detail, conveying a sense of obsession that is thoroughly sublimated. Yet for a romance there is about as much actual sex in Midnight Sun as in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

Writing from a 17-year-old male's point of view in such a meticulous fashion, one might expect some more action in the trouser area but she stays firmly above the shoulders, for Edward's real passion is about consuming human blood. She has him comparing his cravings in terms of heroin addiction as well as food, and the language there is granularly descriptive.

The book is massively long, more than 600 pages, largely because of Meyer's need to record exhaustively this alien male being's experience of events that have already been described by a relatable female human in the first book.

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In the end we have to admit that there has always been the desire to be befriended by a predator. At its most benign there is the so-called "Lion Whisperer" Kevin Richardson, who can romp with lions, leopards and hyenas: he is accepted as part of their family and thus can take liberties with them. But then too there are those women who become infatuated with the vilest of criminals, write love letters to them and marry them in jail in the face of such things, vampires suddenly become understandable.

And the uncomfortable question then arises: is Bella's love for Edward on the spectrum of the depraved fetish to be a murderer's pet?

Vampires are a way of externalising the worst of human tendencies to destroy and lay waste. In Midnight Sun Meyer has tried to make her conscience-stricken vampires as redeemable as the humans whose imaginations create them. Fans of the series will want to read it.

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No sex, please. I may be a vampire but this is Twilight - Sydney Morning Herald