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| The Twilight Saga: Slipcased | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Category: Book
List Price: $83.00
Buy New: $45.65
You Save: $37.35 (45%)
New (23) Used (4) from $45.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 5
Format: Box Set
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 2560
Shipping Weight (lbs): 7.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 8.4 x 6.7
ISBN: 0316031844
EAN: 9780316031844
ASIN: 0316031844
Publication Date: October 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
This stunning set, complete with all four hardcover books as well as four collectible prints, makes the perfect gift for fans of the bestselling vampire love story.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 The Complete Hardcover Twilight Saga October 17, 2008
76 out of 82 found this review helpful
This set includes all the books from the Twilight Saga, which includes; Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and lastly Breaking Dawn. The books themselves are exactly likes the ones you find at any bookstore, in hardcover. The case it comes in has all the book covers displayed on each side minus the names of each book.
What is included that you couldn't normally get by buying each one individually elsewhere are 4 5x7-ish cards that have the cover picture on one side, then quotes from the corresponding book written on the other. for example: one 5x7 has a picture of the twilight cover, hands holding a red apple, then the other side it says, "About three things i was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him--and i didn't know how dominant that part of him might be--that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him." (I included some pictures so you can get a better idea of what they are)
I would recommend this set to those who do not already own the twilight collection(like me) and would like to own all the books(i borrowed them all from a friend). Or of course obsessed twilight fans. There's nothing truly remarkable about the set so i wouldn't go buying this if you already own all the books.
I am very happy with my purchase nonetheless. This saga is one of my favorites.
 Got dem Sparkly Vampire blues... October 29, 2008
16 out of 27 found this review helpful
Mix together random ingredients of Anne Rice and Anita Blake, add a teaspoon of overblown writing, and finish with a vacuously attractive heroine who serves as the readers' stand-in.
This is the winning formula for Stephenie Meyers' bestselling "Twilight Saga," four books chronicling the overwrought romance of a century-old vampire and a completely ordinary teen girl. It's the stuff of a thousand teenage girls' fan-fiction fantasies, and Meyer's purple prose and highly melodramatic storylines add to the feeling that that's just what she's writing.
"Twilight" introduces us to Bella Swan. She hates everything about her new hometown of Forks, until she bumps into the gorgeous Edward Cullen. Edward is not only hot and rich, but he has the whole bad-boy factor -- he keeps warning her that he'll hurt her, so she should stay away. Then when a car almost mows Bella down, Edward leaps in to save her -- and reveals his secret.
Yup, he's a bona fide vampire with sparkly skin and marble flesh. Oh, and he's a "vegetarian" who abstains from human blood, and belongs to a close-knit vampire "family." How cute and cozy.
But their budding relationship is thrown into turmoil when an evil vampire decides to hunt Bella, and draws her into a dangerous trap. Then things get even worse when Edward and his family depart Forks. So Bella starts doing dangerous sports that allow her to hear Edward's voice, when she isn't hanging out with hunky werewolf Jacob. But a mistaken vision leads Edward to believe Bella is dead -- and soon HE might be if Bella doesn't stop him.
Of course -- as they always are in urban fantasy books -- the werewolf and vampire vie for Bella's attentions, even as an old enemy attacks the vampires of Forks. But even the long-awaited marriage of Edward and Bella doesn't make things peaceful at last -- on their Brazilian honeymoon, they conceive a superpowerful, blood-drinking vampire baby. And of course, this brings the wrath of another angry vampire group down on them....
"The Twilight Saga" is a teenager's dream of vampire romance -- it has plenty of hot supernaturals, magic powers, a swooning damsel in distress, evil vampire clans, lots of melodrama, and frequent references to Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Shakespeare. It's the ultimate example of a guilty pleasure read, but the pleasure decreases as the book goes on.
The storyline is simple, but what starts as a teen romance is stretched out over two more books of tedium and a truly surreal concluding volume. Stephanie Meyer tries to keep it suspenseful by slapping in a series of brief vampire conflicts, as well as an utterly pointless love triangle. But this can't disguise the fact that the entire story revolves around tiresome angst -- everyone mopes, whines, moans, and occasionally gets suicidal.
The writing doesn't help either -- all four books are smothered in a thick layer of ornate, swooning purple prose. It's tolerable when Edward isn't on the scene, but things fall apart whenever he's onstage. Every other sentence seems to be a paeon to to how gorgeous the "incandescent" and "scintillating" Edward is. It gets a bit nauseating.
And Meyers adds some distractingly bizarre stuff -- sparkling vampires who inexplicably go to high school, werewolves falling in love with babies, and a gruesome birth scene involving vampire teeth.
And alas, no strong heroines here -- Bella is a wimpy, clingy, superhumanly klutzy girl who is nevertheless attractive to all males. Her main goal in life is to cling limpetlike to Edward for all eternity, because apparently she does whatever the Big Strong Men say. Sadly she's even more insufferable -- and Mary Sueish -- after she does become a vampire.
Edward is much the same -- he exists to be obsessively in love with Bella (to the point of stalking her in her home) and being "incandescently" sexy. That's it. Most of the others are pigeonholes as "the quiet good-natured cop," "the magic baby" or "the nasty blondes," although there are a few amusing characters like the fey, twee vampire Alice.
"The Twilight Saga" takes the basic conventions of the popular urban fantasy genre and soaks them in lethal levels of teenage angst. This quartet has no life -- it's clearly undead.
One Star is WAY Too Much to give for this series. November 6, 2008
16 out of 30 found this review helpful
To put it simply, the books were terrible. Not only did they have purple prose on every page, but the lack of general writing quality was horrifying, and Meyer appeared to have wanted to set feminism back about 100 years in the process. 'Twilight' introduces the main heroine, Bella Swan ('beautiful swan') who is nothing more than a walking doormat. She could hardly take a step without needing a boy to come and rescue her, which (as a girl) I find extremely degrading.
Bella gives up all her ambitions, goals and dreams (which consists only of reading 'Wuthering Heights' over and over again, but nevertheless...) to marry Edward, abandoning her friends and family without a second thought. Oh, how lovely...
Not one of the characters were developed well in the least. Meyer used Bella's cliched flaws to try to make her endearing, and failed miserably. Bella is a seemingly unattractive, plain, clumsy, immature, self-concious girl, yet every person with a 'y' chromosome feels the need to throw themselves at her. Please, spare me.
Bella and Edward's 'love' is never explained. The only thing we know is that she thinks he's hot and he thinks she smells good. Not exactly a captivating romance.
The entire series revolves around 'Edward is beautiful and prefect and gorgeous', 'I hate Forks', 'Edward is beautiful and perfect and gorgeous', 'How dare these people actually be nice to me, they must be out to get me, that's the only explaination', 'I hate Forks', 'Edward is beautiful and perfect and gorgeous'. Gets a little straining after a while.
The dialogue isn't in keeping with the targeted age group. At one point (eighteen-year-old) Bella actually states "Holy crow!" Come on, I'm a thirteen year old and I don't even say things like that.
There are so many plot holes it's ridiculous. I mean, her father is the Chief of Police and he doesn't know that a strange man is sneaking into his daughter's room at night and sleeping over? And he can't tell when his own child is lying through her teeth at him? Call me crazy, but I find that really hard to believe.
Bella is one of the most co-dependant characters I've ever come across, and I've come across a lot of characters. At first, she was okay, not ideal, but okay. But after she met Edward, she became completely dependent on the Cullens, drooling over them and hanging on their every word. If Edward didn't come to school one day, was she seriously going to die? I think not.
And Edward! Contrary to popular belief, he's not 'every girl's dream'; *he-hem* I'm a girl, thank you very much and Edward is about the worst boyfriend I could ever imagine (with the possible exception of George Bush) Ugh, and I thought I was going to hurl at all the corny one-liners he was dishing out. 'Before you my life was like a moonless night, but you brighten up my world with your beauty' (or something to that effect) Yes, okay, you like her, we get the point, jeeze! And through the entire book, he was practically groping her. Every other sentence was '... and he leaned in to brush his marble lips once more to my [insert body part here] I'm glad I'm not a gullible person, because this is teaching teenage girls that groping is okay, it shows that the guy loves you! Not a great message to be putting out there- even though half the fangirls proclaiming their undying love to him would've- had he been real -put a restraining order out on him two day into the 'relatinoship'.
And the name Renesmee Carlie Cullen? Seriously? If Meyer wanted to encorperate Renee, Esme, Carlisle and Charlie into the 'child's' name, why couldn't she have used Charlotte (nickname: Charlie/Carlie) Esme Renee Cullen? At least that's realistic and it avoids the whole 'Loch Ness Monster' fiasco (which a responsible writer would have taken into account).
Meyer frequently changed the POV of her characters; at one point Bella stated that her 'cheeks were as red as tomatoes'. Not only is this one of the most cliched similes a writer can use (tomatoes are red? Wow, I never would have known *rolls eyes*), it begs the question, how could Bella have known what color her cheeks were? They could have been blue with green polka-dots for all she knew, she wasn't standing in front of a mirror.
I'm completely baffled that a book this mediocre made it on the New York Times Best-Seller List. It's a huge kick in the stomach for all us writers who want to add something meaningful to the literary world, and not include a 'hawt' guy for eleven year old girls to drool over.
A great collection! October 19, 2008
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
I bought this to have an untouched set of the books, as my original set has been a bit abused from loaning them out and my own obsessive reading! The box is gorgeous [and sturdy!] with a cover picture of the books on the sides.
The four lithographs are approximately 4 x 11. Each one is the cover of the book [without any of the words]. The back of each has the blurb from the book it corresponds with, in the Twilight font. They are a nice little addition to the set.
All in all, if you were to buy the hardback versions separately, this boxed set is only a little more and you get the lithos with it.
Much as Expected November 17, 2008
12 out of 25 found this review helpful
I had heard so much about this series, and since it was being made into a film, I decided to see what the fuss was all about. I found it much as I expected it to be, sub-par. The writing was stiff and repetitive. The characters were so shallow I couldn't even SEE them. I mean, Bella's only characteristic, the only thing that sets her apart from everyone else in the books was that she was clumsy. That's it. The love story between Bella and Edward is so sudden, so baseless that it is never fully believable. Moreover, every book in the series followed the same formula: boring, mundane minutiae for 90% of the book and then some horribly contrived "action" sequence toward the end. I mean, vampire wars in the open? This series stretches the limits of believability until the entire foundation of the book crumbles, leaving not a rich, complete story one can see and feel but a book that one can read. For those who loved it, and I've heard some raving reviews, good for you. All I can say is that there are obviously ALOT of people out there that saw something that I just couldn't in this series.
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