Book Review: Twilight The Graphic Novel Volume 2

Last week, I wrote a review of Twilight: The Graphic Novel Volume 1. The graphic novels are divided into two volumes. Together, both volumes tell a graphic novel version of the first book, Twilight, in the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. Since I talked about Volume 1 in a sprite post, I wanted to write a review post about Volume 2. The post I wrote reviewing Volume 1 can be read here.

Before I actually review the book, I wanted to talk about the book itself and how it look like. This is what the cover of the book looks like…

And here is the back…

Both volumes of the graphic novel have hard covers and dust jackets. Both volumes can also as one volume called “Collector’s Edition”.

If you get the volume edition of the books, the covers can be laid side by side to create this picture…

The blurb for the graphic novel on Amazon is….

Having uncovered the dark secret of her enigmatic classmate, Edward Cullen, Bella Swan embraces her feelings for him, trusting Edward to keep her safe despite the risks. When a rival clan of vampires makes its way into Forks, though, the danger to Bella has never been more real. Will she make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the people dearest to her?

The second volume of Twilight: The Graphic Novel completes the visual adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s worldwide bestselling debut novel and is a must-have for any collector’s library.

The graphic novel, like Volume 1, was adapted and illustrated by South Korean artist Young Kim.

Just like the first volume, this volume is a beautifully illustrated. The illustrations are in an Asian artistic style, but they are still well done. The characters in the novel look similar to the actors that stared in the movie, but they are a style variation of the way they look. Every time I read the graphic novels, I always felt this consistency of the way each character looks like made the story easier to follow and read. Especially if the two volumes are not read one after the other.

The story is also told really well. I enjoyed the way the story focuses on Bella’s point of view throughout the whole novel. The original novel is written from Bella’s perspective, which is important to include in the graphic novel version. The best part about the way the story is told is Bella’s perspective is very visible, but it is not completely mentioned. It is more shown and eluted to because of what Young Kim focuses on writing and illustrating. This makes it still first person, yet the reader can pick up on details that may have been missed in Bella’s version of the story. This foreshadowing of events to come makes it clear to the reader that there may have been something Bella didn’t mention not intentionally. Instead, she didn’t mention it because she didn’t think it was important to note.

I especially like the way the final battle scene near the end of the first Twilight book is told. Since graphic novels give an illustrated image via the comic side of the story, it can be easy to show very graphic images to get the story’s point across. In this novel, it is done in a way that omits any of the potential graphic fight scenes and focuses on Bella’s point of view.

Even though I really enjoy this graphic novel and praise it highly, there is one drawback to this book: It is a Volume 2 and picks up right after where Volume 1 left off. Depending on the amount of time that has passed between reading the two volumes, this could cause some confusion. I don’t know if this was intentional on Young Kim’s part (I doubt it) or if it is the publisher’s choice. Still, since Volume 2 doesn’t review what happened in Volume 1, it makes it almost essential to own both Volumes of the graphic novel in order for the whole story to make sense.

Despite this lack of consideration about how to start Volume 2, I still highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a graphic novel based off a book. Sadly, I still believe you need Volume 1 in order to make complete sense of Volume 2 and will need it in order to enjoy the graphic novel’s interpretation of Twilight properly. Volume 1 can be read cover to cover without need to review the book. Volume 2 cannot. This makes me sad because it is still a great graphic novel. The story’s pacing is really nice, it doesn’t linger on the violence in the novel, and it is a really great retelling of Twilight. It’s just a shame it’s not as enjoyable without reading Volume 1 first!

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!