Yes, I bought this book. I am aware that I could have read it online for free, just days after its initial release. I know that it is a slim volume and one that I will not, in all probability, read again for a long, long time. I also know that for all its vaunted “charity” status, only $1 of its cover price will actually go to the Red Cross (oh, the synergy!), so it’s not like I’m making some kind of grand philanthropic gesture when laying down my hard-earned. And I read plenty of other things in non-book form, whether they be Baen WebScriptions, Kindle downloads, or those short stories Tor keeps sending me in their awesome newsletters (subscribe here), so I’m clearly not one of those bibliophiles absolutely averse to a little paper-free perusal from time to time.

So why did I feel the need to buy this book? Damned if I can figure that one out. But y’know what? I’m glad that I did.

‘Cause it’s pretty.

It’s sleek and it’s shiny and it has a curvaceous hourglass on the cover, evocatively dripping wine-red blood that has almost run out. Even the title font is attractive; that Twilighty serif that is at once girly and kind of menacing. But inside this elegant little tome is one of the most surprisingly ugly vampire stories I have read in quite some time, and it is that contrast that makes the book so instantly appealing. These are not your sparkly, soul-bonded, People are Friends, Not Food vampires in which Stephenie Meyer has previously specialized. They’re not even the aristocratic and merciless vampire elite she created to reign over them all, nor even the vindictive and cunning vampire enemies out for vengeance. These vampires are just all about the blood. The story drips with it. Reeks of it. And yet Meyer somehow manages to make it all very romantic, and almost kind of normal.

A marvel, that woman.

The action takes place within the ranks of the army of newborn vampires Bella’s bête noir, Victoria, created in order to overcome the Cullens and kill their favorite human dead. Victoria, you may recall, was pretty cross about the death of her creepy obsessive compulsive mate James, a “tracker” who got fixated on Bella and ended his unlife burning up inside a ballet studio at the end of Twilight. (A shameful fate, to be sure.) By the third book in the series, Eclipse, Victoria’s need for revenge has clearly sent her over the edge into outright madness; she’s prepared to risk the wrath of the vampire world’s sinister enforcers, the terrifying Volturi, just to kill one little human girl.

The illicit army she creates to do the job is more than twenty strong, mostly thuggish youths taken from the streets, and they are shocking and repugnant in their naked thirst. And when reading of their horrors so casually inflicted, so casually recounted (within the first few pages, upwards of a dozen people are dead, several of whom have been efficiently disposed of under rocks in the ocean, never to be discovered or mourned), it is a slightly off-putting yet utterly compelling experience.

Before long, a sympathy for their plight begins to emerge in the reader (at least, in this reader), specifically toward our narrator, Bree Tanner. Yes, she of the short second life, Bree was a teenage runaway who accepted a handout from the wrong person at the wrong time and thence became one of Victoria’s unwitting foot soldiers. While she thinks nothing of killing random “dregs” in order to slake her ravenous hunger for blood, Bree is also a more contemplative soul than many of her stablemates. She begins to think things through, begins to question her allegiance to the newborns’ handler, the charismatic Riley, and begins to develop feelings for fellow vampire and free-thinker, Diego, and thence a friendship with one of Meyer’s more inscrutable characters, a stalwart young vamp nicknamed Freaky Fred. In the course of the short novel in which her short story unfolds, Bree becomes a real person and not a mere plot contrivance; she is a tragic heroine, a flawed though withal worthwhile protagonist, and one whose inevitable, already accomplished demise soon becomes a consummation most devoutly not to be wish’d.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is, at only 178 well-spaced pages, a very fast read. It’s kind of prequel-y, since you know what is coming to Bree (even if you haven’t read -- or don’t recall her from -- Eclipse, the title is hardly cryptic), and it’s kind of companion-y (like, say, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow, or Meyer’s own half-completed Midnight Sun), and it’s also a little bit fanfiction-y (in which latching on to an incidental character and creating a whole backstory is completely normal). But more than all of those, it is a chance for Meyer to free herself from the shackles of too-wonderful, ever-adored, perpetually-beset Bella Swan. Even when speaking in the voice of Edward (in the aforementioned Midnight Sun), or werewolf Jacob (in Breaking Dawn), Bella is still the absolute epicenter of their universe; in the Twilight Series, the world really does revolve around that teenage girl--which is probably one reason it’s so popular with teenage girls. In Bree Tanner’s world, however, it is Bella who is the incidental character with no backstory (although we do spend a lot of time on how great her blood smells--okay, we get it!), and as a result, the universe the two young women inhabit is both expanded and made more remarkable.

Seeing the Cullens from another perspective than Bella’s is oddly pleasing, as well, especially Bree’s constant reference to Edward as “the redhead.” Bella only ever describes his hair as “bronze” (which, given how much time she spends rhapsodizing over his skin, eyes and even the scent of his breath, is kind of odd, now that I think about it), so I guess I never pictured Edward as a redhead. And now I’m suddenly envisioning him as less Robert Pattinson and more Some Kind of Wonderful-era Eric Stoltz. And, man, Jasper is mean to poor, put-upon Bree. (Which only serves to make him even more intriguing.)

Bottom line? This “novella” (I don’t think that word means what Stephenie Meyer thinks it means) is worth reading. Not only is it a definite must for any Twilight Series fan, but it is also Exhibit A against all those naysayers who object to Meyer’s much-maligned diamond-studded vampires: see, she can do crazy evil bloodthirsty badass vamps (even if they do sparkle), and even do them well.

And now I’d better stop writing, else this review will end up longer than the book itself.

  -- Rachel Hyland

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