Review: Luminosity

Luminosity by Alicorn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In this retelling of the Twilight story, Bella is decidedly not an idiot. The resulting story is nothing short of amazing. This is fanfiction at its best.

I first read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight because I had a teenage sister at the time, and wanted to read what she was so excited about. It was a wonderful tale and I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite its glorification of anti-feminism. Like Rand's Atlas Shrugged or Card's Ender's Game, I am well aware that a book can be good fiction even when it espouses philosophical ideas that I do not share. Yet one thing always stuck out as being particularly annoying: the sheer idiocy of Bella Swan.

That's where Luminosity truly shines. This retelling of the story replaces that old Bella with someone just as flawed and just as susceptible to teenage whims -- but highly rational instead of blindingly dumb. Everything else is the same as the original, but Bella's actions start to have major consequences on the world around here, and by the third or fourth chapter, the reader will be completely hooked by the new events of Alicorn's universe.

If you are into hard fantasy and have read the Twilight story in its entirety, then this book is definitely for you. Just be sure to read Meyer's canonical series first; once you read Alicorn's version, you'll never be able to go back to the original.

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