New teen fantasy series

While I’ve been in mourning about Harry’s imminent departure, the buzz around Bella has been growing. There have been those who say that she is, horrors, better than he! Now, for me, no one, just no one, can come close to Harry P, but I was intrigued enough to give the new girl on fantasy block a whirl.

So off I went and got all four books starring troubled teen (are there any other kinds?) Bella aka Isabella Swan, authored by Phoenix-based Stephanie Meyer, who’s rapidly being hailed as the second J K Rowling.

Twilight, the first of the series, has Bella moving from hip Phoenix to hickville Forks, to be with her father. She joins the local high school and meets Edward Cullen — he of the porcelain skin, can’t-forget-it voice, and mysterious eyes. Young Bella is irresistibly drawn, but he remains a mystery: she is the only one who doesn’t know that the dishy Ed and the rest of his family are actually Cold Ones (vampires). Oooh.

Edward’s not immune to our young heroine’s charms. His heart is in the right place, but it’s a vampire’s. So he’s smitten, all right, but it’s not her perfume that’s tormenting him, it’s the scent of her blood.

What next?

Oh no, I’m not telling you that.

There’s this, though: the Mormon housewife-turned-author’s last book shoved Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows off the best-seller list in the US. She’s finally landed on the best-seller lists in India, too. And yikes, Warner Bros has put off releasing the next Harry film to summer 2009, and is opening Twilight this November. Has Potter, shudder, been put to pasture?

See, Bella’s good, but Harry’s the best. So she can live on my bookshelves, in second place! And while I’m at it, I’m going to go through the series — after Twilight, there’s New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.

One down, three to go.

The Twilight Series, by Stephanie Meyer. Published by Atom. Price, Rs 350 each. At bookstores nationwide.