Sparkly vampires. A teenaged heroine, of the everyday variety. Epic love. Werewolves. The rainiest town in the USA. High school. Sparkly vampires.

No, really. Let me repeat that bit: sparkly vampires. Who play baseball. And go to high school.

That’s right. The latest literary phenomenon in the teenage world (it’s not often you hear the words literary phenomenon and the teenage world in close association) is a saga of books about the epic love between Bella Swan, aka most ordinary girl in the known universe, and Edward Cullen, aka sparkliest vampire in the world.

The saga begins with Twilight, continues in New Moon and Eclipse, and will conclude in Breaking Dawn, which is set to be released on August 29. A movie based on Twilight is due for release at the end of this year.

Twilight does many things badly. Only the kindliest soul could say it’s beautifully written, because it’s not: adverbs cling to glares and frowns all over the place; no one ever just says anything; most of the plot only occurs in the final third of the book. Bella as a heroine is debatable: she takes passivity and danger magnetism to absurd levels. Edward is a controlling, borderline abusive, 108 year old vampire.

I say all this as a fan, because I totally, totally am.

Despite all that Twilight does poorly, it does some things damned well. It’s full of the kind of melodramatic emotion that swirls around in most teenage girls’ heads. A love story between a not-terribly-pretty-or-extraordinary-teenage-girl and an older, supernaturally beautiful, supernaturally powerful man in a 17 year old boy’s body, hits a lot of buttons. It’s atmospheric storytelling, and it works. That part is not up for debate. Like it or loathe it, there’s something about Twilight that clicks the obsessive button in an awful lot of brains.

An interesting twist is that Twilight is written by Stephenie Meyer, a Mormon mom from America. She based the story on a dream she had, and that’s precisely what it reads like: a hazy, early morning dream.

Chances are, your female teenaged acquaintances are obsessed with it, which, considering this is a book we’re talking about, is a feat in itself. Even I, most bookish of misses, was a bit slack in the reading department at 16.

IMO, what’s so fantastic about Twilight is that, like Harry Potter, it inspires people to create. Whether it’s by writing their own story continuations and deviations in fanfiction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanfiction), or by creating music based on the series (http://www.myspace.com/thebellacullenproject), or videoing themselves and their friends acting out popular scenes or parodying the characters (http://youtube.com/watch?v=IxLHzx74lvk), or compiling mix CDs to chart the emotional development of Bella and Edward’s relationship, or even by beginning to write their own original stories. Twilight inspires teenagers.

Seriously: for all the flack teenagers get for being so technology-obsessed, for not doing anything anymore, they also deserve some credit. The community that’s built up around Twilight is amazing. Huge, and amazing. There’s even, shock horror! a teenage boy who’s taken it upon himself to read the book (http://www.twilightguy.com). He’s enjoying it.

I tell you all this as a public service announcement.

When the end of the year arrives, and Twilight hits the Aussie cinemas, you’ll want to be ready.

Personally, I recommend a thorough knowledge of the text and a heavy duty pack of ear plugs.