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THE SAGA ENDS
Finally, finally, I’m done with the Twilight series. The long haul is over, and I am so glad that Bella is off my back at last.
After hemming and hawing about the marriage thing throughout Eclipse, Bella finally gets hitched to Edward, and they are off to their honeymoon somewhere in the Pacific. But all is not fun and games for the newly married couple, as Bella gets pregnant. The half-vampire, half-human child grows at an abnormally fast rate, putting fragile Bella’s life in danger. Elsewhere, a rejected and dejected Jacob fumes around, but rushes to Bella’s side once he hears about her situation, leaving his werewolf pack behind. When the baby is born, Bella thinks her life will finally be normal again, but she is so wrong. Poor self-sacrificing Bella must put herself in the line of fire (again), to save the person she loves most.
Breaking Dawn is split into three parts, the first and third narrated by Bella, and the second by Jacob. I found the third part the most interesting, as Bella changes from the wishy-washy narrator she’s been for three whole books, into a more confident person. Her voice was the least irritating in the third part, and I enjoyed her narration for a while. I thought Jacob’s narration would be decent, but it was a little fake. It was like Meyer just watched a couple of action movies to prepare for writing in a guy’s voice; she didn’t really have a grip on the character.
One thing that bugged me was the mess of contradictions associated with each character. Worst of all was Jacob: one moment he is rushing to tear Edward’s throat out, the next he ditches his pack to protect the blameless Cullens. Meyer gave everybody their happy ending: right triumphed wrong, everybody lived happily ever after. So who cares if characters did major volte-faces from one page to the next? And the ending; what an anticlimax! She built it up so much that I was really looking forward to this huge vampire war and clash of the titans, and then suddenly, everything just goes phoosh. My crackler of an ending turned out to be a damp squib. Well, I shouldn’t complain. If there had been a battle, the book probably would have been 7000 pages long, instead of 700.
I’ve been asked this question many times: if you didn’t like the books, why did you keep reading them? My answer to them is this: if I had quit midway, I would have been told that I stopped just before the truly awesome parts, that the next book would have blown my mind away. And I couldn’t have contradicted them. Now that I finished the series, I can say with conviction: there were NO truly awesome parts, not for me.
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Your reasons for continuing the series is what drove me to read the second book, but the second book was so horrible to me that I said nevermind and never read the other two. I'm okay with that. Especially after reading spoilers for this book.
Out of the whole series, Breaking Dawn was the only one that made me rub my eyes and ask myself-who's crazy here? Did I just read that right? Bella drinking blood on a straw? You got to be kidding me!
I read it almost a year ago, but I still feel buffed. Gosh.
And I agree on the big fight. Everyone just walks away happily.
I'm just curious to see how this will look in the movie...
I'm going to be listening to the audiobooks of this series. Not because I'm interested in them. I'm not. But I lipped off to my sister about them, and I have rules about judging books I have not read. She loves them and I felt bad about being a book snob, so I'm making amends. :-) But she said she's maybe going to give War & Peace a try, so it will be worth it! (W&P might be my all-time favorite book.)
Lezlie
Seriously, how are they going to make a movie out of this? The monster child breaks Bella's back! Edward gives her an emergency C-Section WITH HIS TEETH. Sheesh. And I love it how every time Stephenie Meyer acts like something interesting is going to happen, instead of having an interesting thing happen, she has something fantastically boring happen, like everyone making up a compromise and going home.
An interessting post on what must be the series of books most talked/posted about this year. I have very mixed feelings about the books - as an adult I quite enjoyed them but was shocked at how young some of the readers were as I thought some of the books (this one on particular) had some very explicit scenes as your above blogger (jennysbooks) says.
You're a braver reader than I am, I couldn't stomach Bella pass the first 50 pages, no matter how awesome people told me it was.
LOL
Well, at least you're done with them!
AG
I feel that if you have read these books, you have every right to complain about them, and to have legitimate complaints since you read them. I, personally, enjoy complaining so am very glad I read these books, as I now am able to continuously complain about them, hahahaha.
:-D
I read them because a friend said it was my turn to be tortured. Great literature, no. Brain candy, somewhat, if you have a high tolerance for teen angst and being annoyed.