Breaking Dawn? Breaking Canon, Laws and Believability More Like (Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer)

Member Name: antoniakelly

Product:	Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
Date:	09/11/08 (581 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Erm... I'll get back to you.

Disadvantages: All of it.

OVERVIEW:

The fourth installment of the 'Twilight' series, written by Stephenie Meyer, about a normal girl who falls in love with a vampire.

Firstly, it is impossible to review this book without revealing at least a few 'spoilers'. Although 'Breaking Dawn' is the last in a series of books, it does not feature the conclusion of an overall arc, it is rather more a standalone story with familiar characters and that is why some information being given is unavoidable. I will, however, not reveal the results of the overall plot, I promise!

The 'Twilight' series has been called 'the new Harry Potter', for reasons I am yet to understand. It focuses on the story of Bella Swann, a 17-year-old girl who moves to Forks, Washington, and falls in love with a vampire, Edward Cullen. Edward is a 'vegetarian' vampire, meaning he doesn't drink human blood, nor do his family. Bella lives with her father, Charlie, and is best friends with a werewolf, Jacob, who is also inconveniently in love with her.

The book opens where the last finished. Bella, desperate to ensure a life with Edward, wishes to become a vampire. After much debating, Edward conditionally grants this wish - she must marry him first. Much is made in the opening section of the book of how little Bella wants to get married, believing it tacky at her age, and she resists typical "bride to be" behaviour.

My feelings toward the book began to curdle at this point. I could not understand why Bella - who, we are to believe, is so passionately in love with Edward that she cannot even kiss him without fainting - would resist marrying her beau, especially when doing so would guarantee her immortality and a life with him forever. I mean, she wants to become a vampire so she can be with him forever - what's a wedding certificate in the scheme of things? It is also hard to understand Edward's motivation for wanting to be married, though this is attempted to be explained in that Edward is old-fashioned.

However, Bella does indeed go through with the wedding and marries Edward. They go on honeymoon and, for the first time, make love, something Bella wanted to experience as a human. We are lead to believe this is a deeply painful experience for Bella - bruises and cuts are mentioned - and Edward is devastated at how he cannot control his strength, but this is written off in that Bella cannot remember the pain, only the joy.

I'll admit it - Bella was really beginning to annoy me at this point.

Then suddenly - SPOILER! - Bella discovers she's pregnant. This goes against all supernatural laws, both of Meyer's own making and generally accepted myth. As a supernatural fan, I didn't like this development whatsoever. I expected 'Breaking Dawn' to be about Bella's transition from human life to vampiric life, but at this point I could sense that wasn't going to be the case. Bella, unlike myself, is pleased to be pregnant and she and Edward follow the advice of Edward's 'father' Carlisle and return back to Forks, to try and understand what is happening.

With no warning, the perspective of the book flips at this point, and our narrator becomes Jacob Black, the werewolf-best-friend-who's-really-in-love-with-Bel la. Furious, I immediately looked through the book to see how long Jacob's "voice" would last and was dismayed to find it is an entire third of the book. Sense of doom increasing, I began reading, well aware that Meyer was breaking her own rules and her own canon. Never in the series before had another character's perspective been used, but suddenly at this most crucial point in Bella's life, we're shut out of her thoughts?

I believe I understand this, however. It is clear in Jacob's section that Meyer has simply abandoned all canon and rewritten the character of Bella. She is suddenly desperate to have this child, even if it is killing her - and it is. Never before in the series had Bella shown a desire for children, she had even been dismissive of rendering herself infertile by becoming a vampire, all she wanted was Edward. In Jacob's section, Bella ignores the advice of all but sister-in-law Rosalie (up until that point, an enemy) and determines that she will have her child. The baby, growing monstrously fast, breaks ribs and hurts Bella immeasurably and she's told by father-in-law Carlisle, a doctor, that she will die if she goes to term, but she doesn't care.

And this is why Meyer needed to switch to Jacob's point of view - because explaining this huge change in Bella was, quite simply, impossible to do because it is just not believable. For three books, the reader is immersed in Bella's world, her character, her thoughts and then to suddenly switch her desires is beyond ridiculous and an insult to the reader. It is perhaps excusable if well written, but it isn't that, either.

Jacob's book is, in short, dull. A lot of werewolf politics which culminates in Jacob deciding to break from his pack so he can protect Bella and her child is beyond tedious, when all the reader cares about is Bella and her progressing pregnancy. Especially as it was all-too obvious that, in Meyer's saccharine world, the separation of Jacob from his pack would not be forever.

Finally, toward the end of Jacob's section, the book picks up the pace and returns to the real story. Bella goes into "labour", shortly after - via Edward's mind-reading capability - discovering that the baby inside her "loves her". Lip crinkled in disgust, I read on. The baby is torn from Bella and Edward goes about turning her into a vampire, which we are at first lead to believe fails, but this is Meyer - so it works and Bella enters a three-day transition phase as she becomes UnDead. Meanwhile, something happens to Jacob that is beyond convenient and disappointingly predictable.

At last, we're back in Bella's head as the tedium of Jacob's book ends. Only to exchange boredom for more stomach-clenching sugary writing and a plot that sounds more fan fiction than actual book. Bella, as a new vampire, miraculously manages to contact her instincts and can resist human blood. Yet again, Meyer unties her own laws. Bella adjusts to life as a vampire, mother and wife - and when the Volturi, the leading clan of vampires, threaten to arrive to kill Bella's child (nauseatingly named 'Renesmee', after Bella's mother Renee and Edward's mother Esme) I found myself hoping the Volturi would slaughter the lot of them.

By this point, I'd lost patience with the book. It was all too convenient, but not in a way that makes you think "good writing". It more makes you think "get out when writer has writers block". The Cullen family recruit from far and wide to "stand up" to the Volturi. There's a showdown, and then mercifully, the book ends.

I was simply dismayed at the route this book took. If Meyer had done the obvious - a book about Bella's difficult transition into the vampire life - then it could have been as engaging as the first three. But it doesn't. The pregnancy storyline is poorly written; it spends so long trying to convince you Bella's child will be a monster that you just know the child will emerge to be a perfect, loving child, and that happens. The writer doth protest too much.

Edward, previously perhaps the most intriguing character, is relegated to a background position throughout. Bella's sudden desperate desire for a child does not, and even with the greatest writer in the world would not, fly. Bella's lack of a struggle when she becomes a vampire is saddening in it's lack of originality. The sudden change to Jacob's perspective is lacklustre and unnecessary and the ending to the entire book so ridiculously neat and perfect it pains me to remember it.

Mostly, I felt this book could have been so much more. The first three books, though not masterpieces, were original and interesting but are then failed by a too-perfect ending.

Is there anything good about this book? Probably the only good thing I can find to say is that it is the last.

I realise I may be alone in this; I know a lot of people have enjoyed this book, and if you like everything to end perfectly, then it's for you. But I was frustrated as a reader and fan of these characters throughout this book as canon was abandoned, laws rewritten with apparently no reason and plot twists that even a baby could grasp.

A poor end to a interesting series and a disgrace to supernatural fiction as a whole - 'Breaking Dawn' is definitely one I won't be re-reading.

Summary: The final installment of the 'Twilight' series had the potential to break records. But it failed.