Breaking Dawn: 3 Books in 1

Okay, I haven't posted in a number of weeks now (2? 3?) and there've been a lot of things that I should be posting about (the sucktastic Indiana Jones, Doctor Who finale, Wanted (movie), giving up on Swingtown, The Dark Knight, Watchmen (comic), Comic Con!). But instead of all that, I'm going to post about the final installment of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Breaking Dawn. So here goes:

Breaking Dawn

I liked this a lot more than I expected to. Of course, I expected to be completely disappointed because everything's been kind of unsatisfying lately (I'm look at you Dark Knight), but I ended up more than just pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed it and I was satisfied with the end of the story. That being said, this is a YA series so the ending was inevitably kind of happy-go-lucky and things worked out pretty conveniently for almost everyone involved, but that didn't lessen the suspense too much.

One of the things that made this book different from the previous books, and in my opinion made it better, was the fact that it was divided into three parts, with one part not being from Bella's point of view. So I think I'll break my thoughts down by book.

Book 1 (Bella's POV)

This entire book read like fanfiction to me. Of course, this is largely due to the fact that I've read an exorbitant amount of fanfiction since finishing Eclipse and most of the stuff I was reading picked up where that book left off and dealt with Bella and Edward's wedding and idyllic honeymoon. And roughly 6% of those stories included Bella getting pregnant due to an oversight in male vampire...er...physiology (?I guess), exactly as Stephenie Meyer explained it in this book. And a portion of the stories were written by talented writer's who really have Bella and Edward's voices down. So I basically felt like I had read about 3/4 of the sentences in Book 1 somewhere in my fanfiction reading.

All of that being said, I still enjoyed it. I could tell there was a baby thing coming as soon as Carlisle mentioned the immortal children. So as soon as Bella was getting nauseous eating fried chicken I knew it would be her baby.

I didn't see the Jacob-at-the-wedding part coming, but as soon as he got there I knew there'd be trouble. By the time Bella and Jacob had talked through two songs I was practically yelling at the book "For the love of God, one of you just walk away before this goes to Hell!". So that was fun.

Also, the fact that Bella and Edward were having sex was nice. And despite the fact that there's no actual sex described, the implication still did a tremendous amount to ease the sexual tension that had built up over the previous three books. Plus, broken headboards are always amusing.

The Jacob stuff and the honeymoon stuff (mainly Edward's post-sex/bruising issues) were tremendously angsty. Not that that wasn't expected. I'm just always annoyed by excessive angst.

Book 2 (Jacob's POV)

Ah, the good stuff. This was surprising. I guess I should have been expecting this after the very end of Eclipse switched to Jacob's POV, but it still caught me off guard. And then I was afraid it was going to delve into the angst even worse than Book 1 had. As it turns out, though, after the first chapter the angst started to let up and gave way to sweet, sad, creepy and downright bloody. I liked it.

Jake's alliance with Edward was really enjoyable. The weird respect/hate dynamic that they started in Eclipse continued and deepened pretty much to the point of respect/tolerate and beyond. And some of the best interactions Edward has with other people's thoughts are with Jake and his sarcastic asides. It's also really interesting that Jake quickly became the second most efficient (after Alice) at conversing with Edward without either of them having to speak.

The pack split was interesting and it was definitely fun to see Jake working with Seth and Leah Clearwater. Seth Clearwater really is completely awesome, and poor Leah just can't catch a break. Ever. I feel bad for that girl. I really hope she wasn't off contemplating suicide after her romantic opportunities were thrwarted twice by unexpected werewolf (*shape-shifter*) imprinting. But, regardless of that, it was fun to hear inside the pack mind and to see Jake coping with his feelings for Bella and his new Alpha status at the same time.

It was definitely nice to be out of Bella's head for this period of time because she clearly had a one track mind for the extent of her pregnancy. And then, of course, she was unconscious for portions of it, including the whole last chapter. And speaking of that last chapter of Book 2: Whoa. When a scene starts out with the phrase "and then Bella vomited a fountain of blood" you know you're in for a gory situation, but I did not expect the truly horrifying stuff that was going to happen during that "birthing" scene. I pretty much picture everything as I'm reading it and this scene looked like a horror movie in my head. There were blood and bodies flying around like crazy. Is there a way to combine gruesome and awesome into one word? Maybe Rothtastic.

Anyway, aside from the horror of Bella giving birth to Renesmee (which is possibly the worst name I have ever read. Honestly, there's no way to say it or read it without slowing down.), the fact that Jacob imprinted on (to? with?) Renesmee was pretty disturbing when it first happened. For some reason my brain chose to memorialize that moment as a comic book splash page (guess I've been reading too many comics lately). I wish I could draw, but I can't so I'll describe it. The back of Jacob's head and shoulder are in the foreground and in the background is Rosalie sitting on the couch and holding Renesmee up so she's facing Jacob. And three narration bubbles. 1) "The gravityof the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood." 2) "It was the baby girl in the blond vampire's arms that held me here now." 3) "Renesmee." (I wonder what it's like to think entirely in comic book. Is that how Stan Lee's brain works? Or Alan Moore's?) Right, my point about it being disturbing was that even though Jacob and Renesmee are in now way related, the idea of the two of them just seems incestual. I guess it shouldn't though, at least not any moreso than the plot of The Graduate. Moving on...

Book 3 (Bella's POV)

So, after three and a half books of Bella being pretty annoying, she becomes not annoying, which then gives way to awesome. Which is a nice change of pace. I don't have too many thoughts about the lead up to the Volturi story line. It was nice, albeit bizarre, that things got to be relatively resolved with Charlie. I guess the chosen ignorance thing kind of fit his personality. And I can't really decide how Stephenie Meyer wanted us to feel about Bella's super self-control...

I started this post days and days ago and then I got tired before I finished. Which makes sense because it's an unnecessarily long post. Anyway...

...So basically I like Bella's new control over her power. It was nice to see her be so instrumental in the success of their showdown with the Volturi.

As far as other stuff in that last battle, after Alice showed up I really wanted someone to at least reference the "Don't bet against Alice" bit from the first book. Oh well. And I loved the setup for the relationship between Kate and Garrett. I was a little surprised because Stephenie Meyer just seemed to bring Garrett in out of nowhere and make him super cool, what with the crush on Kate and the making the Braveheart speech. I really hope she eventually continues the Kate/Garrett story in some form.

Okay, that's all I'm going to say because I did write for too long and this did become tiring. I'll probably bring up other points about the series eventually because I'm sure I'll be thinking about it up until the movie comes out.