books 2008: Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer

[supercheesegirl]

Oh man. I was so sucked in to this one. OK, I don't know that I love the concept of the vampire baby. Vampires reproduce by biting people, venom, whatever, they don't reproduce sexually--Anne Rice vampires don't even HAVE sex. But Meyer's been subverting the vampire mythos all along, what with the sparkling and all, and she came up with a plausible explanation out of mythology, at least, so that's something. But still, I didn't love that Meyer did that to Bella. Also, WTF with Jacob imprinting on the baby? That was weird. That was fucked up. I didn't love that that happened, at all. I also don't really get why all of a sudden we were getting Jacob as a narrator for half the book. She started that with the epilogue of the third book, and I don't really get it. Maybe she wanted to tell the imprinting from Jacob's perspective? Maybe she didn't want to tell the pregnancy from Bella's perspective? I don't understand that choice, and it doesn't go with the earlier books at all.

I really got involved in the story, though. I couldn't put it down. I liked Bella better in this book than I ever had before (possibly due to Bella's dramatic character change?). I liked Edward a bit more too, possibly because he rarely chuckled at Bella at all. (Once I caught Emmett chuckling, though, which is totally out of character!) I liked the massive vampireunion, I always like when that happens in books. I was just really sucked in to the story, and I'm glad it ended happily for Bella (like we couldn't see that coming).

::edit:: I forgot to say: Renesmee? Entirely lametastic name. Just the sort of thing an annoying 18 year old drama queen would come up with, yes, but ugh. And why is it that Bella, of course, doesn't have any problems transitioning from human to vampire? Every other vampire in the history of the world had the unquenchable thirst and lack of control problems. Not Bella. She's super special. Gah. But that's totally par for the course with these books--Bella's always been a Mary Sue, I didn't expect any less of her than to be a super vamp.

Comments

[grass-stained.livejournal.com]

SUPER BELLA SUE TO THE RESCUE! :D

What did you think about the not!sex, but the uber-graphic portrayal of Nessie's birth?

I hated how she switched to Jacob's point of view out of the blue. That was just retarded and amateurish.

Here's my "review" of Breaking Dawn if you want to read it. :)

[sleepyworm.livejournal.com]

My friend Mina discovered that it's a Utah Mormon tradition to name a child by combining two parent names, like the names of both mothers in this case. (It's also common for them to feminize a man's name awkwardly, like STEPHENIE.) This was a secret Mormon touch she threw in, just like Edward wanting to preserve Bella's "virtue" and how Bella's parents barely put up a fight when she announced that she wanted to get married at 18.

Barrrrffffff

Apparently I'm the only person in the history of this book to think this, but when Jacob imprinted, I wasn't thinking, "oh, he's imprinting." I was thinking, RUN AWAY, the baby has sinister mind control powers and it's making you become its servant like that god woman on Angel! Who, by the way, was also the product of an unlikely union involving vampires. I think it would have been much more interesting to have the baby be evil and for it to have an enslaving mind control power that only Bella could resist. Then Bella would have to make the tough decision to destroy the baby for the good of everyone and maybe she'd actually have to give up SOMETHING to earn happiness instead of the way it really happened, where she got everything she ever wanted and everything worked out perfectly, tra la la.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

No, I thought that too at first, that the baby was evil. I still think she's creepy.