Breaking Dawn (MASSIVE SPOILERS)

Cover via Amazon

I’d read the other three books in the Twilight series (not in a great hurry mind you), so it was inevitable I was going to read the fourth, but I’ve only just got round to doing so. I had kind of guessed that it would end with Bella becoming a vampire (so it kind of took the urgency out of starting the fourth book to be honest) but on starting the book I was surprised that it didn’t play out how I’d imagined it (I had imagined the fourth book would be a whole long lead up debating whether Bella should or should not be turned into a vampire, with her being turned right at the end). It turned out (and I warned you, MASSIVE SPOILERS coming up) that Bella gets turned into a vampire about half way through the book and the book really isn’t about that act but more about Bella and Edward’s child. But going back to the act of turning Bella into a vampire, I was kind of glad that in the end it wasn’t a deliberate decision and instead it was an act to save her ‘life’, although there was still some deliberation in it as would Bella of continued with the pregnancy if she had known there was absolutely no chance of her being saved? Scrap that, of course she would, she was that devoted to her unborn child, which was a whole section of the book I found slightly disturbing and I was extremely glad that the middle section of the book where Bella is pregnant is narrated by Jacob instead of Bella, to give a more balanced view point because a whole third of the book of Bella happily sacrificing herself would have been pretty sickening (and anyway, to be honest Jacob has always been my favourite character ).

I don’t know, I’ve read the whole series with the thought in the back of my mind “Would I be happy Girl Lacer reading this, when she’s a teenager?” and to be honest although I have no plans to go about starting banning books, I’d be much happier her reading the much more graphic The Enemy series that the Twilight series. The Enemy series shows events from many different view points and moral angles whilst the Twilight series is a lot more one dimensional, with no real attempt to convince Bella that there was life beyond her first boyfriend and eek, then she gets pregnant . . . I just think this series gives an overly romantic view of life and doesn’t encourage independence but then again Twilight is by far not the first romance series to have done this.

But as for the book itself, despite the topic making me feel slightly uncomfortable, I actually enjoyed it and it was a quick read (not that quick by the way regular readers, I know I only posted another book review yesterday, which is unlike me these days, I’d read about two thirds of Breaking Dawn, the The Fear arrived, so I read that and then I finished the remained of Breaking Dawn yesterday). So ach, it’s not that bad (Team Jacob all the way).

Eclipse

As usual when I read one of the Twilight books I devour it fast, like the big bowl of popcorn they are. I’ve just finished Eclipse, the third in the series and the tension is ratcheting up a notch, not just from the constant threats to Bella’s existence but also from the dynamics of the triangle that is Bella, Edward and Jacob. I love how Meyer demonstrates the downside of believing that you’re going to spend forever with the first person you fall for and what you’re missing and Bella’s hypocrisy for being perfectly willing to turn into a vampire to spend the rest of eternity with Edward but balking at the idea of marrying him!

It’s going to be very interesting to see how book 4 turns out (please, no one tell me!), personally I really hope she doesn’t end up with Edward and goes for the more sensible option of Jacob, but that’s me, boring old grown up, talking. As someone who wishes to write, it is going to extremely interesting to see how Meyer wraps the story up, I think a ‘happy ending’ of Bella turning into a vampire would not work but I think I’m looking at it again too much as a sensible adult and teenagers don’t want sensible but there’s also ending with the right moral to the story (i.e don’t be an idiot and waste your life on the first good looking piece of stuff to come along when you’re only 18*) but teenagers don’t want to be preached at either (and I guess sensible and moral are the same thing here) so I don’t know how Meyer is going to end the story.

* I can’t talk, I met my husband at 18, didn’t marry him until 5 years later though and he didn’t suck the life blood out of me either.

New Moon

I feel that I’ve done quite well in my genre reading recently, reading through all the major contemporary players in the children’s adventure fiction market, so I’ve started to treat myself and return back to authors that I discovered I really liked during my genre reading and Stephanie Meyer was one of them.

So I leapt upon New Moon like a kid at a candy floss stall because there is something just so emminently readable about the Twilight saga, even though it’s a bit ‘flowery’ and you could argue that it perhaps sets up the wrong message to teenage girls about what constitutes a healthy relationship (and I do think Meyer explains quite well in Twilight why Bella can’t resist Edward and therefore isn’t particularly sensible and when, after all, is love sensible?).

I have to admit though, I don’t seem to be much of an Edward fan, it annoys me, even though I haven’t seen the film (I’ve just seen clips), that before I saw the clips and I’d just read the first book, that I imagined Edward to be a lot more good looking than the pasty faced weedy guy in the movie. Yes I know, of course he’s pasty, but ‘my’ Edward was a lot more chiseled, but now I’ve seen the clips, when I read Edward he looks just like the guy in the movie and I just want to scream “Come on Bella, he’s not that good looking”, whereas Jacob on the other hand, yum, a spot of werewolf will do me nicely.

So, as you can imagine, a Twilight series book, where as it turns out Edward isn’t in it for most of it but Jacob is, I really liked this one. The story opens with Edward very quickly leaving Bella, sending her into a deep depression, but she develops her friendship with Jacob. I thought that whole relationship dynamic was done really well, showing that the ‘love of your life’ can leave you but eventually you can move on, that you won’t necessarily love in the same way, but it’ll still be love. But then Edward comes back on the scene and the plot takes us to Italy and the ancient Volterra and although I still enjoyed the story, I wasn’t quite as keen on that bit. You see not only do I seem to have a bit of a thing for Jacob but I also definitely have a love affair for Forks, the forested mountain town, where most of Twilight and New Moon takes place. It’s green, lush, moody, dramatic and it rains a lot and Stephanie Meyer describes it so well that I feel that I’m there. Maybe it’s because there’s a touch of Twin Peaks about the place (linked to Wikepedia for the benefit of anyone under 30), I loved that show and I blame it for me not being very good at chemistry (sssh don’t tell my science students) as the first lesson the morning after Twin Peaks was on was always double chemistry and dissecting the show was always a far more popular activity than paying attention to alkene structure.

So I will be devouring Eclipse (the third in the series) as soon as I’ve finished my current set of 3 for 2s (I’ve vowed to myself not to let a to-be-read pile to develop again) and I was pleased to see on Amazon, that the fourth, Breaking Dawn, will be out in paperback in August. And I will continue trying to work out what exactly Stephanie Meyer has got, because I, as a writer, want some of it, because much as I love books, I never normally have much time to read and my reading time normally consists of last thing at night before lights out, consequently even for the best of books I can never normally read more than a few pages before my head is hitting the pillow, so how come, I can go to bed with a Stephanie Meyer and still be up, two hours later, breathlessly turning the pages? How does she do that? (Partly a rhetorical question, I have some theories, I think she’s very good at creating empathy for her characters and she is a master at ending her chapters on cliff hangers, heck she’s even ended this book on, how many cliffhangers? Five seperate story threads, dangling like that, she just knows how to make people want to go out and buy her next book)

Probably one of the longest book reviews I’ve ever written.

Twilight

I approached Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight book with some trepidation, the story of Bella, who moves to the misty mountain town of Forks and falls in love with the vampire Edward, obviously legions of teenage girls love this book and I know a few adults who like this book to but I’ve also heard some negative things about the book from people whose opinions I trust, but as part of my ongoing children’s reading, I picked it up and opened it.

And I was surprised that yes this book is actually quite good, some of the prose is a little too flowery for my taste and there was the occasional paragraph that no matter how many times I reread it  I couldn’t work out what had happened, so that was either me or those parts were badly written / edited. However I’m being the critical adult here. 

I’ve read charges that this book is not the best thing for teenage girls to read as it encourages them that dating ‘dangerous boys’ is ok but I think Meyer has tackled that aspect of the book responsibly, Edward repeatedly tells Bella he’s dangerous and that it not a good idea to get involved with him and through contact with Edward she does get put in mortal danger. It also gets stated on multiple occasions that vampires ‘dazzle’ humans, they are very attractive to humans, so there’s a certain element of Bella obviously not being able to control herself.

I enjoyed the descriptions of Forks and the surrounding area, Bella may have hated Forks but I quite liked the sound of all that green, mist and rain. I found it interesting comparing the surroundings with Meyer’s recreation of the vampire, with say the vampires from a hotter clime like the vampires in the George Clooney / Tarantino movie from Dusk till Dawn, which is set in a bar in the desert.

Meyer’s vampires suit the forest environment just as much as Tarantino’s vampires suit a sleazy bar in the desert. Meyer’s vampires are pale and lithe with skills to match the sort of animals that live in the forest. Tarantino’s vampires are brasher, bigger and far more uncouth to match their harsh environment. I just found it all a very interesting comparison which I couldn’t help thinking about for the whole of the book, as it happens my alternate reality story happens to involve vampires in a big way (it’s one of the reasons why I read Twilight, checking out the competition and making sure that my storyline wasn’t unknowingly following Meyer’s). My vampires don’t live in the forest or the desert, they live in suburbia and are scarily ordinary, just as suburbia is ordinary.

So back to Twilight, will I read the other three books? I have to admit I’m tempted (which is more than could be said about the Inkspell series I read recently), however too many excellent books out there, so for the moment, I’ll just leave it at Twilight.