With just a few chapters of ‘Breaking Dawn’ left…
From Time’s Nerd World blog:
“…Marriage? Bang, they’re married by page 50. Sex? Page 85. Nothing coy about that. Where do you go from there? The answer, of course, is a half-vampire baby — which could have been lame, but I thought she gave it a real high-stakes horror feel, with its impenetrable uterine sac and its breakneck, almost tumorous growth, devouring Bella from within, bruising her belly and cracking her ribs and her pelvis. And Bella gulping blood to keep it alive! This is a kind of mature, shocking writing I don’t think I’ve seen Meyer do before, even in Host. You can see she’s been through childbirth, and she’s seen the ugly side of it.
“[But I must pause at this point to say: Renesmee. Worst…name…ever. And some sick Twilight fan somewhere is going to name their child that, I just know it.]”
I’m sure some “sick” Twilight fan somewhere will eventually name her child Renesmee, but as it’s already the age of Google, I hope the poor sap gets the spelling right. (I was lining up at a Meralco counter a few weeks ago and saw the worst possible misspelling of a name from 60s pop culture: Edelvise. Correct: Edelweiss.)
So there is sex in Breaking Dawn. Lots of it. Bella is so frisky, she can hardly keep her claws from Edward. It’s too convenient that they have the stamina to satisfy each other, thanks to their super vampire strength. Funny how Edward was nearly reduced to just a sex object in many parts of the book, it’s almost unromantic. While Twilight (and the entire saga, except for a few chapters) is told from Bella’s point of view, Edward is the selling point of the first book for being unnaturally good-looking, smart, rich, and overall perfect; this installment has put the boy vampire on the sidelines because it’s already established that he’s unnaturally good-looking, smart, rich, and overall perfect. And so we shift our attention to his rival, Jacob.
As much as he’s annoying to Team Edward members, Jacob effectively moves the story forward. It’s him one feels for, his pain and anguish that Meyer explores more effectively. That’s his prize for having his flaws, for being different in an otherworldly dis-likable manner.
Bella becomes too perfect herself. Flawed characters make for more interesting fiction and her being an all-too-controlled newborn, not to mention that she now looks like a supermodel, is also a cop-out. That’s probably the problem with perfect characters–they get too old too soon.
There is a bit of fang action during a hunting trip, and that is all that can be expected. A fang-fest between Irina and Bella would have been better.
Jacob “imprinting” on Renesmee is just too funny. It settles the love triangle issue in the most convenient way, and I would have hated all the convenience it afforded the story if it weren’t funny and weird, it has “cradle snatcher” written all over it.
That order has to be established in the vampire world is a dead giveaway that the Volturi will walk away from Forks unscathed. That baby Cullen is too cute to be killed is a dead giveaway that the Italian vampires will leave her in one piece, unburned.
And while female vampires cannot conceive, the same cannot be said for the male members of the species, which is unfair. Why does Meyer have to spring up, though indirectly, the biological clock thing?
(How did I get suckered into this book?)
Meyer mentions the Danag, a Filipino vampire sub-species, in both Twilight and Breaking Dawn.
