Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Breaking Dawn

I picked up Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer almost a week after it was released. However, I still managed to stay spoiler free until I finished. It just feels like an accomplishment. If you want to stay spoiler free you should not continue to read.

Breaking Dawn begins with Bella and Edward's wedding. Jacob returns from his self imposed exile to see Bella one more time and nearly gets into a fight with Edward when he finds out that they're going to try to have sex while Bella is still human. After the wedding Edward takes Bella to Esme's private island for their honeymoon and, as promised they finally consummate their relationship. After a couple of weeks Bella realizes that she is not only pregnant, but appears to be a few months along already. They race back home where she refused to allow Carlise and Edward to terminate the pregnancy in spite of her failing health. Once the baby is born and Bella becomes a vampire they learn that they will once again have to face the Volturi.

I have an overwhelming feeling of indifference towards Breaking Dawn. I didn't like it very much, but I didn't particularly dislike it either. As usual many of the plot elements were predictable and contrived. As soon as the child vampires were brought up it was pretty clear where the story was headed. This time the story was just not good enough to make me look past the problems, but on the bright side it was still better than New Moon.

The section that was narrated by Jacob was better than I thought it would be and it was nice to get a clearer picture of the wolves lives. I hoped for a little while that something might happen between Leah and Jacob, but that would have been too interesting. Having Jacob imprint on Renesmee so they could all be one big happy family is awfully convenient and really creepy. Meyer spends a lot of time assuring the reader that imprinting is not a sexual thing and that neither Jacob nor Quil is a pedophile, but all that aside that still means that he is going to be Bella's son-in-law. He intends to marry the daughter of his previous object of affection. It's all so very creepy!

It was good to get a look at some of the other vampires outside of the Cullens, but there were so many that I had some trouble keeping them straight. There were more interesting new powers introduced and then not really used. Renesmee's ability to share her thoughts and Bella's power to block the talents of other's are the only one's that really mattered in the end. It was nice to see Bella so empowered after being the human that everyone had to protect for three books, but the big confrontation with the Volturi was so anticlimactic. That's the thing that made the book so problematic, there were no real stakes. One vampire, who has only be talked about before and who caused the whole problem, dies. Everyone else escapes and there's never really any suspense to make the reader think that they won't.

As I said before Breaking Dawn was not all that bad, it just wasn't all that good. Everything was just tied up too neatly with everyone paired off and happy. For the entire series Meyer set up the triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob. Imprinting, no matter how well established as a plot device, feels like a cop out.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Eclipse

I actually read Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer while I was in Washington and wrote most of this review on the train, but between all the posting of pictures and some general laziness I haven’t taken the time to sit down and finish it. I’m planning to pick up Breaking Dawn this weekend so I wanted to get this done before I get influenced by the rest of the story. Anyway, the Twilight series was recommended by Stephen and Sylvie and, as always, spoilers follow.

Wow! Let’s start with wow. Eclipse is so many light years better than New Moon. This is the sequel I was looking for when I finished Twilight. How wonderful it is to regain the sensuality that made me love the first book. Sure the characters are still thinly drawn, but the story is too good for me to really care.

Eclipse picks up soon after New Moon left off. Bella is still grounded for running off to Italy and having a motorcycle and her father is still unhappy about her relationship with Edward. Soon she and her father come to an agreement, he’ll let her leave the house if she’ll spend more time with her other friends. This is complicated by Edward’s distrust of Jacob, who her father particularly wants her to see. After trying, and failing to keep Bella away from Jacob, Edward agrees that she should be allowed to see him. Reports of deaths and disappearances from Seattle complicate things and eventually warrant an uneasy alliance.

First of all I was glad to have a least some attempt to give Bella a reason to not want to get married. “I’m just not that girl,” is not the best reason in the world, but it worked well enough for me to go back to willfully suspending my disbelief.

I was worried early on that I was going to find Edward as irritating as Bella was in New Moon, but once he got over his refusing to allow her to see Jacob, I fell right back in love with him. Jacob spent a lot of time being annoying, but that’s his character so I can let it slide.

There was more interesting lore from both the vampires and the werewolves. Back stories were revealed for Rosalie and Jasper and Bella got to hear the Quileute tribe’s story of the werewolves’ origins.

The story was much less cliché and predictable which is not to say that is wasn’t at all, it was quite obvious that Victoria was the one coming after Bella and that there would have to be a vampire/werewolf alliance, but having Bella genuinely conflicted about her feelings for Jacob was nice. No, I never thought she would choose him, but I liked seeing the choice actually be made. The teasing at their chemistry was one of the few things I liked about New Moon and I welcomed its return. And that was quite an impressive kiss. I’m sure thirteen year olds everywhere are still swooning.