Life > August 28, 2008

By CeCe Brooks | News editor

After reading Breaking Dawn and then sitting down to review it, I realized some things. One: This is the fourth book in a series. How do I critique it without spoiling those who haven’t finished it yet or those who haven’t even started the series yet?

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Two (this is the narcissistic one): How nerdy am I going to sound while talking about a book in a series that has such devoted fans they’ve even earned their own moniker (Twilighters, in case you were curious)?

To the first, I realized that you don’t read a review without expecting a few minor spoilers. So, to those who wish to know absolutely nothing: stop reading now. For the rest, I promise to try not to ruin it for you.

To the second, as much as I cringe to say it: I am a “Twilighter.” I wish I was Bella Swan, I’ve repeatedly watched the trailers for the Twilight movie and, worst of all, I checked Stephanie Meyers’ web site almost daily before Breaking Dawn was released.

Now that everyone knows my deepest darkest secret, I’ll get down to business.

As noted from what is probably the best and most recent comparison to the Twilight series, Harry Potter, when the author designates a novel to “end” the series the pressure on them can be very intense.

Meyer deserves applause for gracefully ending her series.

From the first three novels we know this: Bella Swan is a human who is in love with “vegetarian” vampire Edward. Jacob, the “werewolf” is in love with Bella too and although she loves him back, she cannot exist without Edward.

Bella’s human heartbeat is a ticking bomb since the Volturi (the ruling vampire royalty) realized she knows about vampires; and Bella’s dad, Charlie, has no freaking clue that any of this is going on.

As foreshadowed by the ending of Eclipse (the third book in the series), Breaking Dawn is told partially through Jacob’s perspective.

In a slightly different style than her previous books, Meyers divided Breaking Dawn into three books: Bella, Jacob, Bella.

Despite the change in narration there is only very slight overlap, which is interesting, but at times frustrating.

Jacob’s narration takes up a very important part of the book where it would have occasionally been nice to know what Bella was thinking.

Some small fairly insignificant details that I enjoyed in Jacob’s book were his chapter titles such as “Sure as hell didn’t see that one coming” and “Good thing I’ve got a strong stomach.”

Book One does not have all that much action, but there are some highlights. Edward and Bella get married, they finally have sex and the kicker … Bella somehow gets pregnant.

This leads into Jacob’s narration of Book Two where we see Bella on the edge of death because of her much-accelerated pregnancy (she gives birth after a month).

The problem with this is a seemingly sudden change of character.

Bella changes almost overnight from a teenager afraid of getting married to a girl willing to die in order to have a baby.

The birth leads into Book Three, back to Bella’s narration. In order for Bella to survive, Edward had to transform her. ­After Bella’s adjustment to immortality and being a mom to a “superkid,” the rest of the novel pretty much focuses on another showdown with the Volturi.

You may not know his name, but a man named Gustav Freytag invented the typical story arc that many novels and films use. It’s the pyramid with exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement. This was so divised because it works, but in the cases of series such as Twilight and Harry Potter, the formula can make the plot seem a bit predictable. For example in Harry Potter everyone always knew that when finals came around that meant something big was about to go down.

At the end of every Twilight novel Bella, Edward and the Cullens have to fight off some supernatural creature that wants to kill Bella. Despite this the ending is still entertaining and tense to a certain degree. Some critics have said that Meyers disappointed with Breaking Dawn because everyone gets a happy ending, but I say: what’s wrong with a happy ending?

Edward suffered for basically an entire century, Bella wasn’t exactly chipper and Jacob was just pitiful. Why don’t they deserve happiness?