Wow! I can’t remember reading a complete novel series within just one week. And not a vacation week with nothing else on my agenda. There was work (busy, busy, busy work) and friends and politics and TV shows and all that stuff. But I finished “Breaking Dawn” just a few moments ago. During my afternoon coffee break at work :-)
All in all I really enjoyed reading the whole series. The final book was different than the first three and I definitely hadn’t expect these events and development. Once I got over that and let go of my expecations I had fun reading it. But I think Stephanie Meyers got carried away with quite a few ideas. I don’t know, maybe I’m just still a bit disappointed that she didn’t predict MY expecations and wrote the story in the way I would have loved to read it…
A few people on my blogroll read the series (or at least “Breaking Dawn”) over the summer so I knew some readers weren’t that enthusiastic about the books after “Twilight”. And I read somewhere that this last book has caused quite a dispute among Twilight fans. So I expected something different like Bella dying before Edward can change her. Edward ceasing to exist (OMG, that would have killed me *g*) or something similar devasting. But I guess the dispute was about something else and it doesn’t really matter to me anyway.
But now my thoughts about “Breaking Dawn”. I had some difficulties wrapping my mind about a pregnancy and a baby. A baby that seemed to kill her. I know I shouldn’t even try to think about that from a scientific point of view (it’s vampires after all), but do vampires really have some sort of body fluids left? If you know what I mean? So….. yeah, hard time to wrap my mind around. But like I said, once I let go of that, I didn’t mind that storyline that much after all.
I had some difficulites with the different point of view (Jacob’s chapters) for a while. I got used to it and I know it was necessary to tell this story, but I guess it comes down to me just having expected a different story. And I didn’t really care that much about the whole good vampire vs bad vampire confrontation that this story was heading to for the second half. Maybe because I always expected something really bad to happen in the end, like Edward or Bella “dying” or something. I didn’t expected Bella to turn into the superhero vampire either, but after she was such a clumsy human maybe that was just fair. And she is the heroine of that series, so she’s earned it after all :-)
I suspected Jacob to imprint on the baby pretty early and I’m still not sure if I consider that a nice or lame idea. It was fun to read though. And of course it still was fun to read Bella gushing over Edward and to see their romance evolve. I just loved reading about their first wedding night and “I bit a pillow. Or two.” really made me laugh. And so many other Bella/Edward and some more amazing vampire moments which made this series so worth reading. I sort of dreaded that Bellas infatuation with Edward would wear off once she was his equal (vampire) but rather the opposite. It was so much fun reading about the even increased infatuation and to gush even more than before.
So I still have to praise Meyers talent to create these characters in the first place and to write about the absurdity of amicable vampires in an ordinary US town in such an entertaining and endearing way. And of course for her absolutely compelling way to make the reader see the world (and Edward!) through Bella’s eyes and make us all fall so irrevocably in love with him. I wouldn’t mind becoming a vampire if someone like him would ever cross my way :) So all in all it was an enjoyable few days with Bella and Edward on the Olympic Peninsula. And that’s all I expect from a novel series after all…