Book #11: Breaking Dawn

Siiiiiiiigh.

Let's start this as positively as possible: This series is over. I'm done. My irrational, morbid need to read books that I don't even like is satisfied. That's the best part about this book.

This was by far the hardest in the series to get through. As I've mentioned, although I find the Twilight "saga" atrocious, I have to admit that they're at least entertaining. I read each of the first three in a couple days' time, but this one... I just wasn't interested. I kind of wanted to quit about 500 or so pages in, but of course I couldn't let myself do that. Something about the plot just didn't really interest me. That's why it took me so long to read... That, and the fact that I may or may not have thrown it across the room a few times, mid-paragraph.

Picking up where I left off in my snarky review of Eclipse, let me try to explain what's going on in Breaking Dawn. (Also, if you haven't read this series yet, you're not going to, so stop pretending like you'd care if I spoiled the ending for you... which I'm about to do.) Let's do this as simply as possible: Bella and Edward get hitched. They go on a honeymoon, and even though Edward is "afraid" to try, Bella eventually convinces him... that their marriage should be consummated, let's say. Well, guess what? Vampires can get you pregnant. They can and they will. Bella's knocked up, and apparently half-vampire babies are a) really strong and like to break your bones internally and b) ready to be born in just a few weeks. Bella dies (yay!) during childbirth, but Edward "saves" her (boo!) by turning her into a vampire. So Bella's a vampire, and she has a half-vampire daughter who she brilliantly names Renesmee. Yes. Really. A hybrid of her mother's name (Renee) and Edward's mother's name (Esme). Yes. Seriously. (And the kid's middle name is Carlie. Like Carslile + Charlie. Yes. Seriously.) Who should be upset about this? Jacob. But he's not, because as it turns out, Renesmee is his soul mate, or will be when she grows up. Yes, that's how werewolves do things. So, everyone is one big, happy family for two seconds, and then the Volturi decide to ruin the party because some idiot tells them that Renesmee is a full vampire, and full vampire babies are against the rules. They come to kill everyone, but then they realize she's half-human, and they're all, "...Oh. Well this is awkward." They're still mad and kinda want to kill everyone anyway, but they get talked out of it. THE END.

Look, I just told you the whole story in one paragraph. Why did I need to read 754 pages? I don't know. Here's what I learned, though. You know that I hate Bella. More than I have ever hated a character in a book before, ever. Again -- she has no redeeming qualities, yet she has people practically killing themselves for her. But... I found myself missing Bella's whiny, dramatic narration in the middle of the book when, for some reason, it switches to Jacob's narration. (None of the other books have any other narrator than Bella.) Honestly, I only thought Bella was annoying. Jacob. Oh. Jacob. Even the titles of the chapters he narrated were annoying: "Why Didn't I Just Walk Away? Oh Right, Because I'm An Idiot." Yeah. Anyway, I will say that the most bothersome thing about this book is obviously the child's name. I mean, come on. But the part that had me (literally) throwing the thing across the room was the part about Jacob "imprinting" on Renesmee. (That's the wolf term for finding your soulmate, basically.) I don't know. It's all just so ridiculous, but I think it's supposed to be. This is a series about vampires, and it's written for pre-teens. I don't know why my expectations are so high. Maybe I'll let go of my hatred for Twilight and say, "You know, at least it encouraged kids all over the world to read."

Orrrrrrrr, maybe I won't.

P.S. -- When Breaking Dawn first came out in 2008, I kept hearing about how all the hardcore Twilight fans hated it, and they were even returning it to bookstores after they had read it in "protest." I thought, "Well, I'm never going to read this crap," so I looked up spoilers about it to see why everyone was so mad. I kept reading that Bella died, but not knowing anything about the series, I didn't know what that meant. I vaguely recalled those spoilers when I started reading this. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that "dying" just meant becoming immortal. Boo.

1/5 stars

Read from May 13, 2010 to May 21, 2010

--C

Book #7: Eclipse

I'm so tempted to just type, "ugh" as the review for this book, leave it at that, and then move on with my life. That's not really fair, though. But once I get started, I'm going to let it all out, so be prepared.

Here's something positive: It's not as bad as Twilight.

Here's something not-so-positive: It's a little worse than New Moon (which was pretty bad). It's also worse than most books I've read in my lifetime.

Stephanie Meyer is so untalented. I'm sorry. But really. She's, like, that homely, annoying, awkward girl who never got the guy and then decided to write some books about a homely, annoying, awkward girl who has guys crawling all over her for no fathomable reason. The absolute worst thing about the entire Twlight series is Bella, the main character. She has zero redeeming qualities. Ze. Ro. Seriously. She's the main character, the narrator, the center of every sentence in these books, and she is completely useless. The other big drawback to the series is how terribly it's written, but whatever. Then there's the fact that none of the other characters are decent, either, and the fact that the plot is dumb and recycled. What does that leave to enjoy? Not much.

You're obviously wondering why I bother reading them. Yeah, I wonder that myself. I just had to read Twilight to see what the big deal was about, even though I knew it wouldn't be good. Once I read that, I kind of had to commit to read the rest of it. But there's another reason that I read them, too. I'm the kind of person who watches completely horrible TV shows (like, say, Rock of Love) or listens to political commentary from people who believe the opposite of what I do. I do this because I like to make fun of things. Twilight fits right in. I do enjoy reading them, but not because I find anything impressive about the actual content.

So, enough about the series as a whole -- let's focus on Eclipse. If you haven't read any of the series and plan on doing so, now is the part where you should stop reading if you don't want spoilers. Eclipse is the third book in the series, and we've already seen Bella fall in love with Edward Cullen (a vampire whose "vegetarian" family "feeds" only on animals, not humans). He totally loves her, too, and so they start a torrid romance, but then these other vampires show up who are not vegetarians. They do "feed" on people, and they'd especially like to "feed" on Bella, but Edward saves her. (Too bad.) Edward realizes it's dangerous for Bella to be around him, because, hello, he's a vampire. So, he runs away, and Bella, like, wants to kill herself and everything. She finds a little comfort in Jacob, a kid who lives on the nearby Native American reservation, but then he starts acting all weird and GUESS WHAT, turns out the people in his tribe are werewolves. Oh, and he's also in love with Bella. For no reason I can figure out. Because she sucks. Meanwhile, Edward is super depressed without Bella, so he tries to anger the big, scary Volturi -- who are Italian vampire extraordinaires or something -- so they'll just end his sad, miserable life already. Bella and Edward's "sister" Alice run off to Italy to stop Edward from ticking off the Volturi, and then they all return to Washington where everything is hunky dory and there's a prom and all that trite high school romantic comedy crap.

Eclipse is more about Bella's relationship with Jacob the werewolf, as well as how werewolf and vampires apparently hate each other. There's a problem when some "newborn" vampires start to threaten the area, and apparently they're all about some Bella, because honestly, who isn't? Since Jacob is in love with Bella, the werewolves want to help, and the vampires obviously do, too. So, this book is all about Bella reconciling her relationships with arch enemies and enemies working together and... whatever, I don't care. It's predictable and stupid. The end.

My favorite part of the entire book involves Edward and Bella discussing Bella's favorite book, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, which, just in case you aren't familiar, is about some useless girl (Cathy) who has more than one man (most importantly, Heathcliff) pining after her for no apparent reason. (Sound familiar?) Edward isn't much of a fan, and he says that he feels like it would be a much better book if either Cathy or Heathcliff had any redeeming qualities. Seriously? Couldn't agree with you more, Edward. I can think of a few books -- perhaps an entire series -- that would be a bit better if the main characters were likable at all. Bella responds to Edwards comment by saying that she thinks the point of Wuthering Heights is that they don't have any redeeming qualities.

...

......... Is that supposed to make me feel better for reading this garbage, or was that Stephanie Meyer's way of making herself feel better? Not sure, but I don't actually feel any better about having wasted so many hours on reading this trash.

Read April 9, 2010 to April 13, 2010

1/5 stars

-- C