Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

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IrishTea
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by IrishTea »

I will always be a Stephenie fan, but I haven't made up my mind about Breaking Dawn yet. I know she had this ending in line since the beginning, but to me it felt... out of place. One of the whole messages about this series is THE CHOICE. Will she become a vampire and give everything up or will she stay human and keep everything? We all knew what she was going to pick - but still, there was going to be a choice. But in Breaking Dawn she didn't have to choose anything! She didn't choose to be changed but instead had to be changed to save her life. She didn't even have to give up charlie, a baby, jacob, etc. There is such a thing as too MUCH of a happy ending. Also, I felt like the characters were out-of-character and the writing was not so great.

But I also have to give Stephenie props for taking a risk and writing the ending that SHE wanted.
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Iris Messenger
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by Iris Messenger »

I’m surprised, first of all, by all of the Breaking Dawn hate that’s been showing up all over the twilight communities. Sure, there were a lot of surprises that came along, but really … referring to the book as “the book that shall not be named”. I can sympathize with a little bit of the dislike — my first reaction to a lot of the book was face-palming and rolling of eyes and annoyance. After digesting all of the book for a day, and reading the book for a second time though, I’ve gotten over the annoyance.

I do wish things hadn't been so "run off into sunny fields hallmark-moment" for Bella in her new body and self. IrishTea put it quite well earlier:
One of the whole messages about this series is THE CHOICE. Will she become a vampire and give everything up or will she stay human and keep everything? We all knew what she was going to pick - but still, there was going to be a choice. But in Breaking Dawn she didn't have to choose anything! She didn't choose to be changed but instead had to be changed to save her life. She didn't even have to give up charlie, a baby, jacob, etc. There is such a thing as too MUCH of a happy ending.
After all the scathing reviews of “Edward gets human Bella pregnant”, it is slightly humbling to have Bella, in canon, become pregnant. Most of us thought it couldn’t happen. My mother when reading the books had no problem wrapping her head around pregnant Bella. This was because she’d been just reading the books, not the Q and A sessions with Stephenie Meyer that I had been reading prior to the release of Breaking Dawn. So in a way, by all the fanfic and personal correspondence and Q and A's.

I must admit that the name Renesme is, in my opinion, awkward. I did enjoy Bella’s reaction to Jacob’s dubbing her “Nessie”.

I really enjoyed the insight it gave into other members of the vampire world, particularly the depth it gave to the Denali coven. It was such a relief that Tanya was quite nice, and not the jealous shrew that she’s often written as in fanfic. I also enjoyed seeing more of the Clearwaters. Seth and Leah are just awesome characters!

After reading some more Q and A’s by Stephenie Meyer, my quibbles with the logistics of Bella’s pregnancy are gone.
Stephenie Meyer:

One of the longest things about this last year is that I’ve been reading all these quotes that people have been attributing to me that I never said. I had a rough draft of [this story] by the beginning of 2004, so before I ever did a tour or answered any questions or did an interview, I knew where the story was going. … When people said, “Hey, can vampires have babies?” I always said no, because female vampires don’t change at all, and it takes a lot of change for your body to accommodate a fetus, so it’s not possible. But I never said anything about the part that I knew was coming. … It is true … there’s a whole chromosomal-count difference, but venom works a lot of different ways, so for me, it always worked just fine.

— MTV “Twilight Tuesday” interview

So that’s my two cents. While Eclipse is probably my favorite Twilight book, I did enjoy Breaking Dawn — and I'm sure it will grow on me (as it already has ...)
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leahlovetwilight
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by leahlovetwilight »

i liked it and didnt. the thing is, sm gave us exactly what we wanted to get from the ending. bella's happy ending, edwards happy ending, jakes happy ending. with the way it ended, it would be hard to make all fans happy.if someone died, it would have been bad writing. with a happy ending, its a cop out. lose-lose. it was pretty good, and the whole vampire-got-human-pregnant thing, well, she always said that female vamps cant get pregnant. males are aparrently always horny.:P
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JCatter
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by JCatter »

My opinion: I am disappointed that this wasn't as moving of a book as I expected it. The first three I was so emotionally involved that I wept like a baby when Edward left and screamed at Bella to leave Jacob alone. I felt like I was Bella. I could completely identify with her. In this book, everything is all...wrong. It doesn't seem like there is a challenge to overcome anything. Yes she becomes a vampire, which I think most of us were looking forward to, but it's just...not there. What's the struggle? It also got a bit too sci-fi with the "thing" growing in Bella's stomach and the fact that she had a baby seemed so out of character for her. She didn't seem like she wanted children and neither did Edward. I was happy to know of their "love making" because that did make it seem more real with their marriage and the fact that they spent 17 days on honeymoon, seems really odd. I know they didn't have anything else to do. The fact that they kinda told Charlie and that Bella was able to keep away from him and him out of her life just suddenly, as if being married changes that. He didn't mind Edward, or at least it appeared it did.

I feel like this was a spoiler and we're waiting for the real story.
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WhenTheSunGoesDown
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by WhenTheSunGoesDown »

I liked it but then I didn't. I was totally shocked by little Nessie but then Idk it was a little disappointing not as good as the others.

but i still loved it :D
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Murphy
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by Murphy »

I'm deffinetly in the middle. I found it neither amazing not terrible. Slightly dissapointing since I had so many expectations but I don't hate the book, it's just not my favourite.
A few of my problems with it were that most of the characters just seemed so out of character. They just said and done things I wouldn't have thought of them doing in a million years. For example Bella basically begging for sex. I was also dissapointed with the fact that there was no real climax. I waited for the whole of the third section waiting for a battle or something but it never came. Everything just turned out too happy and easy.

I never really felt that there was the romance of the last 3 books. When it boils down to it, the books are centered around romance and I felt that in Breaking Dawn it just wansn't there anymore. Sure, there was the honeymoon but look how that turned out.

Renesmee, I think, was a great character and Stephenie did really well with her but for me, it was the fact that I was so shocked and lost that I was basically always thinking "HUH? What?!" So I never really understood the character.

I did love Jacobs book though. Wonderfully written. It was so unteresting to see a different POV of the pack and even getting to know Leah better! Seth was fantastic too, I wish we could have known him a bit more. There were alot of funny parts too like Emmetts pervy comments and Jacobs blonde jokes and Bellas sarcasim.

I think IrishTea and Iris Messenger both had very good points too. My favourite fron Iris Messenger was the point she made that her mum read the books and was able to accept the fact that Bella was preganant because there was no rule that she couldn't since she hadn't read the Q and As like everyone else.

But anyway, I think if I read over it again I'll like it a bit more. I just know it isn't my favourite and that I had too many expectations for it.
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by Kyoko »

i'm in the middle on liking it alot and not liking it at all... weird? yes i know.... i like the book alot, sure but it was the ending i didn't like. i felt that it ended to soon and that Breaking dawn could have been made into two books. there were things that were lefted untouched like the new werewolfs. i don't no i liked it but i didn't. maybe it was just to much information to take in...?! :roll:
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Chaos
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by Chaos »

I liked and disliked this book (well, obviously.) I will probably update this at least once as I think of more things. As you can probably guess, there are SPOILERS in this review.

Things I liked...

Jacob Black, oddly enough. I've never been a Jacob fan; I found him annoying throughout New Moon and some of Eclipse. But, for some reason, he just grew on me in this book. Compared with Edward's somewhat dark, brooding mood, Jacob was fairly lighthearted and fun. I love his sense of humor. He tells it like it is.

The wolves in general. I actually find them more interesting than the Cullens, as far as their social structure goes. I also ended up feeling kinda sorry for Leah.

And things I disliked...

Renesmee. Renesmee?! Really? That poor kid. Bella should not be allowed to name children. I was okay with the character herself, though. She was charming.

The pregnancy. While I'm okay with how Nessie (I like that better, actually) turned out, I don't think she should have ever been part of the plot. She seemed very random, and impossible (I don't understand how Bella got pregnant. I just don't.)

Jacob imprinting on Nessie. I actually don't see this as gross; I know that Jacob doesn't want to be her lover or anything close to it for awhile. It's just the fact that it was too convenient. Bella's choice between Jacob and Edward was a major theme since New Moon, and bam! Now she gets to keep both of them.

As I mentioned before, Edward's dark mood. For one thing, he seemed hardly there after the honeymoon. And when you did read about him, he was angsting over something. Where's the Twilight Edward we fell in love with?

The end battle. Well, it wasn't even really a battle. It was definitely anticlimactic, and I didn't really see a point to it, other than one of the Denali sisters dying.

Several things about Bella bothered me (but, to be honest, I've never been a big fan of her character anyway.) One, she was freaking obsessed with sex with Edward. I understand she wants to get closer to him, and I'm not at all surprised at the sexual activity they want to share, but c'mon. When she wasn't occupied with Renesmee, she wanted sex with Edward. I also didn't like how she was suddenly "Super Bella" after turning into a vampire. She faced almost no problems with being a newborn. There should have been at least some struggle.

Overall, I just thought the book seemed to drag. I like Stephenie Meyer's writing style in general, but it seemed like for Breaking Dawn, she was just trying to think up things to move the plot along. And I wasn't satisfied with the way she wrapped up the characters. Yes, I realize this is Bella and Edward's story, and she did a good job of finishing them. But the minor characters are also part of their story. Only Bella, Edward, the Cullens, Nessie and Jake were given a full ending. What about Charlie? Did he ever find out the whole truth? What about her mom? All the others at school? What about the rest of the pack, what was their future? Etc.
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by museicalking »

Most people should be in the middle- the book is awesome but being a vampire expert...in none of them should there be a talk of babies!!! i mean- i am going to probably stick to first three, but occasionally go over BD. The concept is original, and SM makes it all sound awesome, but still babies cant be born from any vampire parents. BD is addicting to read and you cant stop- but there could have been a better plot! :mrgreen:
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Re: Breaking Dawn-I'm in the middle about it

Post by princess_sparkle »

I'm in the middle about Breaking Dawn... It was the perfect ending to the Twilight saga, but maybe that is my problem with it, maybe it was just too perfect.
The first time I read the book, incidentally within the first two hours of owning it, I loved it. Everything that I wanted for my favorite characters happened just as I would have wanted it to... Bella married Edward, Jacob found someone else, Rosalie got to help bring up a baby, Charlie got to see his daughter and his granddaughter... the list of happy endings could go on forever.
When I read it again, I disliked it. The rush of cheerful surprise from the first reading was over, and was replaced by disappointment. It reminded me of the Epilogue of Harry Potter, in that everything was just too good to be true. The novel's end was devoid of anything resembling angst, which I enjoy to read the most, and instead read like a fluffy fairy tale... And the all lived happily ever after, except for the fans!
So, overall it is an enjoyable read, and I defy anyone who has read the previous three books to be able resist reading it, but it is (in my opinion) the weakest of the series.
I still bow to the incredible Stephenie Meyer though...
~Sparkle

PS - I may edit this post at some points, when I get my thoughts more organized. :roll:
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