Thoughts on Breaking Dawn

I have finished Breaking Dawn. I did not enjoy this book very much, because I never wanted Bella to become a vampire, and I never liked Edward. I did find Edward bearable in this book, at least when he and Bella were not kissing and when he was not described as "perfect."

While the author's poor grammar quit bothering me partway through the first book, I began to notice it again in this book, no doubt because the book lost my attention at times. Bella's sex-crazed desire of Edward is just repulsive, so during those scenes, I tended to focus on the grammar and poor descriptions.

Here is a sentence from page 480 that stood out as particularly awful.

I was about to take advantage of the fact that he hadn't gotten around to setting me back on my feet and that his wits-scramblingly beautiful face was only inches away when he said, "We're lucky Esme thought to add an extra room. No one was planning for Ness—Renesmee."

What a mouthful. The sentence is awkward, but the worst part is "wits-scramblingly." Enough said.

Now let's prepare to puke. This is how Bella sees Edward on page 482.

I could really appreciate him now—could properly see every beautiful line of his perfect face, of his long, flawless body with my strong new eyes, every angle and every plane of him. I could taste his pure, vivid scent on my tongue and feel the unbelievable silkiness of his marble skin under my sensitive fingertips.

I am just so happy for you Bella... not.

Here is another sentence that sounds bad from page 679.

They came in a rigid, formal formation.

A "formal formation?" Eliminating "formal" would have produced the same mental image without sounding stupid. Isn't an editor supposed to fix problems like that? Or, did the editor fix even worse problems? Could the books have been worse before they were edited?

I could have marked hundreds of poorly-constructed sentences throughout the four books. Rather, I spent my time enjoying the books. It was during the moments when I found the story less interesting that I paid more attention to the grammar.

I enjoyed the books, but not as much as I could have. The author's endless mentions of Romeo and Juliet and other literature convinced me that Edward and Bella were going to die (By death, I mean cease to exist.). I dreaded the ending since I thought it would be full of destruction. Oddly, it isn't. I think the author should have dropped all of the references to literature and let us figure it out for ourselves.

The final "battle" scene in Breaking Dawn is all talk and no fighting. Literally. The Cullens and the Volturis reason out their differences instead of fighting. How lame. The Volturis go back to Italy, leaving the Cullens to live in peace. How does that resolve anything? The Volturis could always come back as soon as the book ends and destroy everyone. It reminds me of those Friday the 13th movies in which Jason is "killed" at the end of each movie yet comes back to life at the beginning of the next movie.

Several aspects of the plot are excessively creepy, like Renesmee's birth and Jacob's imprinting, but the events didn't upset me as much as they did a bunch of people. I guess I wasn't as bothered because I expect those types of events in books that involve vampires and such, so I was not surprised.

What I found missing in books 3 and 4 are Bella's high school friends. Her friends are no longer important after the first book. Bella's friends make a few appearances here and there throughout the last three books, but the characters are missing from most of the plot. I would have liked to have seen one or two of the teenagers, like Jessica or Mike, bitten by a vampire and pulled into the main plot. How about killing one or two of them to add some conflict? Speaking of conflict, the final "battle" scene would have been more effective if some fighting would have occurred with a few vampires destroyed. It just fell flat.

I could say a lot more, but I'm going to stop here for now. I did enjoy reading the four books, but probably not enough to ever read them again. I have some more thoughts which I'll cover in my next post.