My initial (honest) reaction to finishing Breaking Dawn last night
Ok, now that I've slept on it, this book--it's so bad it's almost ineffable.
Like we were promised no new characters, so fans could relish in the plot surrounding the characters they love. Instead, what we got were like 80 new vampire characters, none of whom were developed enough for us to care about them in any real sense. So while Garrett is all awesome and stuff, we know nothing about Garrett, don't really care that he gets with Kate (who we also barely know) and whatever, the fail. The fail.
Nessie's creepy rate of consciousness-building floors me. Shes' already totally cognizant by the battle. What is the point, seriously, of having Bella be a mother, if all the hard stuff (i.e. RAISING HER) is taken care of either by her freakish brain or her creepy "uncle" or her creepy "aunt." Like what was it so important to Bella's characterization to have a baby, if she was only going to neglect it? I'm really upset that the central theme of this book is that Bella never has to give up anything or work at anything because everything is simply given to her; it's like Smeyer literally sat down while plotting this book out and said "How can Bella have her cake and eat it, too?"
And Edward? Edward doesn't really seem to give a shit whether it lives or dies, save for the occasional scowl when Jacob hints at his future with it. Which is incredibly out of character for him. I'm a fan of the series almost entirely because of Edward. I didn't like New Moon at all because he wasn't in it. And in this book, he's in it decisively less because the narrator is too busy cooing about her babyshit to remember that she's married. I found it impossible to read huge sections of her narration because she's so woefully inarticulate (funny thing about writers is that they mask their poor writing via poor first-person narrative). His character was relegated to the status of a secondary Carlisle, someone who just makes sure things are ok rather than someone whose thought processes and emotions the reader got to see. This I found frustrating seeing as he's the baby's frikkin' father and it was so important for Smeyer to have them have this stupid baby in the first place.
Like the popularity of the books is objectively centered around the relationship between Bella and Edward. By introducing a character which bumps Edward off his pedestal, the "magic" I guess, is gone. Why? Well, we've known Bella and Edward through 4 books and we wanted to know how they'd fare. We know Nessie's character for less than half of a book and have thus not grown attached to her as a real central character. We care more about Alice leaving than we do Nessie living, but because Stephenie Meyer is trying to beat home this idea that a woman's life is not complete without child, we get hundreds of pages describing a fucking baby no one really cares about. It was a baby pushed on Bella by plot, totally incongruent with her character and the little bit we know about her personality developed in the previous three books.
And all the dropped fucking storylines...
Hey remember all that talk about Tanya and her epic beauty and implied intentions towards Edward and the coming catfight between Bella for his affection? Ha, no, that plotlne dropped like a hot potato.
Hey remember that plotline where we thought Bella would have an aversion to human blood? Ha, not addressed.
Hey remember Leah and the readers' growing sympathy with her and hope that meyer might resolve her storyline? Ha, nope.
Jacob I actually sympathized with for the first time because he was totally aware of how fucked up this plotline got and, much like the disgruntled fan, shrugged his shoulders and waited it out to see what would happen.
I'm so disappointed with this book, it's absurd.