The Ravenous Bibliophage: Stephenie Meyer - Breaking Dawn
Please welcome the newest addition to the Weekly Geek family, Laurel Fuller. Laurel will be writing The Ravenous Bibliophage - a feature not afraid to tell you what books are crap and why. Enjoy! --Chris
We've all seem them in the window as we walk past Borders or Barnes and Noble. The flat black covers with the striking red-and-white imagery, wrapped around a set of (now) four novels as thick as the later Harry Potters. They are the Twilight series, Stephenie Meyer's wildly successful vampire romance aimed at teenagers and whoever else gets the urge to read Young Adult books every now and then. I started reading them because A) I like vampires, and B) I want to write fantasy-horror for a Young Adult audience one day, and I felt like sizing up the competition. The good news is the series is finally, finally over; the bad news is I vaporized a solid two months reading every word.
The series follows the obsessive, tumultuous relationship between Bella Swan, a mortal teenager, and Edward Cullen, a forever seventeen-year-old vampire. The Cullen clan, a coven of seven, has learned to coexist peacefully with the humans in perpetually gloomy Forks, Washington by maintaining a 'vegetarian' diet of mountain lions and grizzly bear. Through a handful of near-miss conflicts with more traditionally-minded vamps and a tacked-on love triangle spotlighting Bella's werewolf best friend, Jacob, the pair somehow find a way to make it work. In Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward get married and embark on a honeymoon during which Bella gets pregnant (how a vampire can get a human pregnant is a subject of intense debate on the 'net, by fans and haters alike) and taken swiftly back to the Cullen household to be closely monitored. More near-misses ensue, including the possibility of the baby being a bloody-thirsty and dangerous 'immortal child,' and an averted showdown with the Volturi, the badass law enforcers of vampires everywhere. With a little help from their (previously unmentioned) global support network of friendly vampires, the Cullens manage to turn a would-be-epic-battle-scene into a polite diplomatic discussion over how Bella Jr. isn't a threat at all, and the Volturi go their merry way without causing any real damage. After that, it's a clean and tidy Happy Ever After for the immortal family of three.
So, what exactly didn't I like about this book? First there are the uneven, inconsistent traits of our protagonists. Bella is described as clumsy almost to the point of being handicapped, but somehow manages to cook every day for her father (even on her wedding day - this is where the usually dormant feminist in me reappeared, wailing like a harpy) without once lighting anything on fire or losing any fingers to a carving knife. After begging Edward since book one to make her a vampire ASAP, she suddenly decides that she might enjoy a couple more years of being human after all. (The deal was he would change her, but only if she agreed to marry him. Her reluctance to marry the 'godlike' man of her dreams is a subject of some confusion to me, but the pregnancy takes care of this inexplicable plot 'twist' in the end.) There's more, but you get the general idea. To be fair, I liked Bella okay up until about halfway through book one. She was sarcastic and witty, she drove an ugly vintage Chevy that she defended practically to the death, and she was well read. It wasn't until she met Edward that her personality went to mush, and she became a love-struck zombie. (The lesson here, kids, is that finding your 'soul mate' immediately negates whatever other interests or ambitions you may have previously had for your life.)
Next, there's Edward. A Harlequin-worthy clichéd romantic lead if I ever saw one. He's described using the following adjectives, with little exception, throughout the series: godlike, angelic, perfect, beautiful, flawless, etc. As for what he actually looks like, there's the eyes - 'topaz' when he's well-fed, 'black' or 'onyx' when he's thirsty, and in that way identical to every other vampire in the story - and his hair, which is 'bronze' or 'tawny'. That's it. This vapid description reemerges every time Edward makes an appearance, which helps in escalating this work to its 500-ish page per book quota. He describes himself as dangerous, and warns Bella that hanging out with him could be hazardous to her safety, but never once causes her any lasting physical harm.
A lot of the characters surrounding Bella and Edward are much more unique and interesting than the two lovebirds: There's Alice, a pixie-like sweetheart of a vamp who can see the future, and a dead-ringer for Death from the Sandman graphic novels; Jasper, a Civil War veteran with a spider's web of scars covering his face and, and a long, bloody history with renegade 'nomad' vamps in the South; and Leah Clearwater, a feisty she-wolf in Jacob's pack, with a bark that matches her bite. I've thought for a long time that if told by someone else, this story might be tolerable after all, and Jacob is one of my favorites. He's Bella's best friend, wishes he was more, but (after a mind-boggling180 in book three) has begrudgingly moved over seeing how happy she is with Edward. His narration is blunt, funny, and shockingly well-paced considering the waffle that comes before and afterward. My one complaint is that he makes his voice heard so briefly (around two hundred pages, total), and in only one section out of a four-book set. He tells the horrific story of Bella's pregnancy with a consistent style and an unbiased, ironic eye, hinting at Meyer's potential for something better than anything she's shown us thus far. It's also just plain weird to introduce a new narrative device so late in the story, and it's clear from various fan responses that the change was not universally loved. If this section were longer, or if more of the preceding story were told in this way, I would be all over it - and I don't think I'd be alone. It seems to me that Meyer has for some reason focused on the most boring aspects of her story, puffing them up to the point of ridiculousness, and left the bits with the greatest intrigue and uniqueness undeveloped on the sidelines.
There's also this weird, clunky explanation about a varying number of chromosomes to explain away the fundamental differences between vampires and werewolves. First of all, yawn. Second, it's not generally a good idea to mix modern science with fantasy, even to ground your universe in the real world. George Lucas learned that the hard way when fans cried foul at the 'midichlorian' idea. (I'll explain why Star Wars is fantasy and not science fiction some other time.)
But apart from the poor character development, inept research and grammatical sins that any editor with half a brain should have extinguished before this thing ever went to print, my biggest complaint with Breaking Dawn is that it didn't give me the payoff I was hoping for. Stephenie Meyer has a habit of building suspense, and doing it better with each subsequent novel, but without having it lead to an exciting conclusion. Imagine a sling-shot: The author pulls back, building tension, building tension, throughout several small episodes of the seven hundred plus page novel, but instead of letting the rock fly and smash whatever windows it may, she just puts it down and decides to go play with something else. Perhaps by telling us how gorgeous and perfect Edward is again, in case we forgot.
One example of this happening is Bella's pregnancy: Although it's a testament to Meyer's poor planning and inattention to detail regarding her own rules for this supernatural universe (she stated in previous books that the only fluid left in a vampire's body once it's changed is venom - no blood, no sperm), I loved this section to bits. It's exactly my brand of creepy/cool, what with the fetus growing at an alarming rate that can't be slowed or predicted, Bella's skin going cadaver pale (except around the belly, where it's veined with black) as the demon spawn inside her sucks away every bit of nourishment for itself, and the gore-tastic birthing scene at the end. Some folks feel that Bella drinking blood to satisfy the vampire half of the fetus's needs is another inconsistency, because of Bella's previous tendency to faint at the sight of blood, but I disagree. Pregnant women often get weird urges that clash with their previous tastes. Hell, I might be moved to eat asparagus of my own volition if/when I ever get pregnant - who knows? This is not the problem. This section is told completely from Jacob's point of view as well, which spares us the nauseating 'Edward's so flawless and wonderful!' descriptions, which is not a problem either. The problem is that after all the foreshadowing of 'immortal children' and how dangerously uncontrollable they are, all the warnings and nightmares that Bella endures before and during this episode, all the gut-churning details of the violent way in which Bella Jr. is brought into the world, it turns out that she's just a normal, half-human half-vampire, cheerful, precious baby girl - no threat to her family or the surrounding population whatsoever. No, really - she's not an 'immortal child' after all. Gah - all that classic horror creepiness, thwarted! It's tragic!
Another source of annoyance is that Bella doesn't have to suffer any consequences, or even give up anything, by joining the Cullen clan and becoming a vampire. Even as a mother, she doesn't have to do any of the difficult, new mom stuff. Her new vampire sisters dress the baby, Carlisle (Edward's maker/father figure) feeds her, Jacob plays with her, and the kid even sleeps through the night - from the first day onward! - so that Edward and Bella can pick up where they left off on their honeymoon without any interruptions. (Again - gah!)
There are of course more flaws that I could wax intellectual over - and more signs of missed opportunities for improvement - but I want to add that this series was not a complete waste of time in the end. After slogging through the teeth-gnashing imperfections in the Twilight books, I began to notice some of the same things in my various unpublished works, so I guess I should thank her for pointing them out to me, the better to keep me from embarrassing myself once my own stories see daylight. And there is still some potential buried under all the repetition and romantic mush; her unique spin on the vampire myth is unarguably original, even if the Cullens are way too soft for my tastes. Call me a traditionalist, but I like my vampires with a bit more bite. (Pun intended.)
