ErinSlick

but right now I feel horribly cheated.

I’m two-thirds of the way through Breaking Dawn and I can’t bring myself to finish it. And that really annoys me.

I apologize if you all are more on it than I’ve been lately, but Breaking Dawn is the fourth book in the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer. According to my tween sources, these books have pre-pubescent girls and their mothers chomping at the bit for every crumb of information about the upcoming movie.

Since I have this obsession with getting books without the movie cover, I thought I’d buy and read them before the movie comes out in December. Like I said, I love me a good vampire story. And I have to say that the first book, Twilight, delivers. It’s a super fast read and the author does a great job of setting up the mythology of the vampire world that she has created in her mind. You can see each character and for the most part they all behave as normal people in this mythological world would behave. The teenagers sound like teenagers and the adults behave like adults. The suspension of disbelief is critical in fantasy books and it never becomes an issue here. The plot is enough to drive the action and the ending leaves the story resolved. I liked it.

I’ll even give that to the second and third books, although I hand out the praise in decreased amounts as the books go on. The story in book two, New Moon, is actually good. There is real tension there. Not as compelling as the first, but she gives us enough conflict to make it work. And our heroine, Bella, only starts to become mildly annoying.

By book three, Eclipse, I was totally ahead of the plot the whole time I was reading. I realize that this may be because I’m an adult reading something meant for a teen audience. I was also surprised at how she handled the love triangle. I LOVE a good love triangle. Hell, I think Janet Evanovich has written one of the best, and most realistic, recurring triangles of all time with her Stephanie Plum novels. Smartly-written triangles avoid becoming trite when done with a deft hand, but here, Bella’s passive-aggressive and fickle behavior is annoying and just mean. The boys’ actions are only slightly more realistic, but overall, I think the boys are written better.

My biggest problem with book three is with how the action unfolds. Meyer actually sets up an intriguing mystery, but then doesn’t seem to know how to deal with it. The main action in the climax of the book happens off-stage, which is so disappointing. She creates real villains and the threat of them throughout the entire book, but then gets rid of them too quickly for my taste. Don’t create formidable opponents and then make them disappear with a conversation and one punch. Give us the grand showdown – an injured heroine, a manster to the rescue, a finale to make us yearn for the next book. Otherwise, it’s a disappointment.

By book four, Meyer assassinates pretty much every character she has created. Instead of true character arcs, we’re given dramatic changes in attitude and behavior with very little impetus over a very short period of time. She even has characters outright break the rules of the mythological world she so carefully created over three books. And she introduces a VERY LAME plot device to explain those breaks. The storyline becomes harder to follow because the perspective shifts to another character for several hundred pages for reasons that are never adequately explained. She brings back the villains from book three and frankly, I don’t even care enough to keep reading.

Given the story flow, it seems to me that book four may not have been planned in her original saga. I know not of what I speak, but my gut tells me that this books exists because some publisher saw dollar signs and persuaded the author to write another book. I have author friends who say this happens all the time. If that IS the case, I feel very sorry for Meyer. She created great characters with a solid story arc and then tried to tack on an additional book to an otherwise ended story.

In my head, the saga actually ends with book three. The loose ends are tied up nicely and the characters are left with their dignity in tact. If you like romances, vampire stories, or vampire-romances, then I say read the first three books. Everyone should skip book four.

I tried to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but you can get detailed reviews (with spoilers) and fan reactions to the last book at Goodreads. I also have an opinion on the very best part of this book, but don’t want to ruin it for anyone reading it. Let me know when and we can discuss.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get my vampire/human/werewolf/love/lust/obsession fix from Buffy, the gold standard against which I hold all vampire fiction.