Book #62 with added rage!

Breaking Dawn
by Stephanie Meyer

Oh, what can I say about this book? Hey, I know: Renesmee. This was the worst idea, the worst character, the worst conclusion -- and the worst name -- I have ever encountered in a series that I liked.

So you have this series of books that, as cheesy as they are in some ways -- Edward is literally too perfect, both as a vampire and as a boyfriend, and it's obnoxious from page one of book one -- are quite well written, with a large cast of characters who are all very enjoyable in their own way. The Cullens all have distinct personalities, with the possible exception of Esme, and each of them is intriguing in their own right. The same goes for Bella, and Jacob, and everyone else involved in the stories, from the Volturi to the werewolves to the humans, Billy and Charlie and the Quileutes and Bella's school chums. There were some minor missteps in the earlier books, like Charlie being overobsessed with fishing and baseball and thus giving Bella the freedom to do literally anything she wants, and the climax of the first vampire problem -- James hunting Bella in Twilight -- happening over the course of about two pages, but for the most part, these were excellent books. The characters had genuine problems they had to deal with, and they dealt with them in genuine ways: making mistakes, reacting emotionally and then regretting the things they had done wrong, and so on and so forth. All three books built the character relationships up and up, until they had to come to a head. In the fourth book. The climactic book. When all of the issues would have to be resolved, or at least brought to an ending, if not a satisfying one.

I should have taken the hint from the ending of Twilight.

Because, just like that, with absolutely ridiculous ease and unexplainable miracles, everything works out just fine! In fact, not only is everything just fine, but the plot points that should have led to difficulty and hard compromise, the kind of thing that leaves nobody happy, those things make everything even better than fine! They made everything wonderful! It was even happier than Cinderella and The Princess Diaries and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, all wrapped up in one.

The first problem: Bella and Edward's wedding, which Bella's mother is absolutely going to freak out about because Bella is too young and this is the one thing Renee opposes more stridently than anything else, as we have heard for three books, the wedding which scares Bella to death: no problem. Because, miraculously, Renee doesn't mind. Because Edward is the perfect boyfriend, and thus the perfect husband, for her too-young-to-be-married daughter. And since Alice handles literally everything, and of course, everything is perfect in every possible way down to the smallest detail, even Bella can't help but love her wedding. Isn't that just too, too perfect.

The second problem: sex with an immortal who can crush boulders and juggle Hondas and who eats people and who cannot resist the pull of his lover's scent. I was thinking of Larry Niven's essay, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex," about what would happen if Superman had sex with Lois Lane (Hint: Lois would die. In many different ways.) and expecting this to not quite work out. But when it comes down to it, no problem! Edward can control himself just fine, and even though he beats Bella black and blue unintentionally, somehow, her incredibly gruesome body-covering contusions don't even hurt. Now, even I could see the thinly-veiled analogy for deflowering a virgin, and I know that doesn't always hurt as much as rumor would have it, but this was ridiculous. She bruises easily, okay, so maybe the bruises look worse than they are -- but they're still bruises. Bruises hurt. I can understand Bella not minding too terribly much -- but they should at least hurt!

Next problem, and it's a doozy -- the one much of this novel's tension was supposed to be predicated on: Bella wants to be immortal, but Edward wants her to stay human. And a part of Bella wants to stay human, too, because she's afraid of the pain of transformation, and she doesn't want to be an animalistic Newborn for a year or two, unable to control herself and likely to kill at least some humans when she is overtaken by the thirst. Plus she doesn't want to cut herself off from her parents, plus Jacob will be gone from her life forever, plus there might just be some good things about being alive. But hey: no problem. Because Bella gets pregnant.

That's right. Never mind that Edward's been dead for a hundred years. Never mind that they only have sex once, and even though I know it can happen on one's wedding night and all it takes is once, it is still highly unusual for a child to be conceived the very first time. Never mind that, as Carlisle points out later, they have different numbers of chromosomes and are therefore scientifically, irrevocably, forever and ever amen, completely and totally unable to produce offspring together (And let me just say: the implication that Bella's 23 chromosome pairs and Edward's 25 chromosome pairs can combine to make 24 pairs of chromosomes, just like Jacob has, is the most appalling anti-science I have seen since intelligent design. Shame on Stephanie Meyer for putting that thought in the heads of America's youth.). None of that matters. Because miracles happen. Oh, I know what I'm supposed to think; I'm supposed to think that their love was so true and so perfect that it produced a child. This is what the author intended her audience to think, because her audience is a million prepubescent little girls. This is also why she started the book off with the perfect fairy tale wedding and the perfect fairy tale honeymoon -- and skipped the whole quandary of having to describe sex, because Bella blacks out with sheer ecstasy -- because that's what prepubescent girls want to hear about.

But I resent the implication that having a child makes everything all right. I resent the idea that true love has to produce children. When two people who truly love each other come together, you know what you get? Two happy people. The production of a child does not consummate and complete their love, despite all of the claptrap I read over and over again about how the happy couple's love for each other doesn't decrease but is somehow doubled by the introduction of the little nipper. The production of a child makes the couple into parents, but it does not make them better people, and it does not make them better lovers, and it does not make them a better family. And I hate reading books that say all of those things. And this book did it. So screw you, Stephanie Meyer, and all of the rest of those baby-centric breeders who think that no life is complete until one has added to the world's population. Life is not about making more life, it's about living one's own life. And if anybody should live their own life, it is an eighteen-year-old girl who is deliriously in love.

But no. It's all about the cute little pink baby. And this book is all about the cute little pink baby. Every other problem just -- disappears. Bella is conflicted about becoming immortal? No problem: her labor kills her, and so Edward has to do it to save her life. (And Bella should be horrified and terrified by her unnatural and unpredictable pregnancy which causes her great pain and eventually death -- but no problem, because she's making a cute little pink baby.) Edward will suffer for having caused her the pain of going through the transformation? No problem: she was whacked up on morphine, and though it still hurts, she lies to Edward and convinces him it didn't, and he believes her. Bella will be a horrible brutal newborn for a year or two, eating humans and being all feral and animalistic? No problem: she is in control of herself from day one. No reason, no explanation (Though there's a definite implication that she has to be strong for her cute little pink baby); she just is. Isn't that nice? Bella will have to fake her death and lose her parents? No problem: Charlie decides he doesn't care that his daughter is now an inhuman monster, and so he comes to see her and ignores everything that should have freaked him out completely. Strong implication that he is so enamored of the damn -- I mean, the cute little pink baby that nothing else matters. Rosalie hated and resented Bella for giving up her humanity? No problem: the baby makes everything all right, because Rosalie loves babies so, so much. And, of course, the big one, the problem that has drawn millions of readers into this world and these characters' lives: Jacob loves Bella and Bella loves Jacob, and maybe she'd be better off with Jacob, and he will forever resent her turning into his mortal enemy?

No problem. Jacob imprints on the freaking baby and everything is fine. He doesn't love Bella any more, and now he has to be nice to the vampires, and now the werewolves have to keep the peace with the Cullens, because of the cute little pink baby.

And that's it, that's the book. Oh, the last few chapters deal with the Volturi, who come to destroy the now too-powerful Cullen family, under the mistaken impression (and the handy excuse) that they have broken the greatest vampire taboo and made a vampire baby; that was absolutely the best part of the book, except I had to keep reading over and over again about how Bella would do anything to protect her cute little pink baby, and how everyone who met the cute little pink baby couldn't help but fall in love with her and agree to protect her. Because nobody can resist cute little pink babies, right? Maybe everybody who read this book should go get pregnant and have a cute little pink baby of their own! Wouldn't that be perfect? Then all of our problems would just disappear, just like Bella! Hooray for cute little pink babies! But the Volturi section is only 100 pages out of 750; other than the second best section -- which was Jacob's turn as narrator, while Bella was pregnant and dying (but still happy as a clam, because she knew she was going to have a cute little pink baby, the miracle produced by her pure and eternal love with Edward, which really can't be that pure and perfect if it is only completed by the addition of a cute little pink baby, but I digress) -- the rest of it is wedding, followed by cute little pink baby.

And every time I read that cute little pink baby's horrifying name, I wanted to punch something. Preferably Stephanie Meyer, for influencing an entire generation to commit sacrilegious abominations like Renesmee on their own children. I mean, for god's sake, it sounds like pig Latin. It sounds like gibberish. It's a stupid looking name when you write it down, it's yet another chapter in the American love for bad, ugly, unpronounceable, unfathomable names as long as they are "unique," and, worst of all, it made me dislike a character I genuinely liked all the way up until now because she inflicts it on her child and then gets offended when it gets shortened to the much-cuter Nessie. Because Bella likes the name Renesmee. I hate even typing it. Makes me want to punch myself.

The book is a copout, a child's fantasy at the end of what was, for the most part, a real and interesting story. The characters lose all of their previously excellent depth and dimension, and Meyer's writing -- which is still as good as it ever was -- is ruined by the annoying story she's writing about. Worst of all, this book killed the whole series, because why would I want to go back and read the three books I like, when I know, looming at the end of the path, is Renesmee?

To hell with all cute little pink babies. And to hell with these books.