Breaking Dawn, book 1

The third book in the Twilight series is broken down into three “books”.  As the novel is about 750 pages long, I thought I’d review it by book, starting with the first and shortest.  There will, of course, be spoilers here.

The first book centers around Bella and Edward’s wedding and honeymoon.  It begins by showing us Bella’s new car that Edward got her, a ridiculously expensive, ridiculously hard to get car.  It embarrasses her.  Again, Bella seems really silly.  I couldn’t help thinking, “Yeah, you’ve got an inhumanly rich and handsome fiance who wants to give you the world.  That’s gotta suck.”  It is a bit sad not having her old truck there, though.  It was practically a character itself.

At least we got to see the reactions of her parents to the news of their engagement.  The way the last book ended, I was a bit worried that had been skipped over.  Charlie’s initial assumption that she was pregnant, while totally predictable, was also kinda funny.  What teenagers sit there and calmly tell the girl’s dad that she’s pregnant by beginning with, “We have good news”?

Jasper and Emmett showing up to drag Edward off to his bachelor party, which apparently was going to involve more mountain lions and grizzly bears than strippers, was rather amusing.  Actually, I’d kind of like to read about that little trip.  The idea of them sitting him down after killing some large predators and giving him what was at least in part a sex talk… is pretty funny.  Also, when Jasper peeked in Bella’s window, reassured her and winked before he left reminded me of that part of Midnight Sun where he initially wanted to find and kill her, which was the whole reason Edward started coming to her at night in the first place.  Oh, how things might have been different.

The story of the immortal children was interesting, and actually made perfect sense.  This idea of vampires freezing not only physically, but mentally, developmentally, at the age they’re at when they’re changed (a term I like far better than the overused ‘turned’) seems to be somewhat new.  In this world, with these rules, it seems totally natural that vampire children would be outlawed.

The wedding chapters involved a great deal of description of getting ready and the frills of the wedding than a lot of other people would have written.  Again, it’s indulgent.  But maybe that’s the draw of these books.  It’s fun to read about Alice dragging Bella off to get her ready, about all the hubbub about the day.  It’s a girly thing, I guess.  I thought it was terribly sweet that Carlisle was Edward’s best man, especially since that avoided the problem of which one of his brothers would he pick.  And if he’d had both Jasper and Emmett as his best men, given Alice being Bella’s maid of honor, it would kinda suck for Rosalie, being the one really blatantly left out.  It was also really sweet that Seth was there, that at least one of the werewolves wasn’t prejudiced against them and could be friends with the vampires.  That’s nice to see.  The description of Edward dancing with Esme afterward made me think, what would Edward’s human mother have thought if she’d known it would be another woman dancing the mother/son dance with her son on his wedding day?  Seems like that would hurt a little.  On the other hand, she’d probably have been thrilled just to know he’d get a wedding day, that she’d done the right thing in asking Carlisle to save him, even if it meant that Edward didn’t really even remember her.

Once again, we’re reminded that the Cullens are probably the richest people on the planet, and I think my suspension of disbelief on that matter is being stretched to the limit.  Not only do they have their own private island, which they seem to spend very little time in, but it’s got a cleaning staff and a really nice house with a plasma TV and more DVDs than a rental store.  Seriously, there’s just no explanation for that kind of excess.

Now, I don’t want to sound pervy, but… Meyer’s been pretty dang descriptive so far when it comes to Bella and Edward’s physical relationship.  She’s never shied away from giving us details, as evidenced by the 2-3 pages she spent describing a single kiss in the last book (although that was with Jacob, but still).  So why is it that when it finally gets down to them having sex, we’re given one of those scenes like in old movies where all you see is the guy sweeping the girl off her feet and carrying her to the bedroom?  There’s not even a reaction of any kind when he sees her naked for the first time.  I mean, come on, the story’s been building to this since some time in the first book and now Meyer’s decided to be coy?  Naturally, this is a book for teens, not adults, so it’s not like she could be completely detailed, but a bit more of what they thought and how they reacted in the moment would have been nice, and would have been more in keeping with how she’s handled things so far.

That said, Edward’s rather violent tendencies are pretty dang funny, even if all we get to see is the aftermath.  The whole pillow-biting and headboard-destroying is just… well, funny.  And the poor negligee… hehe… the term ‘bodice ripper’ comes to mind.  I do have to question Bella’s sense, though, being so willing to risk him slipping up rather than waiting the couple years after she’s changed for her mind to settle down back to normal.

Edward’s going into complete shock when he realized she was pregant was pretty funny, and I do wonder what was going through his head then.  I think a lot of people take issue with Edward’s immediate desire to abort the baby, but I have to say, it doesn’t bother me.  I mean, he knows far better than Bella how dangerous the baby is, that it’s not like a normal baby.  I’m not sure how he knows at this point.  It’s obviously not common knowledge that it’s possible for a vampire and a human to have a child, or he would have taken some precaution to make sure it didn’t happen.  I imagine there may have been some legends, some horrible stories of such a thing happening, about a woman getting pregnant by a vampire and then suffering a horrible, gruesome death.  Stories that no one really believed until it was too late.  And it’s been pretty well established that the most important thing to Edward is to keep Bella safe.  I’m not surprised that he doesn’t have the same instinctive reaction to protect the baby that Bella does.  After all, he can’t feel it moving inside him.  It’s not all that uncommon, as I understand it, for some men to not really feel connected to their children until they actually see them, and for someone as single-minded as Edward, it’s not surprising at all that he’s one of them.  For that matter, I can’t imagine it would be easy for any man to have to choose between the woman he loves and a baby he’s never even seen.  Though I have to think they didn’t exactly have a family meeting before deciding to go ahead with Edward’s plan.  I mean, Carlisle’s reaction makes sense.  He knows probably better than anyone how deadly giving birth to a vampire child would be for Bella.  And given the fact that he knows Edward would kill himself if she died, it pretty much comes down to an unfortunate matter of one life or two.  Besides that, I think he’d respect Edward’s wishes in this matter, knowing that it’s probably the only thing that would save Bella, that he couldn’t offer any other alternative.  He wouldn’t be happy about, though, and I imagine he’d still try to come up with some other option.  However, while he would go along with the necessity of it, I have to think Esme wouldn’t be all that thrilled with her son for deciding to kill his child, or with her husband for doing it, considering that she tried to commit suicide after losing her own baby.  And Rosalie, of course, would probably be infuriated that such a thing could happen in her own house (particularly since she’d likely care more about the child than Bella)–Bella was smart (for once) in calling her for help.  Jasper, practical guy that he is, would almost certainly support Edward’s decision, unless he thought for some reason that saving the baby was more worthwhile than saving Bella.  Of course, if he could sense emotions coming from the baby (and given the rate of development, that seems like a possibility), that would probably affect his view on the matter, as well.  I’m not sure how Emmett and Alice would react.  Alice would probably see the outcome, or possible outcomes, and that would affect which way she’d feel about it.  Emmett would probably also go along with Edward’s decision, but I think he’d be really depressed about it, because he seems like the kind of guy who would love to have a little kid around the house to play with and be a bad influence on.  That’s what I’m guessing, anyway.  Let’s see if I’m right…