"Breaking Dawn" review (WARNING: SPOILERS)

Hey everybody. Well, as the title of this posting will probably clue you into, I recently finished "Breaking Dawn," the last book in the Twilight Saga. You may have heard that there's been a huge backlash against this book: many Twilight fans are very unhappy with how things play out. In particular, a large number of fans thought that it went into really strange directions, and that the overall vibe of the story didn't quite gel with the previous three books in the series.

Well, personally, I liked "Breaking Dawn." I don't think it's perfect by any means, but I felt like most of what happened made sense when compared to what happens in the other books. It's true that many different plot elements in the story didn't go in the directions I was expecting them to, but I like it when stories do that (which also explains why I'm one of the few people who actually liked the last two Pirates movies).

Unlike some people, however, I wasn't surprised at all that Jacob imprinted on Renesmee; in fact I was expecting it as soon as they hinted the baby might be a girl. And speaking of Jacob, I also really enjoyed his storyline: how he became prepared to kill the Cullens only to find himself eventually defending them...I thought that part of the story was very well done. I liked how Stephenie Meyer switched perspectives between Bella and Jacob during the story, although it also made me wish she would have gone even farther with it and told more of the story from multiple viewpoints (for example, I would have really liked to read Alice's description of the journey she and Jasper took, and maybe an epilogue done from Renesmee's perspective). And while we're on it, I thought Renesmee's name was kind of stupid too...until everybody started calling her Nessie and subsequently pissing Bella off; I thought that was pretty funny.

However, I did have some major issues with Bella's lack of problems becoming a vampire. I didn't really mind at the time, but thinking about it afterward I would have liked to see her have to deal with that a lot more; it felt like it was done to save time more than anything else. I also thought that the whole revelation that the "werewolves" weren't actually werewolves was dumb and unnecessary. And more really should have been done with the Volturi...that was a storyline that just never got finished (in fact I really hope someday Meyer writes another book where they're challenged by someone; it kind of needs to happen).

And it's true that the whole thing kind of turned into an underwhelming Harry Potter at the end, but...well, I don't know...I still liked it. I think it's mainly because I've always felt that the characters themselves were the strongest aspect of the stories (to be honest, I've never really felt the plots of any of the books have been much of anything. Stephenie Meyer definitely prefers to have the drama in her stories happen internally rather than externally), and I still liked them all. So yeah, not perfect, but I still enjoyed it.