Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

Finished!

That's not quite the same relief I felt on finishing the Tales of the Otori series, which was a release from a tale that had become somewhat tedious and slogging. Finishing the Twilight series was more like getting to the end of a particularly terrifying zip line--it was exhilarating, crazy, and impossible to escape, but in the end, great to have your feet on the ground again.

This massive final volume is actually broken into three books, a change of format from the other three, which were one book each. It's a little discordant, and I wonder if Meyer was caught unaware by her success and ran overboard, trying to up the ante to something more epic. One example of this is when she used a quote from Empire, a recent military thriller by Orson Scott Card, to open a new section. I can't fault her taste in literature, OSC is one of my favorite authors, but for me the quote was not only jarring (I'd just finished reading Empire), but inappropriate. The conflicts in the two books are of different scales and different focus, and it feels like Meyer is trying to borrow gravitas. On the other hand, the three-book format gives us a nice long escape from Bella's head when the second book is narrated by Jacob. This is very welcome, so I'm not going to complain too much.

Meyer reminds me a bit of the fantasy author R.A. Salvatore. They both tell engaging stories that capture the imagination and create memorable, fun characters. And they both have serious failings in the prose and dialogue department.

One more rant, and then I'll let it rest: I heard a rumor that for Meyer's next book, she was working on a point-of-view switch, where she told her original story from another character's point of view. Okay, so she's an Orson Scott Card fan, and that worked really well for him in Ender's Shadow. So I was thinking, what would be a good character for a retelling of this series? It should be someone who can give us angles we've never seen, and expand the universe and the complexity of the story, so probably not a main character. I decided that Leah, the only female werewolf, would be a perfect fit. The werewolves are an enigmatic group, there's a lot going on in the background that we don't see. Plus, as traditional opposites, they're every bit as cool as the vampires are lame. And Leah's got a personal tragedy that's only halfway resolved by the end of the series. She's also one of the few characters that isn't happily paired up with someone by the end of the series, and she's deliciously nasty to everyone--she'd be perfect. I was quite looking forward to another take on the series from her point of view, and then I found out who the second point of view character actually was.

Edward. The guy who's been there throughout the entire series? The guy who's gone to painful lengths to tell us exactly how he feels about everything, especially Bella? Yeah, that guy :-p And that's probably a good way to sum up the series.