Breaking Dawn

I can’t seem to get away from the itching feeling that Stephenie Meyer is turning her vampires into the next generation x-men mutants replete with awesome powers and a plot that revolves around an intra-racial battle. Whatever the case, for me that is a welcome change.

There are a few things worth mentioning in this review. First, I haven’t read the two preceding books to the Breaking Dawn – and I don’t mean to – but surprisingly it was not difficult to cope up with how things are evolving into (or maybe because I’ve always been harangued by my girlfriend about the whole Twilight stuff). That’s one good point. Another is that, as earlier implied, there is now a stark turn-around from the original Twilight story. Thank goodness, much of the teeny-weeny love affair has gone away to add a deeper context to the story. At least annoyances on petty quarrels (how come a ninety-year old vampire still thinks like a 17-year old?) have been laudably reduced.

Then there is also this case with the wolves. I was particularly caught off-guard by the wolf pack’s telepathic powers. I’m afraid that it is strongly like Perrin Aybara in the Wheel of Time. I wonder whether Meyer’s been reading Robert Jordan and took the idea from there. I am not accusing, but the idea of the shapeshifters is not entirely original. Nevertheless, I should say it is an integral part of the story and it fit pretty well.

Another curious element in the story is the concept of the 24 chromosome pairs. I know the book’s highly mythical, but aren’t we taught in school that no two different family of organisms have the same number of chromosomes? How come a shapeshifter and a semi-vampire situation is an exception? I hope this will get cleared out in the succeeding installments because for me there is a difference in twisting legends and actually changing scientific facts.

Perhaps the greatest improvement of all is that there are more characters with characters. Bella’s after-transformation attitude was my favorite, second only to Jacob’s glowering temper juxtaposed to his natural sense of humor. Rosalie was a new discovery, Seth a welcome naiveté and Alice still the same candy.

All in all, Breaking Dawn is a fun and exciting read. I was able to read it in less than twelve hours with breaks. And that means I got my nose glued to it most of the time. I still can’t say I am a fan. But I am still curious on why the Twilight series is becoming so popular making for itself a culture that is yet to grow further and bigger. Any theories? I do. It’s still a girl thing so it is bound to be confusing. hehehe.

Twilight

So far, I only know of 7 girls who love this book so much. But the word love and the phrase so much are dire understatements. They’re all addicted, obsessed, downright head over heels. And that rouses my curiosity. A lot.

It appears that there is a silent but overwhelming hype on the twilight series, published just over a year and gaining a following that some considers as the best yet since harry potter. Really? Don’t blame me, that’s what they say.

I’ve been cajoled incessantly by my girlfriend to read the book for myself and I was not really that interested and it took me weeks to finally finish. Not that I did not want to read it at all, but nobody has a book, a real book, so I have to rely on an ebook, and that means waiting for someone kindhearted enough to lend me a laptop for the whole swing of a reading vacation.

I just had exactly that last night – finally! -and here’s what I think.

I have to commend Stephenie Meyer for a very creative story. I’ve read she dreamed about it, well only a part, and it was amazing how she transformed that one single dream into a bestselling novel.

The twist in the vampire legends and how modern vampires behave put them at a new light from being ferocious and downright scary to unbelievably beautiful, perfect, and quite magical. At least in human standards. It is not surprising that some would wish to be vampires after reading this, in much the same way some wished to be witches and wizards after reading harry potter. Thus, the comparison.

However, I feel that there is some substance lacking in the story. And that, I think, is the depth of characterization. The narrator, specifically, Bella, is more of just a narrator than a character herself. She seems to have no past, no dream, no secrets. Well, she does not know how to dance or that she’s a magnet for troubles, deadly troubles, but she as a person, a budding woman, for instance, was not taken emphasis. It seems that Edward’s got most of the story interesting. I even think the vampire Carlisle was more ‘characterized’ than Bella.

But I have to admit that from the appearance of the tracker vampire James and his equally wild girlfriend Victoria, the story got really interesting. I didn’t know there would be an exciting hunt of wit and skill to come and it came as a surprise. I loved the sudden increase in the tempo of the story, and of course, always and not without, that nagging dose of stupidity (one character will always to be stupid in a deadly chase), that I was glued for a moment.

I honestly didn’t like the ending. All in all, I would’ve better appreciate this if I was at the same age as the main characters, give and take a couple of years. I still find it teenager-ish and overly, sometimes, unnecessarily, girlish romantic. But still interesting. In fact, very interesting.