What the heck was that? “Breaking Dawn” is like some sort of weird fan fiction and from plot to characters to tone it doesn’t fit with the three previous books of the “Twilight Series.”  ((Spoilers after the break…))

 So instead of typing a formal review, I’m basically going to walk you through the reactions I had while reading the book.

End of Act I: So Edward and Bella get married and there is very little drama or angst. In fact, all of Act I just felt rushed. Moments like Charlie finding out about the wedding happens in a single page, which is frustrating because at the end of “Eclipse” that was the scene I was most excited to see and then BLAM it’s over in like 3 seconds without any drama or conflict.

So by the end of Act I: Bella and Edward are on their honeymoon and have lots of sex. After the second time they do the nasty I thought to myself “How hilarious would be if she ended up pregnant, but that would never happen.” Boy was I wrong because that’s exactly what happened!

The biggest problem that most fans will have with the pregnancy is that it is completely out of the blue. In the past novels it had been made VERY clear that the only fluid vampires have in them is their venom. So where the heck did Edward get the sperm?

My problem with the pregnancy isn’t the fact the Bella was knocked up, it was how the pregnancy was dealt with. You see as soon as I realized that the Act I turning point was Bella being knocked up, I thought the rest of the book would be about Bella having to choose between human life and vampire life. I thought that a new child would be the deciding factor that would force Bella not to turn into a vampire, that she would choose the love for her own baby over the love for Edward. Also I figured this would be a great way to bring Jacob back in with the love triangle. Not only that but if Bella chose to stay human then the climax of the book could have been about the Volturi coming after her to kill her. Lots of drama, lots of angst, lots of romance… it seemed the logical way the story would go.  Yeah… the complete opposite happened, but we’ll get to that.

First Half of Act II: So as soon as Bella is knocked up and both her and Edward realize it, we jump to Jacob’s perspective. As to why we switch perspectives, I have no idea, but for 200+ pages we see everything through Jacob’s eyes, after which we switch back to Bella’s perspective for the rest of the novel. Seeing/hearing Jacob’s thoughts is one of the best things in “Breaking Dawn” and it’s a real shame that the whole novel wasn’t structured so it was constantly going from his POV to Bellas.

So we stick with Jacob through the whole pregnancy process. The biggest conflict throughout this sequence is “Oh my god what is the baby?” They debate whether it will be a human, vampire, a hybrid, or some sort of monster. Some people want to kill the baby before it’s born and other’s want to protect it. Edward suggests killing it and then letting Jacob have sex with Bella so that way Bella could still have a baby if she wanted. …no seriously. Pages and Pages are spent with Edward trying to pimp his wife out. It was absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable.

At some point during the pregnancy Bella mentions how she is sure the child is a “he.” Of course at this point I thought to myself “How hilarious would it be if the baby was a she and Jacob imprinted on it.” Well sure enough that’s exactly what happened. The baby pops out and Jacob is in love. He nick names her Ness and that’s what she’s called for the rest of the book.

BOOM! POV switch and for the second half of Act II we see everything from Bella’s eyes. You see her mutant child didn’t just get born, it cracked Bella’s spinal cord and killed her as it ate it’s way out of Bella’s uterus. To save Bella’s life, Edward injects his venom directly into her heart, turning her into a vampire.

After the last book, seeing Bella deal with being a “new born” was something I was super excited about. I wanted to see her fight urges and have to coupe with being out of control. So of course that didn’t happen. With no explanation, Bella ends up skipping the whole “new born” phase and has no trouble controlling her thirst for blood. She has no problem being around other humans, even when the scent of blood is in the air. It makes absolutely no sense with the mythology that has been established in the last three books. In fact, more than anything else in the book, this pissed me off. Why make up a huge-ass mythology and spend the whole third book with crazy new-borns and then completely throw it out the window in “Breaking Dawn?”

So anyway we move to the end of Act II and there really isn’t much drama or angst because Bella is the “perfect” new born. Everything is happy and lovey dovey. Jacob spends all of his free time with Ness and we learn more about the freakish child. The baby goes from being an infant to like 5 years old in the matter of a month. Not only does it physically grow at super-speeds but its intelligence “rivals that of some adults.”

To be honest the whole super-baby thing was weird. It was like a bad X-men plot and even the Ness character felt like a weird mix of Cable and Phoenix. I mean of course this is a book with magic and supernatural beings, but Ness and her powers and super-brains just felt unbelievable. It was too far out there compared to other things we’ve seen in the series and goes against the mythology already established.

In terms of Ness, what most fans will be pissed about is her and Jacob. I’m sure if you search forums you’ll see them saying Jacob is a pedophile or inaccurately call the relationship incest since he and Bella hooked up in the past. I personally don’t think it’s either. The child and he aren’t related in any kind of way so it’s not incest and even though she’s only a kid now its not like Jacob was touching her naughty places. Plus, Ness will reach the physical and mental age of 18 in seven years and it is made very very clear that Ness has super-intelligence so its not like Jacob is taking advantage of her in any kind of way.

So Act III rolls around and everything is happy and perfect… until the Volturi find out about Ness. They think she’s an “immortal child” (a kid turned into a vampire who never grows up physically or mental) and declare an all out war on the Cullens. This actually excited me a lot because as you remember, when I first learned about the pregnancy I thought Bella staying human for the sake of the child would force the Volturi to go on the offensive.

To prepare, the Cullens collect friends and vampires with special powers and gather in Forks waiting for the Volturi. The Volturi show up and it looks like a huge ass battle is going to go down… and it doesn’t. That’s right. The big climax of the whole series ends up being fight free. Even though you have all these super-powered characters literally standing across each other like soldiers on a battlefield, a fight never happens. No really… they solve all their problems through talking and everyone lives happily ever after.

Yeah so that’s “Breaking Dawn.” What a horrible horrible experience, mostly because it makes no sense plot or character wise with the first three books.  I think what happened is that Stephanie Meyers got to the end of book three and by that point the novels were a huge success. It was on best seller lists, female teenagers were in love with it, the movie was already optioned… so what probably happened is that the publisher was like “Dude Stephanie we need a 4^th novel because we are making mad dough.” So then Stephanie wrote “Breaking Dawn.” Because this fourth book was never planned and because it had been several years since Stephanie finished the first three… that probably explains why the characters voices/action and the plot was so off.