Breaking Dawn ~ Anyone finished?

[Melissa G.]

Has anyone finished it??
I can't get it until next payday but I am dying to know if it's good or not! (Rather than just rumors)

[Dominique]

I've started! It will be a few days yet before I finish though with work and uni.

[sar4186]

I finished it the day it came out; I was actually a good bit disappointed. I would have liked the story to play out a little more at the end than it did. A little anti-climatical

[bookaddict]

I'm almost finished. If you try not to expect too much it's good. I'm reading it as a guilty pleasure and that's it. I've read a few reviews and people are analyzing it too much. It's a young adult fiction book about vampires.... try not to read too much into it.

[neh]

I really am trying to stay clam, being very near the end, but it really has gone beyond dissapointment for me. But oh well, tis just fiction and i must learn to remember that! It had it's good moments... just not that many!

[lostgirl]

Neh and I have discussed this at length and we're both pretty mad about the turn that the series has taken. Actually I have been angry at the series since Eclipse, but it's gotten worse.

[sagedautumn]

i'LLL join the two of you, I am SO PISSED! She had the opportunity to make it so much better and I feel like it just all fell apart

[Melissa G.]

I have heard so many people say that it is horrible!! I am considering not getting it. Will someone pm me the details? I want to know what happens! Don't worry, I always read ahead anyway.

[bookaddict]

I finished Breaking Dawn, and I really enjoyed it. It was not at all what I expected but I enjoyed the ending very much. I did not expect anything, I had no notions of what should happen. It still is one of my favorite series. The reviews I've been reading make me think people are analyzing it too much. They expected too much out of it. It is fiction and I thought Meyer did a very good job. She matured Bella and the novel was unpredictable. After reading Eclipse I would never have expected any of this. The story isn't about a teenage love affair, it's about a relationship between two soul mates. I'm really happy she matured Bella. For the people who were disappointed what did you want from the novel?

[neh]

*SOME SPOILERS AHEAD - TAKE CARE*
I honestly don't know precisely want i wanted, seeing as in my mind the series had started digging it's own grave a tad in the previous books... but i had hoped that certain aspects of Bella's existence - marriage, children - wouldn't have to take such utter precedence over her own independance and decision-making. As in, selfish as it will sound, i would have liked to have seen her make some decisions and choices based upon her own needs just as much as the other two central figures in her life. (the one thing she truly desires for herself - vampirism - comes soley out of a need to stay with Ed for eternity... so it's a double-edged sword for me) I just felt as though Meyer was solidifying her protagonist's role as mother and wife, and that just made me sick. And in doing so, Bella just moved into emotional and mental environments that i just couldn't follow or truly sympathise with.... mabe i'm utterly awful for saying that, but it's just how i felt. Not to mention, various incidents and events made me angry, for a variety of reasons. Too many to mention.
Perhaps i'm just a bitter old hag or something, hehe!

[bookaddict]

I think her becoming a mother does make her independent because she makes sure they do exactly what she wants them do to. When they want to take the baby, she won't let them. It's the first big stand she makes and they respect her for it. She chooses to risk her life for her child, she goes against what everyone is telling her. I was satisfied with all the loose ends being tied up. All in all, I enjoyed it.

[sagedautumn]

I agree with Neh, although I must confess, I had a problem with Bella's character for a while. The fact that the book is so blatantly misogynistic is a VERY big problem for me, personally. I don't understand why Bella does not take control of her destiny, she seems to drift around waiting for some male in her life to point her in the right direction. In Twilight it was Edward, then when he leaves her it's Jacob, and then she runs to Edward again, forgetting all the pain that he had previously caused her. I think the most disturbing scenes to read were when Bella was begging for sex, that seemed really derogatory towards women. Call me a feminist but it seemed really pathetic that when Edward was the "stronger" of the two he turned her black and blue with bruises, but when she was the stronger vampire than she had to "extra careful" to not hurt him. And yes, Bella FINALLY stood up for herself but I would have liked something a little more fulfilling like how about going to college rather than giving it all up so that she can be a nineteen year old mother. Also, Neh, I don't think it is selfish to strive for your own goals ; education is vital, and if Meyer wanted to she could have allowed Bella to go to college, raise a child, and be a wife, like millions of women still do. I agree that Twilight is some form of an escapism, but it is also a way to connect with millions of girls, not all of them fortunate to know what they want out of life, and I think Meyer had the opportunity to send out a message that could have resonated with them, but instead took the cheap way out. Anyway, that's just how I feel , it could have been a lot better

[neh]

*claps sage* Brilliantly said sage! Bookaddict, i truly don't mean to go against what your saying, coz it's all very well-put and makes complete sense and you're utterly 100% entiltled to your own opinion.
You're right that in becoming a mother Bella obtains a new facet of strength but i just think it's a dam shame that it took both motherhood and vampirism to bring that out in her - why couldn't she have found it ON HER OWN and even more importantly WHILE SHE WAS HUMAN??? *that anger is aimed at Meyer, not you, i promise!* What, do we all have to have kiddies and become the mystical undead to obtain any genuine facet of internal strength and to dam well grow a bloody backbone (although Bella's snapped - ick ick ICK!)?! Sheesh.

This vid pretty much sums it up for me - and makes me laugh.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=82LDFfm91LA

And like sage, i've had some issues with Bella from the start. Wanted to slap her and quite often too. And still i found the books addictive... i have no defense! I can say though that BD was the first book of the series that i felt no qualms about putting down and leaving alone for a day and a half. Enough said.

In terms of my very anti-maternal reaction (which i understand may seem/sound horrible to many, and i do apologise but it's just how i feel) to some of the book's events, i can do no better than quote some stuff from this
blogofstench.livejournal.com/288492.html?view=282860
brilliantly angry rant.

"
Meyer is wrong. The ultimate pinnacle of womanhood is NOT having a child. Do I really need to mention that women have a wide variety of paths to satisfaction in their lives? Some of us have kids and find happiness and strength in raising them. Some of us make friends with our peers, finding support and fulfillment in friendship. Some of us follow careers, pursue creative endeavors, devote ourselves to religious journeys, pursue knowledge and scientific experimentation, etc., etc., etc. Heck, as amazing as it may seem, most of us do several of the above! Just because some women are biologically capable of having heterosexual intercourse, getting pregnant and giving birth to kids does not mean that all women should do so. Nor does it mean that all women find heterosexual intercourse, pregnancy and child-rearing interesting or attractive.

In the example of Bella, however, Meyer shows only one path for women to achieve happiness:

1. Find a sexy abusive guy.

2. Become obsessed with him so that you have no other hobbies, interests or even friendships, beyond some weird love/hate relationship with another abusive guy.

3. Lie and cover up to your parents about the whole thing.

4. Get married directly out of high school.

5. Avoid human experiences explicitly offered to you such as a college education, a chance to learn new skills, a period in which to make friends with some normal human beings your own age and to expand your horizons.

6. Instead, just get knocked up.

7. Then nearly die while giving birth.

8. You'll live sparkly ever after, you, D.H. and baby, in an isolated cocoon of heteronormative bliss completely divorced from reality!

The Twilight Saga promotes an unrealistic, narrow-minded view of the happiness that women can hope to achieve. Because the books basically say that you can only be happy if you're heterosexual, married out of high school and having kids, they, like so many other supposedly "romantic" fairy tales, are philosophically bankrupt. Hence, we need to expose the stupid assumptions underpinning them and the limited, insulting views of human capaibility that they portray."

And - this is news to me - it seems several fans are so dissapointed with the book that they have been returning their copies to the bookstores and demanding their money back:

By now you may have heard that Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer's teenage-vampire-in-love series Twilight, sold 1.3 million copies in its first day in bookstores this weekend. But some of those copies just may be headed back: A Twilight fan who was disappointed by the twists and turns of the 764-page novel has launched a "Return Breaking Dawn" campaign on Amazon's message boards, urging fans who hated the book to return it to the store they bought it from. A Borders employee claims on her blog that she's already seen returns, and one commenter on Amazon says that the local Borders has had fifteen copies returned already.

[neh]

I didnt want to go and add even more to that alreayd overly-long post, so i'm gonna out this here and Dom and Isa can move it if they wish; sorry if i'm a pain guys! '

Here is a letter that an Amazon customer is planning to send to Meyere's publishers Little, Brown Books - it's quite long, just a heads up.

www.amazon.com:80/letter-Stephenie-Meyer-Little-Brown/forum/Fx1GAA6GYWX8459/Tx3PBA5FZXLY050/1/ref=cm_cd_ef_tft_tp?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=031606792X

[sagedautumn]

WOW! That's crazy!