Breaking Dawn: You Can Stop Holding Your Breath Now

By: Alaina Gizzo
Posted In: Entertainment

Zealous Twilight saga fanatics rushed home minutes after Breaking Dawn’s midnight release on August 2nd, eager to experience the concluding novel of the series.

Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series breaks ground, incorporating the typical adolescent

vampire obsession with the dark side in a fashion that takes the entire situation a hop too far. The novel begins a few days before the teenage Bella is to marry the eternally 17-year-old vampire Edward, who belongs to a clan of vampires that only drinks animal blood. Bella’s obsession with the Adonis-like creature corners Edward into a pact that will allow Bella to join the undead if she marries him. Edward, however, deciphers ways to extend her mortal deadlines for longer than a reader can expect.

The basic success of Breaking Dawn rides on the complete consumption of its readers comparable to cocaine addiction. Either readers hate it or their lives are entirely changed by it, with the latter being most

likely. The motive for making it to the end of this novel, with all of its annoying obstacles, mysteriousness, and severity in the adolescent relationship, is to simply complete the series.

The saga is often compared to the Harry Potter series, but is actually not similar at all. While the Potter books are relatively self-contained and can stand alone, the Twilight saga creates novels that are extremely intertwined and overlap.

Besides the obvious elements that are inappropriate to younger readers, you can determine that the saga is not family-friendly like Harry Potter is, from the grotesque details of inter-species pregnancies and the intense love and

obsession that most younger readers cannot relate to and probably shouldn’t. Plus, the main readership is young adult females who easily get wrapped up in the romantic science

fiction aspects of the series.

The book remains overall entertaining and

certainly worth the read for the Twilight drones, but on its own represents the weakest portion of the saga. The other three novels in the series act as a crutch for the fourth, which tumultuously travels farther and farther into the deep obscurity of one girl’s attempts at keeping up with the supernatural. This last book truly is for those who have been mercilessly consumed by the series.

Perhaps the novel lacked Meyer’s attention since it was divided between raising children, working on the first Twilight film, and publishing The Host, her first adult novel which was also released this summer. Or maybe this just happens when all good things come to an end.