Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Twilight Saga: Book 4)

8/10

After my damning review of Eclipse, I’m sure you must have guessed that I didn’t hold out much hope for the finale of the Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn. Eclipse would have been a decent book as a standalone, but in the context of being the third book in a good series it should have offered a lot more. Thankfully, Breaking Dawn is of the quality that we expected after Twilight and New Moon.

The book is written in three parts, the first and final part of which is from Bella’s point of view, as were the first three books in the saga. The middle part is Jacob Blacks point of view of the problem created in the first part. It is an interesting narrative, and the author pulled this off pretty well. The one downside of this was that her writing as Jacob was still a little reminiscent of a teenage girl, rather than a testosterone filled male werewolf.

[ Spoiler Alert
On honeymoon in Brazil, Bella and Edward consummate the marriage which begins the book. Bella begins to notice her body changing and they realise it is an over-accelerated pregnancy. The baby, which is half-vampire half-human, is threatening to destroy its mother, Bella. ]

Breaking Dawn offers more than Eclipse but the story becomes a little predictable. It is a fine ending to a decent saga, but if Stephenie Meyer doesn’t want to run the series into the ground she won’t bother writing any prequel/sequel/parallel stories in the Twilight saga, because with each book they all got a bit repetitive.

As a stand alone book, it was an easy read and full of the twists and turns we have seen Meyer pull off in the saga. As the fourth book in the Twilight series it was a fitting finale. The twi-hards (twilight fanatics) will undoubtedly be happy with the way the book ends, but for fantasy readers who are less tolerant of the clichéd stories and fairytale-esque approach, nothing will particularly come as a surprise.

Breaking Dawn is a must-read if you have started the series and want to see the story through.

The Twilight saga was an interesting series overall and worth reading if you have the patience to overlook the repetition, run-of-the-mill storyline plus a little bit of sub-standard writing. None of it is particularly original or well thought out, but it still provides a decent bit of reading entertainment.