I can feel you out there, quietly loathing me; the clickings and scrapings of weapons being assembled, and the singing of a knife being sharpened.

Thank you. You can’t possibly know how much it means to me that you wish to put me out your misery; but I must continue to cling to life. I must finish this.

It’s become a holy quest – a crusade, if you will. I don’t know what I’ll find when I reach my destination. Perhaps a sense of accomplishment, and an incredibly high [for me] page count.

Now, if you’ll hold still a moment and permit me to tie this rope around you, I’ll hitch you to this truck and we’ll continue our trip into hell.

I’d had more than my fair share of near-death experiences; it wasn’t something you ever
really got used to.

It seemed oddly inevitable, though, facing death again. Like I really was marked for disaster. I’d escaped time and time again, but it kept coming back for me.

Still, this time was so different from the others.

You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated. All my reactions were geared toward those kinds of killers—the monsters, the enemies.

When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it?

If it was someone you truly loved?

—Breaking Dawn Book 1 Prologue

Oh, for fucks sake, you whiny, overwrought, spoiled little brat, are you really sitting at a stop light, worrying that people are staring at you because you’re that freshly engaged girl in the completely unlikely Mercedes Guardian?

Yes, I suppose you are. And, there you are, filling the car up, and some supposedly more-knowledgeable man identifies it as such, stating that it’s not even available in Europe yet, and wanting to take a picture of himself with it.

Now, I can’t be sure, since I probably know as much about this car as the author of this pile of unrelenting suck, but…a quick google hasn’t really given me much in the way of…distinguishing features that identify the difference between your standard Mercedes S Class and the armoured version. The S600 Guard looks…entirely unremarkable, except for the fact that half of the pictures I’ve found show it on fire.

While it does appear to have some nice features, I kinda doubt that it’s possible for the car – armoured as it may be – to withstand a tank deliberately driving over it. Also: missile proof glass? Really?

That’s okay. The car’s going away soon. See, it’s the ‘before’ car – on loan from someone. Edward’s just trying to keep her safe.

She fails to blow up while pumping gas, and heads back to the Cullen residence, passing Hearts In Atlantis style lost pet posters that just happen to be stuck to every vertical, rod or trunk shaped object between points A and B.

No. Not really. They’re just posters asking if anyone’s seen Jacob; he’s still off having a large, wolfy sulk in Canada.

We find out that the wolf that fought alongside Edward – Seth – is friendly with the Cullens now. The other wolves don’t approve, but he’s going to the wedding anyway.

The story thus far derails [leaving far too few bodies]; someone left a flashback on the tracks. Stepping back to examine the scene of the accident, one might notice that it has the air of a clumsy attempt to bridge the gap between ‘now’ and ‘the previous book’.

Ah, yes. Yes it is. Because here’s Bella and Edward, sitting on the loveseat in Charlie’s house. Charlie’s just gotten home from work, and Bella wants Edward to wait until he’s hung up his gun, because, recent efforts to like Edward aside, she’s convinced that this will lead to…some sort of desperately ineffectual gun violence leading to exactly zero deaths. A tragedy, in other words.

‘We have some good news.’

‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you.’

No. But Edward wants to say he’s sorry for not asking permission first, before proposing.

Charlie gloats, because he’s not going to be the one to tell Renee; Bella can handle her mom’s reaction all on her own.

Poor Charlie. Renee’s happy for Bella, telling her that all the awful things she said about marriage applied only to her. Her precious daughter has never been a teenager, always sticks to her decisions once her mind is made up, and is lucky to have found another old soul. Now, let’s get planning!

Fittings and frettings ensue as we suddenly leap back into the story already in progress. And recaps, because the reader may’ve managed to completely obliterate certain details from their mind through long, expensive nights of heavy drinking. We must be reminded that Edward can’t read Bella’s thoughts.

‘You should go to your bachelor party – which, of course, is nothing but a regular hunting trip – but, first, I need to spend a few pages re-re-re-describing your perfectly magnificent angelicness, my perfect marble statue of a vampire. Then, I shall spend many pages remembering the guest list, and some backstories for character development purposes.’

The coven from Alaska – referred to as the Denalis – used to have a mother. A mother who serves as a segue to a story about ‘the immortal children’. Infants and toddlers who’d been turned. Beautiful creatures you couldn’t help but love. Lisping two-year-olds who destroyed villages in their tantrums. All feeding indiscriminately; all unteachable. So, they were destroyed. Those who protected the godawful creatures were also destroyed. The ‘mother’ in the Denali clan was one of them.

Bella dreams of protecting one of these things from the Volturi.

Wedding time. No, no, don’t look at the decorations yet; I want to save them so that you can describe them while you’re walking down the aisle. Have some combined smells instead: orange blossoms, lilac, roses, and freesia.

The idea seems strangely…stinky, to me. Or possibly just ‘lilac’, because it tends to overpower things. Then again, I don’t know about orange blossoms, so I can’t really say. Someone who knows more about the potential floral stenchitude should chime in here….

Makeup, dress, more inanity. Renee arrives to gush over her daughter’s dress, and the awesomeness of all the planning. And to give her a gift that covers the ‘old’ and ‘blue’ parts of the stupid saying. The dress, they claim, counts as ‘new’, and Alice loans her a garter.

She doesn’t fall down the stairs and die from her old, blue hair combs puncturing her skull and skewering her brain.

The wedding is magical and wonderful and sickening. The reception struggles on like that hand from the last book. The bouquet toss; the garter toss. The cake. The dances. Bella comforts Charlie by saying he should have her arrested for criminal negligence – the crime being that she’s leaving him to cook on his own.

And she finally sees herself in a mirror. Edward standing next to some strange, dark-haired beauty. Edward complains about Mike’s ‘inappropriate thoughts about a married woman.’

Jacob arrives; Bella dances with him, deciding that she’d never done anything to deserve a friend like him.

He says he wants to remember her as she is right now. She steps on his feet. He wants to know when she’ll be turned, informing her that she can’t have a ‘real honeymoon’ with a vampire.

‘Uh huh’

‘Nuh uh’

‘Can so!’

‘That’s sick!’

A fight nearly breaks out, and we get a dose of Edward in self-loathing mode again, wondering what he was thinking even offering to give Bella a ‘real honeymoon’.

More dancing. Alice swoops in to force Bella to change into a ‘going away dress’, and they’re on a plane, heading to an unnamed destination…after a shower of ‘I’ll love you forevers’ and rice thrown by vampires.

You’d think that vampires would be able to kill a human that way, but, no. Again, tragic.

Washington to Houston to Rio to…a dock. And then…a private island. Isle Esme, on loan from Esme, who got it as a gift from Carlisle.

Yes. They’re disgustingly, conspicuously wealthy.

He carries her off the boat…and leaves her to wait for her in the water outside. She fills a few pages going from postponing to panic to confident, finally joining him in the water.

Suddenly, it’s morning.

She wakes to find him cynical, severe, and not looking at her.

He didn’t open his eyes; it was like he didn’t want to see me.

“Look at yourself, Bella. Then tell me I’m not a monster.”

Wounded, shocked, I followed his instruction unthinkingly and then gasped.

What had happened to me? I couldn’t make sense of the fluffy white snow that clung to
my skin. I shook my head, and a cascade of white drifted out of my hair.

—Breaking Dawn Book 1, Chapter 5: Isle Esme

Take a moment to come to your own entertaining or revolting conclusions. Feel free to share them with me in the comments. I’ll wait; find me here when you’re done.

There are also bruises. Lots of bruises. Bruises that match Edward’s hands. He’s so sorry; he’s a monster; she should never forgive him. He wallows in self-pity, like a good abuser the morning after.

If you’re curious, the fluffy white snow was down. Edward bit the pillows.

Edward keeps her worn out by feeding her a lot of food, and actively exploring the island with her. Bella tries to trade another year of life for more sex.

Because sex between two virgins on their wedding night is always amazing. Always. And it always leaves you wanting more.

Well, the second half might be true. You might feel like you want more, in that ‘what, exactly, am I missing, because that wasn’t anywhere near as good as people said’ kind of way.

Eventually, he relents. Beds and lingerie are destroyed.

People arrive to bring food and…possibly clean up. One of them seems to suspect that Edward brought Bella here to feed off her, because of local legends. They leave. Lunch is made. More furniture is destroyed.

Edward leaves to hunt on the mainland; Bella wakes up alone and starving. She tries to make fried chicken, but gets impatient, and eats it from the pan while it’s cooking. It tastes wrong – and smells wrong, eventually – to her, so she throws it away.

She gets sick.

Bella’s tired. Bella’s having strange dreams. Bella’s hungry. Bella’s vomiting…but still hungry. Bella’s late.

Bella’s pregnant.

Bella’s supernaturally pregnant. Five days late, but she’s already got an identifiable ‘bump’.

Time for a few paragraphs of attempted justification. The incubus and succubus get trotted out, and an excuse for why female vampires can’t get pregnant [their bodies never change, and pregnancies require change], while male vampires can get human females pregnant [their bodies never change, which means their sperm are always good].

The phone rings. It’s Alice. Bella wants to talk to Carlisle. She thinks she feels something moving around inside her.

She begins to refer to it as ‘her little nudger’, and they’re off, flying home again. Edward wants to get rid of it before it hurts her.

Bella, however, has become very attached to it. She’s spent a couple of paragraphs talking about how much she never understood why anyone would want a baby, but, now that there’s one in her, she can’t bear to let it go. She wants to protect it, so she calls the only person she can think of who would want this baby as much as she would: Rosalie.

Ah hah! There’s the reason for that incredibly creepy story about Rosalie’s turning, and why she picked Emmett.

I think I’ll leave this here, and do another post for the second…book…in this…book.