Breaking Dawn / Stephenie Meyer

Breaking Dawn

category: romance, author:

Stephenie Meyer

book 4 of Twilight
original copyright 2008,
read in May 2011

Agamedes' opinion: 8 out of 10

At last (for me) the final chapter in the Twilight saga! And what a saga it has been... Oh! the suffering! Oh! the drama! Oh! the romance...!

Yes, I have enjoyed Breaking Dawn just as much as I enjoyed books one, two and three in the Twilight series. There is, however, one major strength which is also a weakness, in this final book of the series.

Typically enough -- as the fourth book -- you expect that the weakness is to do with unfamiliarity with the characters. Unfamiliarity for the reader who starts at book four, that is. Well, no...

Aside: Category: romance? Yes, definitely. Romance is the main theme of the entire series. Fantasy? Yes, there are plenty of fantasy elements. And I don't just mean that true love is a fantasy! Horror? Hardly! Still... there are vampires, there are werewolves, there is sudden death and threat of sudden death. So, okay, add the horror label... Really, though, this is pure romance set in a world of fantasy.

This book is a conclusion. A wrap-up. In fact, I only started reading the Twilight series because of a book review which said that this book was a good conclusion... So I started reading only because I had been promised a satisfactory ending. (In general I tend to avoid books which become instant cult fiction. On the unsubstantiated grounds that cult means rubbish and that a cult series means never-ending rubbish.)

So, this book is definitely a conclusion. It wraps up the key conflicts of the previous three books. While leaving the world of vampires and werewolves wide open for more books... Very good!

On the other hand... the conclusion is satisfactory only if you have read the first three books.

It's a positive conclusion, with definite signs of the author's moralistic views. Who can argue with the premise that love conquers all? And in Breaking Dawn, love even conquers the perennial problem of forgetting to breathe while kissing your lover...

But really, the very satisfactory conclusion is just a bit too nice -- if you only read this one book.

Read the series and the ending is... just right. Read just this one book -- so you have missed the build-up -- and you will find that the ending is just a bit weak.

So.

Start with Twilight the book. Read through all four books of Twilight the series of books. And Breaking Dawn is the ending that we all have been hoping for... The ending that just did not seem to be possible... The ending which solves all problems without closing off our desire to read more.

So my rating is eight out of ten. And nine out of ten for the entire series.

Aaahhhh shucks... It is soooooo sweet :-)

..o0o..

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