Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Bella’s Wedding, Bedding and Surprise: A Review of Breaking Dawn (Part I)

A while back I came up with a theory as to what Stephenie Meyer would do with the Twilight series. Eclipse left us with Bella agreeing to marry the vampire love of her life, Edward, having survived three books still alive, human and, remarkably enough, still a virgin. I thought of Breaking Dawn as offering a checklist of getting Bella wedded and bedded and undead. My thinking was that instead of going with the obvious ending of having Bella being turned into a vampire, Meyer would go through with the wedding and the bedding, but then have Bella get pregnant, with a human child. (The books never said that vampires could not have children.) Since Edward and Bella are a unique couple, it is perfectly reasonable that the vampires would be unaware that such a thing could be possible. Having a child would change Bella’s priorities. Now she would be determined, one, to protect her child and keep it human and, two, to stay human for her child's sake. The child, once it is born, would be some sort of special genius capable of tipping the balance of power in the supernatural world, taking the series into serious Orson Scott Card territory. The Volturi, the vampire mafia, would come after Bella, her child, and the Cullens. They would be interested in the child and the fact that Bella would now have violated the terms of Alice’s agreement with them (Back in New Moon, Alice explained Bella’s presence with them by saying that the Cullens were planning on turning her.) would give them the perfect excuse. This would lead to the Cullens having to fight the Volturi. To do this they would have to form an alliance with the werewolves and various other friends such as the Danali and Jasper’s old comrades Peter and Charlotte. This would climax in a cataclysmic battle, which would take place, somewhere right outside Forks. I think it is important that an author has the spine to kill off major characters. Hopefully, Meyer would allow for some heavy casualties and kill off a few of the Cullens, Carlisle being a likely target. Meyer might even take out Edward or Bella.

I figured this storyline would take three books to tell. The first book would have Bella getting wedded, bedded and pregnant. It would also establish the Volturi as something far worse then what they seemed until now, some old friends of Carlisle, who went after humans but kept the vampire world under some form of control; a minor evil which stops an even greater evil. The second book would deal with Bella’s pregnancy, the birth of her child and would have the opening rounds with the Volturi, leading to some great crises. Killing off Carlisle, much as J. K. Rowling killed off Albus Dumbledore, would fit nicely. Finally, in the third book, we can wrap everything up with a grand royal rumble of supernatural creatures, with Bella ever in the center and commenting on it all in her unflappable straightforward fashion, which is what makes these books tick.

I nixed this idea for two reasons. The first being that I checked one of the established Twilight websites and it specifically stated in its FAQs that vampires could not have children. I assumed that someone had posed this theory to Meyer and she downed it. The second thing was that I found out that Breaking Dawn was going to be the final Twilight book, so Meyer clearly planned to wrap everything up here and not open up a whole new storyline. While not to give too much away, as it turns out my theory, while not completely accurate, was quite close; so much for that website. As for this being a three-book storyline, Meyer took it and crammed it into one 754 page book. Curiously enough, unlike the previous books, Breaking Dawn is divided into three books, which follow the basic plot structure I outlined. Because of this, I intend to deal with Breaking Dawn as three separate books.


(To be continued …)

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