#46 Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer (Atom)

702 pages. Much like Harry Potter, as the popularity of the Twilight series has grown, so has the length of the books, and (alas for the purposes of this challenge) the last by Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn, is the longest yet. So it’s absolutely bizarre that nothing really happens.

Oh, there are a few incidents. This is the book where Bella becomes a vampire, an event which has been so foretold in the previous three instalments there’s no fear of a spoiler there, but there are a few other twists which might keep the most avid fans fleetingly entertained.

That won’t be the case for anyone else, though. I’m all for building up a bit of tension and suspense, but Meyer never comes up with any sort of climax, merely a situation which fizzles out just when things look like getting dangerous – or what some might consider to be interesting.

A review of Meyer’s next work, the novella The Second Life of Bree Tanner which I happened to notice, points out the problems with the Twilight series better than I can, chiefly that the whole world the author has created, featuring hugely powerful vampires and shape-shifter-like werewolves, is incredibly sanitised.

This is a book when the heroine’s greatest power when she turns into a fearless vampire is to be, well, normal. It might be a great message to send out to young girls, who will form the majority of the book’s readership, but it doesn’t make it readable.

Other will no doubt quibble at the quality of prose, the meandering plot, the length, of time, it takes, for anything, to happen, but one final point if I may? Meyer also experiments with the structure of the book (you get a chapter by Bella, and then one with Jacob, for example), but you can tell things are running out of steam when she contrives to introduce a whole series of new vampires with special powers, seemingly for the only reason that the original ones seem a bit boring now.

Back in March, the Friend of the Wench took umbrage at my middle-of-the-road rating for the third Twilight book, Eclipse. I don’t foresee any such problems with this review…

So, rating time:

#46 Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer (Atom) - 4/10

Next up: Psmith, Journalist, by PG Wodehouse (Century Hutchinson Limited)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating