MADreads

A night with bite

August 12th, 2008 Molly & Katie

(Or, the real life adventures of two librarians at the 12:01 am release party for Breaking Dawn at Borders West in Madison on Saturday, August 2.)

Molly: Everyone was giddy with excitement, sugar and caffeine.  The party had been going since 9:30 pm with trivia, costumes and such, but we didn’t arrive until just midnight.  Swarms of teen girls were milling about (parents conspicuously absent–hiding in the coffeeshop or to return later to pick up their Edward and Bella fans) and started to line up as their assigned wristband colors were called over the PA system.  I made a beeline for the cafe counter to pick up brownies and chocolate chip cookies to sustain us through what would inevitably be the long twisting line to get a copy.

Staff dressed in black and wearing fangs ushered the hundreds of girls and smatterings of boyfriends, moms and two curious librarians along to a table stacked with copies of the highly anticipated book.  By the time we got to the line, all of the wristbands had been given out and we were told to line up with everyone else.  Staff kept calling out wristband colors, and I felt a little sheepish about jumping in line, but whatever.  In front of us was a young boy, maybe 12, in a wolf costume.  A member of Team Jacob!

Katie and I pored over the Borders exclusive Twilight movie calendar while we waited in line and debated over what we hoped might happen in the book. W e already knew Edward and Bella would get married (thanks to Stephenie Meyer’s spoiler interview in Entertainment Weekly), but vampire skeptic that I am, I was still hoping that something would happen to lead Bella to her best friend, the hot-blooded werewolf Jacob.  I had to be at work in a few hours, so I wasn’t going to get to read much, and I was very jealous that Katie was going to get started on the book right away.

Katie: The coffee and cookies helped, although I finally had to pack it in for the evening at 2 am after about a hundred pages.  Topping out at over 700 pages, the final installment of the Twilight saga would prove to be at least an entire weekend read, if not more.  But Meyer fans won’t be disappointed, as all the questions that have popped up over the last three books are answered here.  Following Bella and Edward’s wedding (sorry Molly), Bella feels that her dream of being with Edward forever is within her grasp.  But after an uneasy honeymoon, Edward and Bella discover a twist in their relationship that will test their love for each other more than any of their trials to date. 

I won’t go into greater detail than that, but suffice it to say that the Volturi, vampiredom’s self-elected law enforcers, have good reason to come to Forks, Washington, to settle their grievances with the Cullen coven. The Volturi, who always had an unhealthy interest in Bella and her unusual abilities, discover at last just how formidable Bella is as an opponent.  But is it enough to save everything that she’s fought so hard to have?

As a long-time fan of Jacob, I had hoped to see Bella with her werewolf friend.  Meyer writes a substantial portion of Breaking Dawn from Jacob’s point of view, and his anguish over seeing Bella with Edward is hard to take.  But like much of the series, the ability to discover what love really means turns out to be true for Jacob too, and his story ends in a way that will strike most Twilight fans as poetically just. 

Meyer has long hinted that she’ll release Edward’s side of the story in the as-yet-unpublished novel Midnight Sun; with the ending of Breaking Dawn, there’s a sense that she might continue Jacob’s story beyond that of Bella and Edward.  Fans of the series who fear withdrawal now that Bella and Edward’s story has come to a close won’t have to wait long to take their fangs and Twilight costumes back out of the closet: the movie version of the first book will hit theaters this December.

Entry Filed under: Recreational Fiction, Romance, Young Adult