Breaking Dawn...No Spoilers

One of my favorite online people, Andi of Tripping Toward Lucidity, just posted a message about Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer, which we are both reading (along with legions of fans of the Twilight series). Her post has prompted my own, which will probably echo hers in many respects. We both made the mistake of visiting Amazon's review page for BD; big mistake. Of course there were spoilers galore, which as a serial last page reader, really didn't bug me so much. It's the incessant whininess of the reviews, obviously written by teens who didn't get the story they'd wanted.

Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, of course. I don't deny anyone that pleasure. But having read several "reviews" (and how can they be considered such when 1) they are full of spoilers and 2) they just berate the author?) that seem to borrow from each other and influence further despair among said teens, I am waiting for the moment when cooler heads and rational minds decide to actually REVIEW the book. I get the feeling that most of these teens had the plot carefully planned in their own heads, and when Meyer decided to deviate from those pipe dreams, their worlds were shattered, making her THE WORST AUTHOR EVER. OMG, how are we all going to live? It won't do a bit of good to remind them that ultimately, they got what they wanted, because Meyer threw in some curves that took them on a ride they didn't meet the height requirement for.

I'm on page 185, and I have to say that the poor reviews at first made me very worried about how much I was going to like BD. I was expecting the worst. I know Bella is a drama queen and that Edward is controlling, but beyond all that, I like the stories Meyer has created and I'm happy (in general) with things as they've been written so far. I am beginning to realize my fear for this novel was wasted; I'm liking it. Despite a trip into sci-fi territory (I'm thinking specifically of a Star Trek TNG episode where Troi gave birth within 3 days), I think there's potential here for a good journey to a satisfying ending. I just started a section from Jacob's point of view, and while skeptical at first, I have to say I'm really enjoying it. I suspect many of the teenyboppers didn't care for this little tactic.

I'm really hoping that once the teens get all their own personal angst out of their systems that reviews will begin to appear that actually let people know what the NOVEL is like. While it won't be another Twilight, I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to be one of those who will be giving it a fairly positive review. We'll see.

~taminator40