Few books are as hotly anticipated as Breaking Dawn, the final installment of the Twilight saga. The conclusion to the four-part bestselling young adult series by Stephenie Meyer on teen vampires debuts worldwide today. (Fans lined up for the book at midnight release parties in bookstores across the continental US when it launched on Aug. 2.)
Twilight’s premise — clumsy girl next door falls for hot, “vegetarian” vampire (read: he doesn’t drink human blood, choosing to hunt animals instead) — earned the first-time author a following equal perhaps to JK Rowling’s when she debuted the first Harry Potter tome.
Set in the perpetually damp and drizzly town of Forks in rain-soaked Washington, Bella Swan, the coordination-challenged heroine, discovers that the resident high school hottie, Edward Cullen, isn’t quite what he seems. Turns out the bronze-haired, pale-skinned junior is a 107-year-old vampire who falls hard for the awkward heroine.
A few days ago, Meyer created an online frenzy when Entertainment Weekly’s website revealed an exclusive spoiler straight from the author’s mouth. Spoiler-phobes beware: Edward and Bella tie the knot. “And it’s not a dream sequence!” Meyer tells the magazine. “It’s the actual wedding between Edward and Bella. The wedding! I’m a girly girl so it’s something I’ve been waiting for, too.”
Not to worry. The wedding occurs at the beginning of the book, leaving roughly 600-plus pages for the rest of the plot to unravel.
In the 754-page final installment, Meyer pulls out all the stops, finally delivering on the Swan-Cullen nuptials and Bella’s ultimatum issued in Eclipse, book three of the series, concerning the couple’s sex life (she wants to do it; he’s afraid he’ll turn her into mincemeat mid-coitus). “You are so human, Bella,” Edward admonishes with a laugh in Breaking Dawn. “Ruled by your hormones.”
Meyer, a Mormon with a conservative religious background, is being credited with creating what is essentially a romance with fangs delivered in a four-part story arc that’s strictly rated G. She approaches the latest book’s love scenes with caution. A strict fade-to-black policy governs when she narrates the couple’s sexual exploits. After all, a large chunk of Meyer’s fan base is composed of the pre-teen set, nine- to 12-year-olds who might find the storyline a tad too mature for their taste.
Devotees wondering whether Bella turns into a vampire will finally get some resolution. Meyer offers some surprising twists, which I won’t go into for fear of being burned at the stake by Twihards (die hard fans of Twilight), but let me assure you that almost everyone in the Twilight lexicon makes an appearance — including a wide cast of characters from Edward’s past.
Random trivia: in the first and final book, Meyer namechecks the Filipino Danag. A quick Google search reveals that, according to “Vampires A – Z” (an actual site Meyer must’ve referenced while researching), it’s “a Filipino vampire held to be very ancient as a species, responsible for having planted taro on the islands long ago. The Danag worked with humans for many years but the partnership ended one day when a woman cut her finger and a Danag sucked her wound, enjoying the taste so much that it drained her body completely of blood.”
The release of the final chapter of the Twilight saga doesn’t spell the end of the super-successful franchise. Meyer plans to release a companion book to Twilight, dubbed Midnight Sun (with a first chapter excerpt already available on the author’s site, www.stepheniemeyer.com), which is a rehash of the first book through Edward’s perspective. A film version, currently in post-production, is also expected to hit theaters this December, starring Into the Wild’s Kristen Stewart and Harry Potter’s Robert Pattinson.
* * *
Breaking Dawn is currently on sale at National Book Store. — BL