New Moon Epilogue - Treaty

1. Even the epilogue needs a title?

2. Bella’s rewarded for all her moping with “Almost everything was back to normal--the good, pre-zombie normal”. So yeah, after all this, the only things that really happened are 1) Jacob’s a werewolf, 2) an evil vampire’s still a threat because Edward’s an idiot, and 3) thanks to their stupidity, Bella and Edward are being watched by an underwhelming group of vampire enforcers. For some reason, I expect a little more from 548 pages of content.

“The hospital welcomed Carlisle back with eager (?) arms, not even bothering to conceal their delight that Esme had found life in L.A. so little to her liking.” Because gosh darn it the Cullens are special. This kind of crap is the main reason I’m never worried about anything bad that happens actually sticking.

We get another helping of the Cullens’ special-ness when Bella mentions applying to colleges (but only if she’ll be attending with Edward, of course), and hearing how “He’d already gone the Harvard route.”

3. A little of the hurt goes away with Bella acknowledging that “My behavior had been such last fall, after the Cullens’ supposed move to L.A., that the seat beside me had never been filled.” A little, because that implies she was only crazy during that span of time.

“With Edward back in place, it was almost as if the last eight months were just a disturbing nightmare.” As opposed to some other kind of nightmare.

4. Jacob hasn’t been answering Bella’s calls since the Cullens came back, though, and she’s been making them during that period where Charlie sends her to bed every night and Edward sneaks into her room. Edward doesn’t seem to like the idea of her socializing with the wolves: “I guessed that he had some reciprocal prejudice against the werewolves”. You mean like the far less dramatic Alice does, who has a romantic partner with nearly all the advantages she does? Like he said to Bella’s face when he found out from Alice who she’d been hanging out with after he left?

Not that it’s cause for too much concern: “With Edward near me, it was hard to think about unhappy endings--even my former best friend, who was probably very unhappy right now, due to me.” In case you’re wondering, that goes away in the next book about as easily as anything else. Edward agrees to let Bella hang out with unstable werewolves if she really wants. I find it kind of hard to consider that character development, though, instead of more simple dismissal of difficulties.

Indeed, “Being angry about things was easier than feeling guilty,” thinks our heroine as she vents to Edward after work one night. Am I really standing alone when I say I want to jump into the book and tell Edward how wrong he is when he says “It’s not you, Bella. Nobody hates you”?

5. Edward tries to explain to Bella that it’s just something they are, and vampires and werewolves are just enemies. That’s how it is.

Yeah, the Quileutes help the Cullens fight Victoria in the next book. Not in the sense that they’ll stop her if she’s in their territory, they agree to fight side by side with the sparklepires against Vic's army of newborn vamps. They even accept combat training from Jasper, a damn bloodsucker. And Edward’s prejudice goes away after Bella says she wants to be friends with both of them enough times (well, and resists being held hostage while he’s away). Stop teasing us, Steph.

6. Oh, and Bella still isn’t over Edward’s perfection yet: “Every time I looked at his face, that impossibly perfect face, my heart pounded strong and healthy and very there in my chest.” Really? Edward's good-looking? That’s such a fresh and unexpected revelation!

I mean really, two books into this and this is still worthy of mention.

7. Despite her life being perfect again, Bella’s in trouble when she gets home. Jacob left her motorcycle outside her house, it seems. “The sting of betrayal washed through me. I had trusted Jacob implicitly--trusted him with every single secret I had. He was supposed to be my safe harbor--the person I could always rely on.” And she picked Edward over him despite knowing full-well he had no love for Edward or any member of Edward’s sparkly kind. She started it.

“Of course things were strained right now, but I didn’t think any of the underlying foundation had changed. I didn’t think that was changeable!” So both of our leads are morons who can’t anticipate that people they’ve slighted might hold grudges. Good to know.

“What had I done to deserve this? Charlie was going to be so mad--and worse than that, he was going to be hurt and worried.” There’s your answer, kiddo. Imagine how he’d feel if he knew the shit you were keeping from him that didn’t involve hanging out with werewolves. “Didn’t he have enough to deal with already?” Considering he can’t prepare at all for the things that might target him because of his proximity to Bella, since he doesn’t know about them thanks to her silence, plus she sticks around keeping him as a likely collateral target, I’m not really swayed to Bella’s side here.

“I would have never imagined that Jake could be so petty and just plain mean.” What does she call what she did to him for all those months when she knew he was interested?

8. Jacob’s there, and Edward explains that it’s to talk to him. Upon seeing the wolf boy, “My fury weakened, faltered, as I stared at Jacob.” Even when she’s back together with Edward, she melts like a stick of butter when a boy’s mad at her.

Edward explains other things, no doubt gleaned by telepathy, that the reason Jacob delivered the motorcycle was to get her in trouble so Charlie would forbid her from spending time with Edward. When Bella asks why Jacob thinks she hasn’t been down to La Push, Edward explains it’s because Jacob thought Edward wouldn’t allow it. And since you’ve probably heard that Edward sabotages her truck when she thinks about making a visit, well, he was totally right.

Edward tries to thank Jacob for taking care of Bella while he was away being an idiot. Yeah, that’s a nice way to say it when she led him on and then threw him away like a dirty paper towel for a boy she didn’t even think she could get back with.

Jacob blows it off and reminds Edward of the specifics of the treaty. “If any of them bite a human, the truce is over. Bite, not kill.” Considering the Cullens more than have the means to relocate wherever they want, I don’t really see how the ire of one group of indigenous werewolves would be that big a concern for anybody in this conversation. Edward’s the guy Bella picked. The contest’s over. We know it’s over. Even before we knew about Jacob getting Bella’s perfect daughter as a consolation prize.

She even says so: “He hadn’t realized--or didn’t want to believe--that I had already made my choice. That I was really intending to become a member of the Cullen family.” And how nice of her to invite herself.

9. After the boys confirm that the ball of orange hair’s still trying to get at Bella, an irate Charlie demands that his insane daughter get inside.

Inside, she mopes some more about the state of affairs. “I had serious problems. My best friend counted me with his enemies.” Says a lot about her as a person, I’d say.

“Victoria was still on the loose, putting everyone I loved in danger.” Too bad she wasn’t even in the book.

“If I didn’t become a vampire soon, the Volturi would kill me.” We were given plenty of reason to fear those guys.

“And now it seemed that if I did, the Quileute werewolves would try to do the job themselves--along with trying to kill my future family. I didn’t think they had any chance really, but would my best friend get himself killed in the attempt?” So leave. Like they did at the beginning of the book. You see? There’s all of Bella’s big problems laid out in a nice little laundry list, and not one of them’s a believable problem either because of poor writing or our heroes’ idiocy. Which are really the same problem but why start picking nits now?

Maybe I’m just a snob, but I feel like an author’s failed when their books are only considered good by people who don’t think about the contents.

10. “Very serious problems. So why did they all suddenly seem insignificant when we broke through the last of the trees and I caught sight of the expression on Charlie’s purple face?” Maybe because those lines give just about a perfect feeling for how real those problems are, even within this fictitious universe. She brings them up and then sounds totally ridiculous with the line about Charlie's face.

11. “I squared my shoulders and walked forward to meet my fate, with my destiny solidly at my side.”

I bet that sounded like an awesome way to close out the book in the author’s head.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand looks like we’re done. Thanks for reading, everybody.