Adventure Begins Here - The Renegade Wizard

Once upon a time the fields of interactive books were plentiful and selection abounded. As the 80’s progressed and gave way to the 90’s, though, videogames became more advanced and Choose Your Own Adventure-style literature became less remarkable in terms of what it could offer instead. Videogames started to have protagonists with identities, plots, supporting casts. Not to mention they had a more visceral feel with the way you directed every dodge, every magic spell, every roundhouse kick to an enemy’s head. These days an interactive book has to be pretty special for anybody to take much notice. Like oh, Thrusts of Justice.

Unfortunately, The Renegade Wizard isn’t that special.

You’re Toby, the squire of a famous knight who’s part of an army being assembled to capture a, well, renegade wizard who’s finally been cornered in his underground lair. Totally unexpectedly, as soon as your brave and righteous forces get within a day’s journey they’re annihilated by a sneak attack by orcs and the wizard’s dark magic. It’s up to you, the spunky underdog, to seek out the evil wizard in his lair and shine the beacon of justice in his sneering face.

I have nothing against the author for throwing his hat into the ring by trying to give those of us nostalgic for our Fighting Fantasies and Lone Wolves something to snack on. It’s just that most of the bog standard fantasy cliches I can think of are thrown at the reader and expected to stick, with no effort on display to make them fresh in any way. It’s left to one person to do the job an army couldn’t. That person is a relative nobody you wouldn’t logically expect to be up to hunting down an evil wizard. Your mentor makes a heroic sacrifice so you can go on and continue the quest. You have the chance of venturing into an ancient section of the caverns to find something powerful to aid your quest…but no-one who’s ever gone in there has ever returned.

When you corner the evil wizard, he gives a speech about what fools his colleagues were in the Circle of Wizards (or whatever it’s called in this fantasy world). Your character responds with a trite speech about the need for law and order and how if wizards set themselves up as gods then blah blah blah. Near the end you’re even given a rival in a character you’d probably barely even remember if I hadn’t just mentioned this.

The writing is just so dry, and at times verges on the redundant. For instance, “the language of the forest: identifying tracks left by animals of the forest,” and “A bookshelf dominates one wall, heavy with books.”

The gaming part itself isn’t exactly bad, but is just as generic as the rest of the book. After being handed your impossible quest, your mentor suggests you get help from either a barbarian, a wizard, or an elf ranger lady. Anyway you get a basic skill, like a bonus to combat rolls or the ability to read runes (yeah, read runes. No magic), along with some helpful item like a shield or a bow, then your tutor turns you loose on your quest. Because while they’re perfectly willing to train you to do it, none of these guys much care about stopping a megalomaniacal wizard, it seems.

Combat and skill checks and whatnot are fairly basic, with you trying to beat a certain number on dice, the higher your result the better. It’s easy enough to learn and keeps thing from getting bogged down on account of mechanics, but because of the blandness of the writing it feels like a chore dying over and over again to learn where enemies are so you can avoid them, and finding sources of healing and better weapons to cope with the ones you can’t avoid.

There's also the mechanic of “Hero Points” that can turn any of your failed rolls into a success and an enemy’s successful roll into a failure to represent those improbable strokes of luck the heroes always have in grand adventures. While not strictly original (the James Bond RPG back in 1983 had the same idea, and there might well be even earlier examples), it’s a cute mechanic. They aren't unlimited, though, and you'll want to be choosy about when you spend them as you get deeper and deeper into the dungeon.

Lastly, “Adventure Begins Here” is apparently the name for a proposed series should this book do well enough (according to its entry at Amazon). Not the choice I would’ve made.


You can skip this one without any regrets.

Captured by the Engines

It was supposed to be a date like any other. A computer programmer was taking his girlfriend out, until suddenly a black Thunderbird, its radio pelting Beach Boys music into the night, appeared and herded them into an alleyway. The next thing the programmer knew he was looking down at his leg.

Which was on the other side of the alley.

Soon the car’s showing up all over, even appearing on the third floor of a hospital to finish off one of its earlier victims who survived their initial encounter. What is this strange car? Why is it killing people. And how in the hell could it just appear halfway up a hospital building? And why does the scorched rubber of its murderous tires always turn to skin and blood by the time it gets to forensics…?

I know this sounds a lot like a certain Futurama episode, but it actually works pretty well. The descriptions of the violence are fairly macabre. The author also puts some appreciable effort into fleshing out its characters before chucking them in the meat grinder, as it were. Too many other fictional murder sprees don’t really bother, in my experience, and the entire experience suffers for it. Thankfully Captured by the Engines etches its world well. The characters, not just the ones who get run down, are memorable (I found the taciturn medical examiner, and her banter with the local sheriff, to be particularly good), as are the various key locations the story revisits. Like the Pyramid of Cars, which became eerier than you'd expect a pile of rusted old junkers to be.

I won’t say the mystery aspect’s great, since doing a good mystery’s an art that seems to have died off in recent decades, but I found it easy enough to stick with the book to the end.

In fact, the mystery sucks. You’ll have figured out what’s going on long before the characters do. You will. I guarantee it. Hell, you’ve probably already figured it out just from my little summary.

And I caught a couple editorial oversights in my read-through. Like “principle office,” near the end. That one frankly baffles me. I sort was willing to let that go in the books about ReBoot, but that’s because that’s a series with lots of silly wordplay already. This was a story about gruesome vehicular homicides.

But…if you’re willing to give the book and its ideas a chance, you’ll probably come away fairly pleased with it. As I noted it fleshes out its characters and world pretty well. When a street gang named the Desperos was briefly mentioned, I had to stop and think, “Desperos? Like the Despero?”

Because the guy looking into the classic car murders is Batman. Did I mention that? Because he is.

So, yeah. Batman. And the villain of this is an obsessive maniac like most of his. As you’ve already guessed it’s nobody from the comics, but I thought he was a decent villain all the same. Disturbed, but powerful and unique. I found him memorable, and a little frightening.

All in all, a decent if perhaps overly predictable read.

Breaking Down Book 3, Bella, Chapters 19 - 23

Chapter 19 - Sometimes An Ugly Caterpillar Turns Into an Ugly Butterfly

* We’re back to Bella for the remainder, looks like. While switching the perspective character was an interesting idea, this seems like a wasted opportunity. Why switch it back to the one we’ve had all this time if you’re going to do that? Why not Edward? I mean, even if she finished and released Midnight Sun, Meyer wasn’t planning to retell the entire series from Edward’s perspective, was she? She was already running out of celestial phenomena to name books after.

Let’s see, the epigraph from this one’s from a book by Orson Scott Card, whose work is even more distantly related to Meyer’s than Shakespeare’s. Not only because of the sci-fi, but because of having actual characters and therefore, actual character drama. “Personal affection is a luxury you can only have after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.” Oh cut it out, Steph. There’s no danger to anybody we’ve spent time with and you know it. It’s almost endearing the way Meyer keeps trying.

There’s another preface about some nebulous danger that terrifies Bella. “No longer just a nightmare, the line of black advanced on us through the icy mist stirred up by their feet. We’re going to die, I thought in panic.” The Volturi are coming for Bella’s little miracle. Nope, they still aren’t scary, and even if they were, ripping the Cullens’ heads off would only be an improvement.

If only that was it. Meyer actually undermines the drama even more than usual if we just look down the table of contents right before this part. Know what the last chapter’s called? “The Happily Ever After”. Oh wow I am. So filled with. Suspense I could. Just choke. To death on. It.

* The chapter itself is a trip through Bella’s psyche as she undergoes her change into a vampire. Flowery descriptions of her thoughts, her feelings on her relationships and the pain she’s going through abound (and of course how the most painful pain is the pain she’s causing others), but let’s not kid ourselves. Steph can’t make her characters’ thoughts compelling when they’re awake. Why would it be better when they spend pages and pages trapped inside their own heads?

In fact, let me use the bulk of the summary from the guidebook: “Bella wants to stay alive for Edward, Jacob and Renesmee, Bella burns but forces herself to remain silent to lessen Edward’s anguish.” Then Bella wakes up.

* Before I move on to the next thing, a bit of advice to any budding authors out there: try to make sure you can write a stimulating conversation between two characters before you try to get all artsy with internal monologues.

Chapter 20 - Masturbating To Yourself Is the Most Pathetic Thing In the Universe

* “Everything was so clear. Sharp. Defined.”

Thanks for being the author willing to go that extra mile, Steph.

* “I could see ach color of the rainbow in the white light, and at the very edge of the spectrum, an eighth color I had no name for.” That sounds like senses acute to the point of driving one insane. Then again sparklepires are probably just that awesome. She even starts calling out measurements of time like “a sixteenth of a second,” or “a sixty-fourth of a second.”

Or maybe I’m just one of those assholes who grew out of thinking omnipotent characters with no shortcomings were interesting. When I was ten.

“The dust was so beautiful that I inhaled in shock…” Nice to see being turned into a sparklepire hasn’t robbed Bella of her ability to act completely melodramatic…She's shocked by the beauty of dust motes. Seriously. This is how we're being introduced to the wonders of seeing the world through vampiric eyes. The beauty of dust.

* Then she comes fully awake and sees Edward beside her. “The greater part of my senses and my mind were still focused on Edward’s face. I had never seen it before this second. How many times had I started at Edward and marveled over his beauty? How many hours--days, weeks--of my life had I spent dream about what I then deemed to be perfection?…I may as well have been blind.” Her senses have expanded but what they’re used for hasn’t changed a bit. So all we’re hearing is the exact same thing she’s refused to shut up about this whole entire time, taken to a new plateau of perception.

Joy.

I know you think every book has its audience, Steph. And I know vampires stay exactly as they are when they become vampires, so maybe Bella literally can’t stop now (although Steph also outright declares in an interview from the guidebook that Edward’s become an optimist by the end). But…maybe you shouldn’t write a series of thicker-than-phonebook novels where everything else, including the plot I have no doubt you were so proud of, is secondary to constantly looking at and examining one single thing?

* Becoming a vampire immediately makes your human memories foggy, it turns out (“My mind spun out, spiraling back to my last human hour. Already, the memory seemed dim…”). Which would seem to confirm my earlier attack about Edward’s extremely romantic gesture of the wedding gifts he gave to Bella. The ones he inherited from his family, that were indeed from parents he hardly remembers having.

Edward assures Bella everything’s fine, and because it’s Bella, she immediately starts dissecting that blanket assurance to figure out if it covers absolutely everything and everyone she can think of. She thinks about her daughter and wonders where she is. “I tried to remember her face--I knew that she had been beautiful.” I said this in the “Seven Deadly Sins” article, but to say it again, this doesn’t sound like Bella showing how much she loves her kid. It sounds like exactly the same thing she’s been saying about all vampires since before she knew they were vampires.

“What about Jacob? Was he fine? Did my long-suffering best friend hate me now?” Does it maybe indicate anything to you, Bells, that your HUSBAND can’t do anywhere near the things for you that the guy you were always arguing with could? Is there maybe something wrong with this picture?

* Edward touches her face, and “The feeling was tingly, electric--it jolted through my bones, down my spine. Trembled in my stomach…Wasn’t I supposed to lose this? Wasn’t giving up this feeling a part of the bargain?” When did we hear that?

Oh, wait. “I was a newborn vampire. The dry, scorching ache in my throat gave proof to that.” That’s the ONLY thing that could mean? “And I knew what being a newborn entailed. Human emotions and longings would come back to me in some later form, but I’d accepted that I would not feel them in the beginning. Only thirst. That was the price, the deal. I’d agreed to pay it.” She agreed to jump off a cliff to hang onto Edward. Literally.

Of course, even becoming another species has no consequences if you’re Bella. “But as Edward’s hand curled to the shape of my face like satin-covered steel,” (boy that’s a romantic image, isn’t it?) “desire raced through my dried-out veins, singing from my scalp to my toes.” Ditto on the dried-out veins.

* She also finds out exactly what he meant when he said vampires are easily distracted. “These emotions were so much stronger than I was used to that it was hard to stick to one train of thought despite the extra room in my head.” She doesn’t have trouble sticking to the train of thought concerning Edward, which was the only one she ever stuck to before anyway. And even emotions are amplified by being a vampire? What the hell, does everything have to be amplified a hundred times by being a vampire?

She also mentions how a different part of her brain seems to monitor her thirst and if she gets distracted enough talking to people, she forgets the thirst is there. If anything I have to say Meyer tries too hard to explain how being a vampire works, without trying hard enough. She explains how Bella has all these new mental functions, but a chapter later she’s either completely adapted to them or Meyer couldn’t be bothered with them anymore. Because Bella sounds exactly the same as always, but now she’s incredibly beautiful too and measuring time in fractions of seconds.

* But probably the most galling thing about this part is the focus on how Bella is defying expectations for a newly-converted vampire. They try to explain this as her being the only known person who ever wanted to be a vampire and all the time she had to mentally prepare herself, or maybe THAT’s her special vampire power, but I’m still calling it the work of a chickenshit author.

Why spend a lot of time on something unpleasant like that, or having Bella give in to her urges, slip out and have the Cullens hunt her down and bring her back before she can blow their secret or kill someone? She wouldn’t have to actually do it before they caught her, just come really close. But noooooooo, let’s spend chapters talking about the exact same things as always taken to an even higher level. Let’s not show something unpleasant we’ve been building up to this entire series, let’s not ask Steph to make good on a threat.

* Around here, we find out here that the little Cullen is half-human and half-vampire. And her name’s Renesmee, a portmanteau of the parents’ mothers’ names. Because such a beautiful, wondrous, miraculous little angel couldn’t have any other kind of name. Urg. If cool things actually HAPPENED once in a while instead of us simply being ASSURED the most sedate vampire story in the world is the most awesome experience in the history of mankind…you could get away with this stuff a lot more easily.

* They’re about to go and hunt when Alice stops them and makes Bella look at herself in the mirror (she also dressed Bella up in this ridiculous luxury dress while Bella was out. “Tightly fitted ice-blue silk? What did she think I would need it for?” It was probably the most fun Alice ever had). Bella goes on and on about how the woman in the mirror looked like “a carving of a goddess”. Even if she’s still refusing to believe that’s her, she’s still wanking to vampires, and now she’s wanking to herself. Ewww.

* Edward expresses a little frustration that he’d hoped her becoming a vampire would let him read her mind, but he still can’t. “I felt better at once,” she thought. I’m not sure what to think about that. On the one hand, she shouldn’t be okay with how Edward violated her privacy with impunity, but on the other hand, every time it came up, she seemed downright grateful that he did. She even threw a tantrum near the end of the last book about how unfair it was that he couldn’t read her mind and she had to resort to talking to him.

* “ ‘I guess my brain will never work right. At least I’m pretty.’ It became easier to joke with him as I adjusted.” If she’d ever cracked a joke, and if that didn’t sound like exactly what she’s been telling herself for as long as she’s been telling us how perfect Edward is.

Actually Bella attempted to crack a joke once that I remember, in the first book when she pretended she was presenting herself to Edward as his next meal. He wasn’t amused, and I remember saying that was the fantasy equivalent of a racist remark (not to mention how it was almost a self-deprecating jab at how bullshit the idea of Edward losing it and attacking her was). You cut-up, Bells.

Chapter 21 - Vampires Have Perfect Recall, And Bella Can’t Remember What She Was Told Two Minutes Ago

* Edward suggests jumping straight out the window for them to leave the house. Bella notes “We have all eternity,” and he doesn’t want to take the time to just go downstairs and go out the back door like a normal person? He reminds her that he just reminded her about Jacob and their warm-blooded daughter being downstairs, and that was the whole reason he suggested they go hunting first. Dumbass.

Besides, you have superpowers now. You’ve been waiting for this moment since the day you found out Edward was one too. Why would you not have a little fun with that? Because she doesn’t. After this chapter, anyway. The only significant difference is now she’s starting to acknowledge that she may in fact be pretty. Goes to show how small-minded Bella really is, because based on all her moaning about getting older, that’s all she wanted to be a vampire for.

* But no, Bella doesn’t have any fun with her new abilities. In fact she starts torturing herself with “One mistake, and he’d (Emmett) be rolling on the floor. Then the jokes about the world’s only clumsy vampire would start….” Are you really sure you want to spend the rest of eternity with these people? Not just the rest of your life, but the rest of all life on the planet?

Bella does jump, and Edward compliments her. “That was quite graceful--even for a vampire.” And she figures that since nobody laughs, he must’ve been serious. Or maybe they’ve had, you know, decades to work on their poker faces and you’re an idiot. Naaaaaah, not a chance.

* Let’s see, Edward effortlessly jumps a river, Bella calls him a “show-off,” and in response “heard his invisible laugh.”

Pancho, I think your wife’s off her pills again. She’s starting to see laughter.

* Bella’s worried about still being clumsy as a vampire, but “I was more worried about the forest getting hurt.” Even if she hadn’t been saying shit like this all the time, she’s a Cullen now, both in name and now in body. The Cullens are criminals. They probably eat endangered species when they’re out doing exactly this. Do I think a couple trees matter to them? Especially when vampires don’t have to breathe unless they want to?

Do I doubt Bella could rein them in? Not at all, with the way the entire world bends over backwards for her. But except for one example she doesn’t, and since there’s no foreseeable danger on the horizon for the family after what happens at the end, there would seem to be no need to expose Bella to that side of their business again either. And since by then she’s got nothing to distract her from staring at Edward and having him grind her marble back into the ground for the rest of eternity, why would she care enough to go digging and find ways to make them nicer?

“Hoping very much that Esme was not particularly fond of any specific trees across the river…” What are you, a complete retard?

* Anyway Bella automatically has perfect poise and coordination as a vampire. I’m not really sure how that works so I’ll say it’s the author not wanting to bother with Bella having to learn anything. She even has automatic knowledge of dendrology because she can identify trees just like that. This is heading past awesome fast and into fncking stupid.

Also “I kept waiting to feel winded, but my breath came effortlessly.” When Bella woke up as a vampire she noticed breathing was voluntary. She already knows this. Again, this is something I probably wouldn’t care about if not for all the hoopla of how smart she is.

* Bella smells a hiker and gets the urge to attack them, but doesn’t. Because then the author would have to expend effort to keep her “likable” and “relatable”.

* Anyway Bella kills this mountain lion. “My teeth were steel razors; they cut through the fur and fate and sinews like they weren’t there.” Hey, this is starting to sound like a book with scary vampires like it wants you to believe. But it’s starting to sound (once again) like something I’d be hesitant to let my kids read.

* Hunger sated, Bella and Edward stare into each other’s eyes and, you guessed it, think about how totally, eternally in love they are. “My old mind hadn’t been capable of holding this much love. My old heart had not been strong enough to bear it.”

SDT, Meyer. For that matter, Bella’s been telling us about every single thing in the most ludicrously over-the-top fashion possible for this whole exercise. Now I’m supposed to imagine something BEYOND that because she’s a vampire?

No, Steph. No.

“Maybe this was the part of me that I’d brought forward to be intensified in my new life….Maybe I would just love Edward more than anyone in the history of the world had ever loved anyone else.”

By the way she compares this to “Carlisle’s compassion and Esme’s devotion.” Other people get super-powers, and they have the power to be good parents. And you thought Aquaman got shafted.

By the way, SDT that stuff too.

* Then they decide Bella’s fed enough to safely see her child for the first time. AFTER some making out, of course. Which is way better than when Bella was human, of course. Because they’re inflexible statues going at it now.

Wait, what?

Chapter 22 - Vampire Underarm Odor Saves Relationship, Film at 11

* As Edward leads his bride back he assures her that their daughter “is like nothing else in the world.” There was “the sound of an almost religious devotion”.

“I felt a sharp pang of jealousy over this stranger. He knew her and I did not. It wasn’t fair.”

…it’s NOT FAIR that he got to spend time with their kid, while she was BECOMING AN ENTIRELY NEW SPECIES? RECOVERING FROM HAVING MULTIPLE BONES BROKEN AND FNCKING DYING?!

And she’s going to be this immature…forever. Sounds like she’ll be a dynamite mom, huh?

* Their little angel sleeps easily at night, it turns out. “The only parents in the world who don’t need sleep, and our child already sleeps through the night.” Boy aren’t you guys specially perfect.

* She learns Jacob’s still there, and asks why. “Why should he have to suffer more?” Wait, more? Does that mean his suffering before was okay while she was pregnant and she needed him around, but now that she’s got everything she wanted, NOW it’s too much?

Oh, and “I cringed at the dim memory of shame and guilt. It seemed odd now that I had needed him so much then. That sense of absence without him near had vanished; it must have been a human weakness.”

Fuck. You. Stephenie Meyer.

Yes, I complained that she was a selfish bitch for continuing to ask him to stay and be there at the same time she was making goo-goo eyes at Edward. I still feel that way. But…to imply that needing someone sometimes is a “human weakness” and that she’s something better now because she doesn’t have it anymore…fuck you, Steph.

* They run back to the house and Edward warns her not to breathe, because Jacob’s outside and she might be tempted by his scent. “I tried not to panic as I froze mid-breath.” Panic’s a human weakness. She said that other thing like all those are gone now.

This turns out to be some kind of test to see if Bella will attack him, before letting her near her child. She thinks it was Edward’s idea: “What was with Edward? After all that we’d been through, shouldn’t he have been able to feel some kindness for my best friend?” Why, exactly, would that make them friends? Because that’s how it always works in the movies? Jake did all this over her, and she had to know he probably resented knowing she was never going to come to her senses with Edward.

“But what was Jacob doing? Why would he offer himself as a test to protect Renesmee?” Aaaaaand here we see the problem of a hack author having multiple perspectives in the same story. Even more than these being predictable as all fnck, we were around to see important stuff that Bella wasn’t. We know why Jake’s putting himself out like this for Renesmee’s sake. It gets grating really fast listening to Bella go on and on about how she doesn’t understand why Jake would be doing this.

Settling into their old jibing routine, Jake calls Bella a “freak show” (that’s 50 more points for you, Mr. Black). “ Edward growled. ‘Watch yourself, mongrel.’ ” Is Edward even physically capable of relaxing and having fun? Is he the only one allowed to insult Bella? I remember him doing that a lot in the early days. Says a lot about her and these books as a whole. That can make for interesting relationships, actually, but you have to know it’s just playful, and not constantly be reminded by the character themselves how worthless they are.

* Bella insults Jacob’s wolf BO and Edward whispers “I love you” afterward. Again, this wouldn’t necessarily make the characters assholes…but they are assholes, and it’s hard for the wisecracks to seem purely playful after all this.

Bella realizes that she and Jake can be friends with certainty now because he’s so disgusted by her vampiric scent that they could never be lovers. Seriously. “Maybe now I could truly be his friend, since I disgusted him enough physically that he couldn’t love me the same way was before. Maybe that was all that was needed.”

I have not the words.

* They head in and Edward assures his wife “I know you can handle this.” Me too. Quit pretending you can do suspense, Steph. You can’t. You’ve got to be willing to do bad things to characters you like. I have yet to see that and we’ve only got about half of the last book to go.

* The look in the baby’s eyes was “not at all childlike; it was adult, aware, and intelligent.” What does that say about everyone else?

I guess now’s as good a time as any to talk about the kid’s rapid maturity. She’s growing up insanely fast both mentally and physically. My question is…why? Shouldn’t having parentage from an unchanging vampire slow down her growth? I truly think Meyer decided it would be the other way around because Renesmee being some kind of mongoloid monster baby wouldn’t fit the image she had in mind for her book, and because “fnck it, this is my story, I can do things however I want.”

* Alice complains that Bella ruined the dress that was completely impractical for running around the woods at super speed picking fights with wild animals. Boo hoo. Idiot.

* Carlisle calls Edward “irresponsible” for letting Bella near hikers at this stage of her vampirism. What do they normally do about hikers? I mean, the whole thing that makes the Cullens “special” is that they run around in the woods and eat animals instead. They must have something in place to avoid this, right? I mean, if we’re to believe they still have to resist that impulse around people, it’d be tremendously stupid of them not to. Right?

I can’t shake a suspicion that this remonstration is really just an excuse for Edward to tell Bella she’s “stronger than anyone I’ve ever known”. Meaning in terms of restraint.

* Bella does get to hold her kid, and everybody’s all fraught with tension and stuff. “No one but Jacob and Renesmee was so much as breathing.” For like the third time in this article, no one but Jacob and Renesmee has to.

* After seventeen pages, Bella finally realizes why Jacob’s so protective of her baby. Seventeen pages building up to something we already knew about. Then she angrily chews him out for it. I’d like to remind everyone out there that a couple chapters ago, she was the one who told him it would probably just happen like magic with no thought or input from him. Which it did.

He protests he had no control. “ ‘Why should I listen?’ I hissed.” To prove you have any of those redeeming qualities everyone else seems to think you do? I dunno.

Esme implores Edward to stop Bella from attacking. “She’ll be unhappy if she hurts him.” Bella will be unhappy if she hurts Jacob. Well there you have it folks, if it matters it has to do with how it affects her. Just because Jake can heal quickly…it probably still isn’t pleasant to do so.

Not that this makes the whole coupling up with babies thing any less ewww. It was invented by a human being. I’m allowed to critique it.

* Nobody moves to block Bella, though. Her restraint is so great that all she’s done is yell at Jake, after all. It’s only when she finds out he nicknamed the baby Nessie that she loses her shit and jumps at him.

She can  resist the urge to take a human life because that’s what vampires do, but her best friend who’s stuck with her through thick and thin giving her kid an unflattering nickname sends her into a homicidal rage. Now imagine this exact same bit in something with a sense of humor about itself. That could’ve been awesome.

Chapter 23 - Bella’s Looking To Be A Crappy Mom, But As Usual It’s Okay

* Open on Edward apologizing to Seth for not acting faster. Guess why.

All I’ll say is for Bella being a stupid cunt to stand out, she’d have to not be a stupid cunt all the time.

Oh, and for what it’s worth Bella gets the feeling that while he heaps praise on her restraint, Edward was secretly wishing he could’ve been the one to smack Jake around a little. Oh yes, they’ve bonded, haven’t they? I do understand it, though. What’s to respect about either of them?

Also a bit of news “pleased me a teensy bit in a petulant way”. That being that Nessie bites Jacob all the time, and which is how they know he’s not venomous. How do they know what happens if a vampire bites a werewolf anyway? Why would it be the same thing that happens to a human?

* Some updates on relationships between various characters, but it still doesn’t count as development and we all know everything turns out perfectly, so who cares?

Also some of the vampires are out hunting. They’re safe to do this because off-screen the rest of the Quileutes found out Jake had imprinted on the baby. “Binding, because the most absolute of all the pack’s laws was that no wolf ever kill the object of another wolf’s imprinting. The pain of such a thing would be intolerable for the whole pack.” So it’s not for any moral or traditional reason, but to save themselves the horror of being subjected to Jake’s wangsting that his bros attacked his baby-girlfriend. God the resolutions for big issues in this book suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

Also some stuff about how alpha wolves can still talk to each other in wolf form and stuff like that, but none of it matters. In any case, the danger of the Quileutes is negated. “One big worry down.”

Ha ha ha oh you’re serious.

* Another threat looms on the horizon, though, and that’s what are they going to do about Charlie. They haven’t made up their minds between Bella pretending to have died from a “tropical disease,” or letting him arrive at his own conclusions. “Technically, the vampire rules would remain unbroken.” And if the Volturi are really so ruthless and protective of secrecy above all else, they don’t seem like they’d be the kind who care much about the letter of the law.

In the interests of fooling Charlie about the disease thing, they plan to leave for a while to make it believable and the author’s just SO UPSET about it. I mean, Bella is. I’m sorry, I stand by that. The author doesn’t want the bother of spending a significant amount of time elsewhere, and uses Bella’s fragile emotions and everyone’s inexplicable devotion to her to avoid it.

And just so you know, Bella automatically plans to take her kid but leave Jacob. Even though I see no reason at all the Cullens couldn’t buy him a ticket on a separate flight to the same place.

On the other hand Bella’s still got “enough petty ire in my system” to be grateful for the chance of “having Renesmee away from him.” So you haven’t solved your differences, because you’re being an even bigger bitch to him now than before. And yes, I can still feel that way while still being disgusted by imprinting.

* Time to check in on Nessie, and Bella observes how her “skin glowed like backlit alabaster.” Is that going to mean anything to adolescent and teen readers?

Bella tries to figure out exactly how fast her daughter’s growing. “My vampire mind had no trouble with the math.” So she’s good at math because she’s a vampire. The list of things they can do just gets sillier all the time…

* We find out Nessie’s special vampire power, which is to transmit her thoughts to someone by touch. Meaning while even she isn’t old enough to talk yet, she doesn’t need to because she’s telepathic. And yes, this works on Bella for some reason. I really don’t care how Steph explains that Edward’s power counts as an attack like Jane and Alec’s, but Nessie’s doesn’t. She probably didn’t even think about it until someone else brought it up.

In case you were wondering what Nessie shared, it’s how beautiful she thinks her mom is. Bella refuses to believe it, of course.

Besides how pretty mommy is, “It looks like she’s going to give you a rundown of everything you missed,” Edward informs our protagonist. Have her fncking be there! Maybe storytellers have done it that way for centuries upon centuries because hearing a story about someone hearing a story is stupid? Bella not being there isn’t a framing device, she just isn’t there for anything you might want to read about.

* More dressing up the perils of the series instead of creating any when Edward brings up that Jasper’s a little resentful of how quickly Bella’s settling in to being a vampire. “But that’s unfair,” Carlisle interrupts. “Everyone is different, everyone has their own challenges.” Can you actually name one Bella’s had, Mr. Doctor Leader Dad Guy?

Bella realizes how afraid she is to face her father. “And here I thought I would be so fearless when I was indestructible.” So what “human weaknesses” does being a vampire solve and not solve? Was Bella just wrong about that before, like with everything else? And if I may add, this is another thing we already knew about because Bella was panicking at some danger in the preface.

* Getting near the end, as the Cullens talk about an extremely minor friend of theirs who has a mysterious power, Bella realizes the only reason they sit in chairs s as part of their attempt to blend in as humans. She realizes that she could stay standing up until the day the sun goes cold if she wanted to. I mean, seriously…this is how you choose to explain that vampires are tireless? When Bella notices her in-laws sitting down? Not when she’s chasing down prey or trying to elude an enemy or something where it would make sense? Yeah, being a sparklepire sounds stupider every time something else gets mentioned about it.

* More healthy treatment of the topic of sleep, and watching other people sleep. Bella can even see what Nessie’s thinking as she dreams, and is pleased with being tied with Jacob for how often she shows up. That doesn’t sound like a feeling of smug superiority at all.

“For the first time, I understood how Edward had been been able to watch me sleep night after boring night, just to hear me talk in my sleep. I could watch Renesmee sleep forever.”

That would’ve almost not been creepy if she hadn’t mentioned Edward doing it to her.

* Thankfully we go out on Bella being pissed off. At Alice telling her happy birthday, because it’s her 19th. Bella spazzes out because she refuses to think of herself as getting older.

I’m kinda starting to like Alice again. I’m getting the feeling she does this crap on purpose, and guilts Bella into accepting it by acting like her best friend.

Breaking Down, Book Two: Jacob, Chapter 14 - 18

Chapter 14 - You Know Things Are Bad When You Feel Guilty For Being Rude to Vampires

* Aren’t those Cullens great?!

* Jacob gets back from running the perimeter, and “Someone had laid out clothes. Huh. Edward must have caught my moment of irritation as I’d bolted out the door. Well. That was…nice. And weird.” That the unfathomably wealthy white people dipped into some of their unfathomable wealth to make sure he’s not walking around with his dork hanging out? When he’s supposed to be helping Bella be as un-upset as possible?

Also, do the description of Jacob’s borrowed clothes, and who they probably belong to, merit an entire paragraph? Seven whole sentences?

Gah, these books are stupid.

* I almost want to say Steph really was finally wising up to how dumb her story her was by this point, when Jacob goes inside and sees Bella wrapped up in so many blankets she looked like a giant burrito.

I almost want to say that.

* He’s unsure of why she looks so happy to see him. “Happily married, too--there was no question that she was in love with her vampire past the boundaries of sanity.” Or maybe she was just insane, and it happened to manifest in an obsession with some perfect pretty boy. SDT, Meyer. Don’t try to hide behind your guidebook when you can’t be bothered to show something this integral to the plot in all the space you gave yourself.

* Also, “It bugged me a little, but for no good reason,” that Edward was able to pick up on Jacob’s thoughts that no attack is forthcoming even though Jake was about three miles out.

I know, I know, what Jacob probably meant by it is he’s not sure how to feel about Edward saying his thoughts are easier to pick up on because Edward’s getting more familiar with Jacob. Of course what it sounds like is how far-reaching Edward’s ability to be totally invasive is, and Jacob not being able to come up with a reason to be repulsed by the notion. That would make all the breaking and entering seem less romantic, doncha know.

* Edward tells Jacob that Bella’s upset to see him and his pack “all so…bereft.” Because it’s not like everybody in the world has their choice of loving homes with people willing to see to their every single need like she does…

* The topic of meals comes up, and Edward points out “Well, we do have normal human food here, Jacob. Keeping up appearances,” and that’s where I’m going to cut him off. Nobody comes to their house. Part of the reason the graduation party was such a big deal was nobody had ever been there or knew how the Cullens lived. The only “normal” person who’s ever an exception to that rule when the Cullens don’t specifically invite them is Charlie when he comes to check on Bella in a couple chapters. And by then he’s sure something weird’s going on so there’d be no point to showing him what’s in the fridge to prove everything’s normal. Besides, he doesn’t come until Jacob basically invites him by saying Bella’s better.

They have no reason AT ALL to be that in depth with their charade on a regular basis, and could actually be doing some good if they’d stop wasting food as props for their non-existent visitors and supporting some kind of feed-the-hungry charity instead.

Damn it, Meyer, stop and think once in a while. I know the author and the readers don’t see the same book the same way, but how fncking hard is it to remember none of them have social lives with normal people?

* Jake has a dream where he’s drinking a glass of water but it turns out to be bleach. I could make a crack about how that’s like reading Steph’s work, but why start being nasty now?

* Before Jacob goes to sleep, Alice comes up to him and remarks how relaxing he is because her visions shut down around him. Just being close to him does that, or does him being involved in their group future do that?

In the morning Alice’s face “wasn’t pinched up now. And it was easy to see why--she’d found another painkiller.” What other painkiller? It’s not Bella and her baby because Alice has never been only half-vampire; that was the source of Alice’s pain. “Like bad reception on a TV--like trying to focus your eyes on those fuzzy people jerking around on the screen. It’s killing my head to watch her.”

So what, then? She also said “I can’t take aspirin.” Are there pharmaceutical companies specifically for vampires, maybe? That’d add all kinds of dimensions to the story. Then again that’s probably why we don’t hear things like that.

Oh wait, he means having another werewolf around because Seth has a line of dialogue right after that little observation. Funny how Jake just described the scene of everyone hanging out and doting on Bella as usual, and didn’t mention Seth ONCE.

* Seth’s there because “Bella got cold.” I’m no doctor, but don’t pregnant women usually feel hot? Is it different because the demon fetus is drinking her blood? Didn’t it stop doing that because Bella started drinking straight blood herself? She’s described as looking a lot healthier since then.

At least last time they had the excuse of being in a damn tent on top of a mountain during a storm, with everyone away fighting a vampire army. Here they’re in the Cullens’ house with everybody around. They don’t have a damn portable heater for her this time? She had to cuddle up with another werewolf?

Ah, screw it. The point’s supposed to be Jake’s still not over her. How could anyone be? It’s BELLA SWAN.

* More empty talk about the conflict with the Quileutes, and how even if it came to a fight, Jacob COULD, theoretically, use his alpha status to end the fighting right there. Carlisle’s against it because it would be wrong, of course.

You have to wonder what the people in the book are thinking about their problems. Are they honestly prepping themselves for the uncomfortable eventuality of battle with other supernatural creatures who really aren’t evil, or are they waiting for a magic cure that makes everybody happy with no bloodshed to appear like the rest of us? Can’t say it seems like they’re concerned with anything beyond Bella’s comfort.

Chapter 15 - Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock

* Or, if I was going to do a sarcastic chapter title, “Countdown (to Boring).”

* Open on a telepathic conversation between Jake’s pack, where we find out, “Did you know you can buy blood? If you’re a doctor.” Oh, is that a fact? Did he have to explain what it was for? Did anybody check up on that? That just seems like something that would be regulated somehow, the sale of medical supplies, especially blood. Carlisle’s a nice guy and all that, but again, he’s still the head of a family of weirdo recluses. Meaning it’s probably common knowledge he doesn’t practice out of the home, let alone make house calls. How did he explain it? Did Steph even think he’d need to?

“Who cares about legal crap when you’re the undead?” Indeed.

* Oh, and Seth was actually alternating cuddling up to Bella with Edward to let their raging or frigid body temperatures adjust her own. You’re still telling me the Cullens couldn’t get her an electric blanket, Steph.

* Alice suggests Rosalie get Jake something to eat. He says he doesn’t trust her not to spit in his food and Alice replies “Rosalie would never embarrass Esme by displaying such a lack of hospitality.” Like when she suggested they just leave Bella to the (metaphorical) wolves in the first book because the idiot girl wasn’t their problem. In response to Edward’s direct request for her help, yet.

Edward promises he’d tell Jake if the food was poisoned, “And for some reason, I believed him.” Because Edward’s not just a great guy, he’s incredibly charismatic. Of course. Also, we’ve got this.

Jacob: “Let me guess, someone around here used to cut hair in a salon in Paris?”
Bella: (chuckles) “Probably.”

If only you’d tried to work a sense of humor about it in before, Steph. It’d still suck. You’re a hack writing a Suefic. But at least we could tell you knew.

* Some wangsting follows about how Jake’s not over her, and having him around completes her “big family.” “I’ve never had a big family before now. It’s nice.” It’d be nice if she got some appreciable time with anybody besides Edward, then. And, you know, not making the ones we do see seem like controlling/overbearing assholes.

* Jake and Edward talk about the plan for explaining things to Charlie, and that it’s mainly to drop a few hints, let him come to his own conclusions, which will probably be wrong. If he doesn’t know everything, he’s theoretically safe from the Volturi. Even though the frigging guidebook for the series admits that unless he made a huge ruckus with his knowledge, they’d probably never know about it.

Just so you remember, it took Charlie months to run out of patience with Bella being a zombie, and he’s never once tried to stop his daughter from seeing her dickhead boyfriend/husband. Because he loves her that much. Seems like it would take a hell of a lot to get to him. And yeah, these books don’t have anywhere near the bite they think they do. Meaning Charlie can probably take everything they’ve got to dish out.

* Also, Edward’s planning on checking into the legends of the cleaning lady’s tribe, because he thinks that might teach them something about how to deal with this. Because legends have such a good accuracy rating in this series; this isn't Supernatural, Meyer. Hell, if you remember me bringing it up before, the guidebook has a list of info about vampires the Volturi weren’t able to hide, were able to hide, and stuff they just plain made up to throw people off.

That does suggest a potentially interesting plot, though, with the Cullens sneaking into Volterra to get access to some kind of database on vampire info to know what to do, or where to look to learn more. That’d be a lot cooler than heading to South America to chase what is, in all likelihood, a dead end. Let’s not forget that the cleaning lady might well have gotten in touch with her people and warned them that Edward’s a “libishomen.” And so’s the rest of his family, probably.

It’d also give the Volturi a much better reason to confront the Cullens than the one they have. Especially since this “libishomen” nonsense ends up going pretty much nowhere anyway.

* Oh, but the book tries pretend otherwise. These legends actually mention a child born of woman and “libishomen,” that it was an evil thing that “must be killed immediately. Before it could gain too much strength.” So I’m guessing that legend isn’t actually talking about somebody we see later.

The legends hold “libishomen” themselves in the same regard. “Their legends say the same of us. That we must be destroyed. That we are soulless monsters.” Yeah well, considering that most vampires, even most of the non-Volturi ones the Cullens are friends with, are remorseless killers, maybe there’s something to it. Besides, even as the exception to the rule, the Cullens are still mainly a collection of arrogant douchenozzles. And they’re still vastly more powerful and supposedly teeter on the precipice of losing control all the time. In what way is “soulless monsters” an unfair assumption?

I’m sorry, it’s just the way Meyer thinks she created “good guy” vampires, but at best all they are is not actively evil. Is Superman a hero simply because he DOESN’T follow the guy who caught him off at the checkout line into the parking lot and heat vision his tires? Is Green Lantern a hero because he DOESN’T use his ring to pick up that same guy and hang him from the top of a radio mast by his underwear?

Maybe the bar for being a good guy’s higher than simply NOT abusing your awesome power. Which the Cullens totally do. Just because they don’t abuse it one certain way...

* Jake’s so upset by the fact that Bella’s willing to kill herself for the sake of her little monster, and that the Cullens are willing to let her, that he starts to attack Roz with blonde jokes. And it “Made me wish I could throw something at Bella too.” Wow, you just earned 50 approval points from me, Jake.

Chapter 16 - Too-Much-Information Alert

* Since when has “too much” information been Twilight’s problem? Aside from Bella getting naked, I guess.

* I just thought of this, but why is Jacob sometimes Jake, but Edward always Edward? Guess he’d seem like less of a “gentleman” if we ever called him by a nickname.

* Jake and his buddies are out scouting to see if any of their old buddies are around. They run into a place where they can smell all the vampires but Edward having been there recently, meaning there was “some reason for gathering that must have been forgotten when Edward brought his dying pregnant wife home. I gritted my teeth. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me.” Then why bring it up? Do I expect Steph to make anything of this? No, I don’t.

Leah makes a remark that knowing they’re helping the Cullens is a perfect excuse for Sam to “bunker down” and come up with a new plan. Bunker down? Isn’t that “hunker” down?

* She also observes “Wouldn’t want our precious parasites taking unnecessary chances.” As I’ve read in many a bad review article before mine, you know it’s a bad sign when the audience starts agreeing with the antagonists. God forbid the vastly more powerful Cullens who are the reason for all this put themselves at risk.

* Jake has to admit, though, that he isn’t hating having Leah around like he thought he would. She replies “You’re worth following, Jacob.” Because he didn’t hook up with her cousin for contrived reasons totally beyond his control?

* On the other hand, now that they’re opening up, we get a little development on Leah. As soon as she can, she’s planning to get out, and who can blame her? “I’ll get a job somewhere from La Push. Maybe take some courses at a community college.” What’s this? A female character finding meaning in life beyond a hot guy and beautiful babies? How’d this get in here?

Oh, wait, she’s sympathetic with Roz for not being able to have babies, because she can’t either. Never mind. Moreover, “I understand why your blond vampire is so cold--in the figurative sense. She’s focused. She’s got her eyes on the prize, right? Because you always want the very most what you can never, ever have.” She’s not focused, she’s one-note. Learn the difference, Steph.

Also, Jake thinking over Leah’s sterility because of her lupine powers has him asking, “Was that because she wasn’t as female as she should be?” Meaning what, exactly, Steph?

* Jake wangsts some more about having to go back to the Cullens’ to check on Bella. “It’s hard for you to be there, but hard to stay away. I know how that feels,” Leah opines.

Jake confirms “My head is not going to be the happiest place on earth.” Call me a grammar Nazi if you want, but “earth,” lower-case e, means dirt. Not the planet. And yeah, it won’t be a pleasant thing to see, since Bella’s just so damn special it takes mystical lupine biology for Jake to get over her. I bet ten years down the road, all the normal dudes from her school imagine Bella’s face on their wives when they have sex.

* What really hurts is this conversation leading into why Jacob hates imprinting. “Imprinting is just another way of getting your choices taken away from you.” All I have to say is…fnck you, Steph.

* Jake goes back and finds Bella in the living room. “I wondered briefly why they didn’t leave her upstairs, and the decided at once that it must be Bella’s idea. She’d want to act like things were normal, avoid the hospital setup. And he was humoring her. Naturally.” Based on her history, that doesn’t sound like being upbeat so much as insisting her problems don’t exist so she can get people to calm down and give her what she wants.

* About then Jacob realizes Edward, as always, has crumbled like a wet graham cracker and plans to do whatever Bella wants. In this case, let her have the baby even if it literally kills her. Jake’s about to snap, so Edward tosses him car keys “like they were a life preserver.”

Chapter 17 - What Do I Look Like? The Wizard of Oz? You Need a Brain? You Need a Heart? Go Ahead. Take Mine. Take Everything I Have.

* You see maybe why I stopped doing sarcastic titles of my own for this part?

* “I sort of had a plan as I ran to the Cullens’ garage. The second part of it was totaling the bloodsuckers’ car on the way back.”

Oh no! He’s going to mildly inconvenience the guy who can probably outrun that thing on foot anyway!

“Did he actually mean to give me the keys to an Aston Martin, Vanquish, or was that an accident?” I get Jacob probably know what that means, but I don’t. Does Meyer think her target audience does? Didn’t Bella remark that kind of thing was the province of those with a Y chromosome? Yeah, I slammed the author for that, but that was over the entire idea that women can’t be interested in cars. Just because I’m capable of thinking a car’s cool doesn’t mean I know what’s cool about it just because you told me the name.

* He drives to “the undefined sprawl that was part Tacoma and part Seattle.”

“This was a stupid plan. It wasn’t going to work.” This is a clever plan. It’s totally going to work. Because if there’s one thing these books have managed time and again, it’s to surprise me.

* “I parked across two handicapped spots--just begging for a ticket--and joined the crowd.” I’d say Jake’s being a dick, but let’s remember who owns the car.

* What’s his plan? To go walking around and try to imprint on some girl to get Bella out of his head. This is basically slavery based around his heritage and the presence of vampires. Why is this treated in a positive light? And remember the Quileutes started wolfing out in response to the Cullens’ presence (although I still say it makes more sense to blame Victoria). So they’re to blame for this imprinting crap.

“As time went on, I started noticing all the wrong things. Bella things. This one’s hair was the same color. That one’s eyes were sort of shaped the same.” Sue. I got nothing else to say. Sue. Don’t try to lie about it, Meyer. You know it, I know it. You just won’t admit it.

“It wouldn’t make sense to find her here, anyway. If Sam was right, the best place to find my genetic match would be in La Push.” It would? Why? And that’s what it’s about? Superior genetic heritage? Wow, that’s romantic. Which could be forgivable in any genre except ROMANCE.

Besides, you already know what happens. That means Jacob’s perfect genetic match is partly Edward’s genetics.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.

* Then a nice girl starts talking to Jacob, about how if he stole the car he’ll probably get off easier if he turns himself in. Way to keep a low profile during an extremely delicate operation, Eddie. Yeah, Eddie. Not Jacob.

As for his conversation partner, “Lizzie. She was pretty. Nice enough to try to help a grouchy stranger who must seem nuts.” Which also means she’s got more personality and redeeming qualities than any three characters we’ve been following this whole time. Why are you putting this character in, Meyer? All she’s going to do is make our leads look crazy and masochistic. Hell, she recognizes Jake’s borrowed car and throws out some appreciative words about it. They’ve already got something they can talk about besides each other.

Fnck these books. Fnck ‘em!

* Eventually Jacob realizes imprinting’s going to happen when it happens, and being around a ton of girls isn’t going to do it. “I was going to have to take the torture like a man. Suck it up.” Or think about what the hell you’re doing, weigh the pros and cons and think about what you’re going back to. I’m sorry to keep harping on this, but the Cullens aren’t good vampires. Less bad isn’t good.

Oh, and just for the record, Jake went babe hunting in “a big park full of kids and families.” I know it was meant to be a harmless descriptor. But what with where the imprinting bit’s been, and where it goes…eeeeeeeeew.

He goes back to Bella and the Cullens because that way, “I didn’t have to be all alone.” See? Crazy and masochistic.

* Edward’s waiting for Jake in the garage when he gets back, but I bet it wouldn’t surprise you to hear it’s not exactly out of a growing camaraderie between the two.

When Jake took off all of a sudden Leah apparently came in to ask why, and then unloaded on Bella for the way she keeps Jake around even it hurts him, seeing her like that and in the arms of someone else. I think. Edward doesn’t go into much detail. “You were quite vehemently championed.”

Edward adds, “I’m not going to pretend that I understand why Bella is unable to let go of you, but I do know that she does not behave this way to hurt you.” She knows that it does, and continues to do it anyway. Is there a difference?

Jacob promises to talk to Leah. And Bella. “She doesn’t need to feel bad. This one’s on me.” Stop defending Bella. Or at least stop claiming she’s so wise and kind and whatnot.

* Anyway, they talk some about the fetus, and Jacob realizes Edward doesn’t want to abort it anymore because “He couldn’t hate what loved Bella. It was probably why he couldn’t hate me, either.” It’s not because they’re getting to know each other and see each others’ good sides, it’s because of Edward’s obsessive devotion of Bella. So, same reason as EVERYTHING.

* Then, Edward gets on his hands and knees and begs for Jacob’s approval, to preserve the treaty between them and the Quileutes in spirit if nothing else. “Your word on this will condemn or absolve us. Since Edward has a hypo of vampire venom prepared and eventually uses that on Bella, and with Jacob’s parting shot in New Moon (“If any of them bite a human, the truce is over. Bite, not kill”), I have to think Edward’s asking permission to do the teeth C-section if that becomes necessary.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, the womb occupied by a half-vampire fetus is too strong to penetrate by normal means, and even as a baby it’s so strong that attempting a normal delivery would definitely be fatal. So Edward uses his teeth to cut it open to extract his kid.

Think on all that for a second.

* Things finally get cool as the chapter ends when Bella “vomited a fountain of blood.”

Chapter 18 - There Are No Words For This

* Oh boy, that’s encouraging in a BOOK.

* “Bella’s body, streaming with red, started to twitch, jerking around in Rosalie’s arms like she was being electrocuted…As she convulsed, sharp snaps and cracks kept time with the spasms.”

So this book’s target audience apparently isn’t ready to read about sex, but they ARE ready to read about Bella smeared with blood and contorting in bone-breaking agony. Eh?!

“Rosalie pinned Bella down, yanking and ripping her clothes out of the way, while Edward stabbed a syringe into her arm. How many times had I imagined her naked?”

(mouths “what the fuck?”)

* With Bella’s blood everywhere, it’s too much for Rosalie and she lunges forward to feed on our heroine. Okay, it happens twice, but…Rosalie seemed like a bitch who was willing to condemn Bella to die all the time anyway. This just makes her look like more of a bitch, not like vampires have no self control.

Jacob intercepts her. “My right palm smashed against her face, locking her jaw and blocking her airways.” And vampires don’t have to breathe, so…good work.

“I used my grip on Rosalie’s face to swing her body out so that I could land a solid kick in her gut; it was like kicking concrete.” Because we’ve never once established that vampires are made of rock. That their skin sparkles like diamond because of that. Thanks, Steph!

* Eventually Roz is restrained and Edward goes in to do the teeth C-section. “Vampire teeth--a surefire way to cut through vampire skin.” I thought everything about this was unknown.

* Bella’s heart stops after they get the kid out, and even though Edward’s injected her with vampire venom, Jacob’s entire world comes crashing down because the love of his life is dead and blah blah blah. It’s wangst. I don’t need to tell you about the wangst, do I?

Jake heads downstairs to do his duty to his pack. “Sam had been right. The thing was an aberration--its existence went against nature. A black, soulless demon. Something that had no right to be. Something that had to be destroyed.” He thinks it killed someone who was effectively suicidal anyway. Someone who never affected change despite all her efforts, change was only affected through everyone else’s efforts and unwavering desire to please and protect her. If she’d made some kind of mark of her own, done something to justify all this insane devotion…

* …but one look at the baby and all those violent thoughts melt from Jacob’s mind. That’s right, just like magic, he found his soul mate, and it’s the daughter of the center of the universe. She’s not even five minutes old.

Eeeeeeeeeew.

* “From upstairs, there was a new sound. The only sound that could touch me in this endless instant. A frantic pounding, a racing beat…a changing heart.”

What, you mean BELLA’S NOT DEAD?!?!?! For real?! Who could’ve seen that coming????

Your books suck, Steph.

Breaking Down, Book Two: Jacob, Chapter 10 - 13

Chapter 10 - Why Didn’t I Just Walk Away? Oh Right, Because I’m An Idiot

* Nah, it’s not as much fun when the book mocks itself. Not that self-mockery fixes problems…Not when it only starts coming in the fourth quarter, certainly.

* More reflection on Bella’s condition. “The girl was a classic martyr. She’d totally been born in the wrong century. She should have lived back when she could have gotten herself fed to some lions for a good cause.” Pardon me if I’m wrong, but is the book then admitting that Bella’s always trying to throw her life away over nothing? And perhaps, by extension, how a lot of the problems in these books exist solely in the minds of the protagonists? Which would’ve worked better if Steph did more with it than mention it.

* Bella and Jacob discuss the futility of their relationship, and how it felt to Edward when he met Bella. “He said it was like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, like magic. You’ll find who you’re really looking for, Jacob, and maybe then all of this will make sense.” Are we talking about fairies using love potions on unsuspecting humans? Because I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing we could talking about. Then again let’s remember this is the same girl who confused Romeo’s previous girlfriend with a character from a totally different play. Despite her only known hobby being reading classic literature.

* They discuss vampirizing as a life-saving measure, and how Carlisle “doesn’t end lives, he saves them.” With no consent from them, and not if they’ve got something to leave behind. I suppose Rosalie qualified because her parents saw her more as a trophy than a daughter.

But nobody minds or questions it, because that would lead to moral dilemmas.

* Jacob tries to get Bella to see that the vampire-spawn’s killing, but as usual she shoulders all the blame. “It’s me. I’m just weak and human.” Stop saying “human” like it’s a disease, Meyer. Yes, as a vampire she’d be stronger and tougher and be dealing with a superhuman pregnancy better, but being human isn’t the source of her myriad problems. We don’t necessarily need a protagonist who can fight, we need an author who can find dramatic possibilities with the characters she’s given herself.

* Jacob leaves because he refuses to watch Bella twist and die. He reports to the pack “Bella’s life means nothing to her,” and I think Dana put it pretty well.

* The wolves debate among themselves and figure that they need to attack and wipe out the threat of a spastic vampire baby who’ll never be able to learn the consequences of its actions. Jake protests because there’s no way to do that without killing Bella too. I realize killing humans probably runs counter to their usual mission parameters, but she made her choice. Stop with the get out of jail free cards because it’s Bella. I don’t care that it’s Jake, and he still loves her after all this. Can’t anybody have any principles?

No, of course not. It’s Bella Swan, one of the Sue-iest Sues anybody ever tried to hide. How dare anyone suggest she have to pay for insisting on hanging around the Cullens when everyone, including the Cullens themselves, warned her she could easily die that way? She didn’t listen when everyone told her not to play on the train tracks. This is what she gets.

* Jacob reflects on how such-and-such Cullen would be the most dangerous, and how good some of them are that it’d unquestionably murder to have to kill them. As if it’s not murder to kill someone who isn’t good. And one more time, this isn’t character development. Not for anybody but the one doing all this pontificating, at least.

Jake eventually gives in because Sam tells him to, and nobody contradicts the alpha.

Chapter 11 - The Two Things At The Very Top Of My Things-I-Never-Want-To-Do List

* There’s some unease among the pack. “Which brothers would we lose? Which minds would leave us forever? Which grieving families would we be consoling in the morning?” Why should I care? Why doesn’t the author make better use of the characters she has instead of piling more on? Why doesn’t she stop pretending already?

The thing is I probably would feel for them based on a line like this a lot more if not for the way the author insists on giving names to every single faceless fncker in her books. No, really. It’s the way Meyer insists on trying to make us care about every single one, by giving every single one of them a name, and saying we should care about them.

* Jacob realizes there is one way he doesn’t have to listen to Sam anymore. That is, seize upon how he was supposed to be the alpha but didn’t want to be. Isn’t it great the way so many problems are resolved by things just happening, or being a certain way? Not through effort? “I hadn’t earned anything. But there were things that had been born in me, things that I’d left unclaimed.” That’s nice that you’re pointing it out, Steph. Now stop relying on it.

Jacob’s better than Sam, by the way, because he’ll never use his alpha blood to force anybody to do anything they don’t want to. Even though that would put an immediate end to the threat of warfare between the two groups and all the wangst about whose moms they’d be comforting come the morn. He doesn’t even consider it. That might, after all, imply something other than black and white morality and require the author to make an effort.

* Jake runs to warn the Cullens of his ex-buddies’ plan to attack, and realizes partway there he’s not the only deserter. Seth came because he’s friends with Edward, and eventually Leah comes because she wanted to look out for Seth, her little brother (oh yeah, total harpy). If there’s more than one alpha, the wolves can apparently pick which one they want to follow. Convenient. Yet, it does allow for a little nice character growth among Jacob’s new recruits. Nice being relative to the rest of the series, of course.

* As he runs up to Chateau Cullen, he spots the boys out front. “They were snow white in the pale light.” Isn’t that normal for them…? Because they’re vampires?

He fills them in on the new developments among the wolves and yeah I’m really sure we’re looking at the possibility of a fight, even with a focus character who actually participates in the plot.

* Sheesh. Now that I think about it, since Bella’s life-threatening pregnancy’s the impetus of the plot, by switching the perspective to Jacob Meyer’s doing what she’s done this entire miserable experience: isolate the reader from what’s driving the story by isolating the narrator from it. Admittedly, he goes to check on her so it’s not as bas as it has been.

* Carlisle’s eternally grateful to Jacob and Seth for their “great personal sacrifice,” but I’m not sure what exactly it is he gave up other than the other wolves not killing them. I didn’t really see the friendship between them and the other wolves, just a bunch of hopped-up meatheads who wanted to kill vampires. Definitely didn’t see the relationship between Jake and his sister. Don’t know if they were happy at home. Don’t know if they had any respect for Sam. Hell, this is before alleged super-bitch Leah decides she’s in Jake’s pack too, and leaving the old pack cuts them off from that group telepathy with them. For all I know they consider this a trade-up.

* Jacob goes in to see Bella and notices “The glass wall was gone -- it looked like metal now.” Although I don’t know if this is another example of how quickly the Cullens can get and install things, or if it’s supposed to be those metal shutters we saw they already had back in the first book.

“The dripping noise was from the IV plugged into her arm--some fluid that was thick and white, not clear.” Am I supposed to know the difference? Would Jacob? Would the fourteen-year-old target audience? Would they know even if they followed this series into high school?

Oh and “Worse. Yes, she was worse.”

Sorry Steph, you’ve dropped the ball too many times for this to be a worry now.

Chapter 12 - Some People Just Don’t Grasp The Concept Of “Unwelcome”

* Jake and Seth set themselves running a perimeter around the Cullens’ house to watch for the other Quileutes like nice obedient guard dogs. Then Leah shows up, allegedly to keep an eye on her brother but also glad for an excuse to be rid of Sam. She probably wasn’t too happy being reminded every single day he dumped her because he imprinted on her cousin, after all…

Not sure why imprinting’s treated like a good thing.

* Eventually the bickering between the wolves ends and of course matters turn back to Bella’s survival.

Sayeth Carlisle, “Bella is already a daughter to me. A beloved daughter.” Of course. And it’s Bella, so the fact that Carlisle sees her as a daughter isn’t enough, he had to add another sentence with that superlative.

There’s still the possibility of vamping Bella to save her. “I’ve seen vampire venom work miracles, but there are conditions that even venom cannot overcome.” I doubt it, but it’s possible Steph did exhaustive research and found out “venom” is actually a neutral term that doesn’t mean poison. That’s what everybody thinks when they hear the word, though, and if she’s going to use “venom” to mean something that also heals and strengthens, it’d be nice to explain that in-story.

Also I wonder a little at Carlisle’s medical qualifications when he talks about how Bella’s baby is killing her from the inside because it’s not entirely human. “I can’t figure out what it wants.” Well Dr. Feelgood, the inhuman aspect must come from the father, yes? What does the father feed on? Shit, I’m not a doctor and this is no mystery to me.

Then again, how long did it take these guys to figure out Victoria was behind all the new vampires near them? To even guess that?

* Carlisle educates Jacob some on the medical differences between vampires and humans. I’m not a science guy so I can’t properly get into what’s wrong with this. If you’re interested in that, here you go. Also, the characters just say people have 23 chromosomes, not 23 PAIRS.

* Edward basically tells Carlisle he’s dumb for not figuring out the baby’s half-vampire and wants blood, and he’s right.

The Cullens prove to already have a store of human blood on hand, to keep Bella sated while going through the early days of her own vampirism. Presumably stolen by Carlisle from the local blood bank. Yay Cullens.

You could frame it by saying he did that to prevent deaths from Bella going crazy as a new vampire, but are you honestly thinking that could happen after all the other false alarms?

Chapter 13 - Good Thing I’ve Got A Strong Stomach

* Jake and Bella talk about how they always end up in situations like this, and I have to admit I do get the sense that they are friends despite all the shit she puts him through. I’m still not sure why friendzoned him when there’s actually something to get along with in the first place when it comes to wolfboy, though.

Although she does call him a jerk when he tells her that Roz doesn’t care if Bella lives or dies, as long as she gets to have a baby around. You're the one manipulating somebody to make sure things turn out how you want, Bells. And he's still right.

* The vampires bring Bella some blood to drink, “the kind with a lid and a bendy straw.” Like I’ve always, don’t want to be treated like a kid, don’t act like one.

Okay, okay, it’s really so she doesn’t have to look at it as she drinks and think about the fact that she’s swallowing blood. That’s just annoying in another way, though. When’s Bella finally going to toughen up a little and stop having every single thing done for her?

* Bella asks if this “counts,” drinking human blood before she’s a vampire. Edward assures her, “No one is counting, Bella. In any case, no one died for this. Your record is still clean.” Was it ever?

* With the little beast apparently calmed some by the blood, Bella’s finally able to get some sleep, and Jake leaves to let her.

Something that finally gets the plot moving again happens when he hears Seth and Leah howling and realizes some of the other Quileutes are on the way. Their names are listed as if that matters, but it doesn’t, so I won’t recopy it. They try to guilt Jake some into thinking he overreacted by running off like he did, and Seth thinks “Overreaction? And attacking our allies without warning isn’t?”

Allies? How are the Cullens “allies”? They joined forces with the Quileutes to fight Victoria’s gang, sure, but that was after the Alaskan vampires refused to come. It sounds like Seth’s letting the fact that he’s friends with Edward color his perception of the situation, and overlook the understandable concern that they don’t know what in the hell Bella’s going to birth. Well, actually, “concern” implies the books have any teeth.

But all the same, the Cullens helped them one time after who knows how long of uncomfortable peace. They help each other once, and they’re allies? I’m sorry to keep bringing this up, but I think it’s a hell of a difference between the Cullens and the Quileutes that the wolves actually protect their territory, while the Cullens only protect themselves. In my mind that hurts the “allies” argument too.

Maybe the author doesn’t see it this way, but based on their actions, it seems like the only reasons the Cullens wouldn’t simply leave to escape hostility is because a) it would bother Bella to do that to her family, and b) because the Volturi are keeping an eye on the family, and because of tracker-guy there’s no place to hide from them. Or currently c) because Bella’s pregnant with demonspawn and too weak to travel. And the Cullens were too stupid not to move her to one of their properties that isn’t down the street from a werewolf den in the first place.

It sounds kind of like Seth says that thinking they’re friends with the Cullens, when really they worked together because their interests happened to coincide at one point in time. I dunno, that seems a fairly wimpy definition. But a stronger one would require an author who doesn’t confuse conflict with mentioning conflict.

* Then Leah shows up, nude because of wolfing out. An entire paragraph, eight whole lines, goes into describing communal nudity and how it got weird when she joined up. Clean, huh?

* More brilliant rhetoric from this book. Jacob tells his former friends “this isn’t just about Bella.” Liar. You are a filthy, filthy liar, Stephenie Meyer.

“We’re protecting those who should be protected. And that applies to the Cullens, too.” Are you so sure of that, Mr. Black? And even ignoring their moral standing, the book still persists that vampires > every other species in the universe. When Sam was planning to attack he was sure they only had a chance as long as they had the element of surprise, and was still expecting losses. That was what that mourning families crap was about. Who says the Cullens need protection from the likes of you, Senor Black?

* More boring talk about how Sam won’t attack because he’s lost the element of surprise, and he’s afraid of more desertions, particularly among Jake’s friends. Still not much in the way of drama.

That’s a big part of the problem with going to battles as a major dramatic element once, when you’re writing a long series. It’s like Pandora’s box; once you open it and let reader expectations out, you have a hell of a time putting them back in again.

Solving problems through negotiations and concessions is boring real life shit, and it's even more galling you'd go that way after having the conflict center around supernatural beings killing each other so often by now. Disputes resolved by debating that could theoretically be dramatic (with a really good author, which leaves Steph out), but it's doomed from the beginning here because nothing’s at stake. All the Quileutes with any kind of identity are hanging with Jake and the Cullens now, and most of their development comes after this. Besides, Sam’s afraid of attacking now that the Cullens know he was thinking about it, and of his pack walking out on him since he can’t force them to do what he says anymore. The threat’s already been neutered.

Breaking Down, Chapters 6 - 9

Chapter 6 - There Should be Laws Against This Much Nothing In One Book

* “My entertainment became the number-one priority on Isle Esme.” Ha ha, became! Who do you think you’re kidding, Steph?

* “I knew what was going on. He was trying to keep me busy, distracted, so that I wouldn’t continue badgering him about the sex thing.” So stop. It’d be one thing if the story didn’t make an effort to portray Bella as something more than your average dramatic teenager…

“Whenever I tried to talk him into talking it easy with one of the million DVDs under the big-screen plasma TV,” (Isn’t it awesome that the Cullens have things like that?? It’s awesome, right???) “he would lure me out of the house with magic words like coral reefs and submerged caves and sea turtles. We were going, going, going all day, so that I found myself completely famished and exhausted when the sun eventually set.” They’re not even comfortable enough to sit on the couch and chill, Edward has to keep her constantly distracted so that dreaded topic doesn’t come up. How long’s that going to work even on a space case like Bella? Actually, probably a while, if “magic words” like those are enough to throw her off for an entire day. And hell, a glance at his perfect face always dissipates all annoyance she might be feeling toward Eddie.

Bella, you suck.

* Bella tries harder to seduce Edward, trying to make more use of the lingerie and “scanty bikinis” Alice packed for her. Oh god, stop giving me details on Bella’s plans to seduce Edward.

She tries to get him to give on the sex by being willing to hold off on being transformed, saying she’d like to go to Dartmouth and have some “human experiences,” but Edward sees right through it. “You are so human, Bella. Ruled by your hormones.” Wait, so what’s her deal supposed to be?

Eventually Bella starts to freak about the Volturi coming for her, and that with her sheer aura of desperation seems to overwhelm Edward enough for them to do the nasty again. Bella of course feels guilty, but Edward blows it off. “So you seduced your all-too-willing husband. That’s not a capital offense.” The same husband who refused to do it, refused to cut any sort of deal that would include it. How wishy-washy can you get?? Edward’s hardly been able to think of Bella’s own good even while he’s thinking of Bella’s own good before, though. At least she’s consistent about that.

* Bella realizes that getting laid has made her genuinely want to try college as a human and hold off on being turned. And if you think that’s honestly going to go anywhere, I’m going to have to assume you haven’t been paying attention.

* Bella goes to watch a movie while Edward goes to let the cleaners in (“They had more DVDs than a rental store”). I worked at a Blockbuster for a while. We were always getting asked for movies we didn’t have. I’m tempted to say the selection of a rental store’s really not that great, and it’s a lame-sounding comparison to make anyway. Maybe if she’d said, “They had more DVDs than an Amazon warehouse”…

Perhaps more pertinently, Bella’s interests pretty much shrank to Edward Cullen as soon as she moved to Forks. How long’s it been since she was even inside a video rental place? I’d say New Moon but it’s hard to imagine even Bella Swan turning DVD-watching into a life-threatening experience.

Also I just have to love the line that says Edward was talking to the cleaners “in what I assumed was perfect Portuguese.” Because Edward’s perfect. Edward knows everything. She just assumes that by now. Except we’re going to see a huge example of his deficiencies in the very near future.

* One of the cleaners, an indigenous lady, apparently tells Edward, to his face yet, that she thinks he’s something called a “libishomen.” That is, “a blood-drinking demon who preys exclusively on beautiful women.” You might think that the Cullens don’t care about letting these people know they’re vampires, but this sounds like this is the first time the people who clean the beach house have ever had cause to think this.

Also, I can’t find anything about a “libishomen,” so I’ll just quote what a TV tropes commenter had to say: “In Breaking Dawn, a Brazilian cleaning woman recognizes Edward as a "libishomen". Ignoring the fact that it's Lobisomem, that particular Portuguese myth is a werewolf and not a vampire. To make matters worse, the lobisomem looks like a man-ape, so it should have been impossible for Edward Cullen to be recognized as one."

Why exactly is she telling the guy who she thinks is a monster, that she thinks he’s a monster, though? Her concern is for the could-not-be-more-obviously-pregnant-if-you--built-a-50-foot-neon-sign-next-to-her Bella, who doesn’t speak her language, yeah. But what purpose is telling the monster he’s a monster meant to serve? I dunno, what if she was right? Won’t that just double the body count so she doesn’t go home and tell her people the guys who own that island are libishomens? She’s not, I know, but what IS the thinking? Is there any?

* Apparently it doesn’t even matter that this might be the love nest of a demon, since the cleaners just come in and get to work. Boy I wish I could say I was surprised. Within a page Bella forgets they’re even there and ponders sex again, which they leave to have.

Chapter 7 - It Took This Long For the Plot to Get Started, Aren’t You Filled With Confidence?

 * Bella has another nightmare about the Volturi, and I don’t care how many times you tell me otherwise, until you show them being scary, I’m not going to believe you when you say they are.

“And then, like a burst of light from a flash, the whole scene was different.” Just for the record, that’s what a flash is. A burst of light.

She wakes up to find a note from Edward that he went to the mainland to hunt. Guess it would’ve been too mean to have him eat one of those cute porpoises Bella went diving with in the last chapter.

“We seemed to exist outside of time here, just drifting along in a perfect state.” Imagine the impact of that same sentence coming from someone not disconnected from reality as the rule and not the exception. She totally forgot about other people being in the house because she was getting horny again in the last chapter, remember? Ditto for when she watches CNN later and notes “we’d been so out of touch, world war three could have broken out and we wouldn’t have known.”

* More signs of impending about-to-be-a-mommy-ness. Bella gets nauseated by food and decides she doesn’t want to go back “to the hot room.” So turn on the AC? Do they seriously not have that? They have plenty of things to make them look normal at their house in Forks nobody visits, why the hell would they skimp on the charade on a property normal people actually do come to? Why do I even ask anymore?

Guess not, since when Edward gets back he promises, “I’ll have an air conditioner installed before I leave again.” Edward, I’d say you suck at foresight, but it sounds like your dad sucks at it too since this is his and his wife’s private retreat. Next you’ll tell me Edward forgot to get a bed for the house he bought near Dartmouth for them (because he did. Buy a house there).

* Bella realizes her period’s late, and yanks her shirt up. “I had absolutely no experience with pregnancy or babies or any part of that world, but I wasn’t an idiot.” You don’t need me to say anything by now, do you? “I’d seen enough movies and TV shows to know that this wasn’t how it worked.” Well, if you’re going by sensationalized Hollywood depictions, maybe you are an idiot. I can’t help myself, can I?

She moans to herself, “there was no way I could be pregnant. The only person I’d ever had sex with was a vampire, for crying out loud.” It’s like she somehow tapped into the author’s mind and got used to there being no consequences to anything, and got complacent.

She remembers her research on vampires from the first book, and stuff like succubi and incubi. Then she thinks about Rosalie’s frustrations about not getting to experience motherhood, and realizes there is a difference between the two of them.

Damn. Now I really have to ask what the Cullens do with their immortality. Carlisle’s been alive for three and a half centuries. Apparently neither he nor even the Volturi, the oldest of whom have been alive for somewhere around thirty centuries, have ever asked what happens if a male vampire has sex with a human woman (hell, if a male human has sex with a female vampire). No, it’s just nothing happens when vampires have sex with each other, so nothing could possibly happen if a vampire has sex with a non-vampire.

I don’t know, but Carlisle gets kind of excited at getting to study something like this when they get home. You’d think at some point it would’ve occurred to him, and it’s not like he’s lacking for time to run scenarios or come up with a list of what-ifs. If not for that, I almost could’ve believed this just never occurred to anybody in the book.

* I know it’s said that normal vampires wouldn’t have the restraint to have sex with a human and not drink their blood, but that ties into two of the books’ shortcomings. One is that we spend all our time with the Cullens, and the other is that because Bella’s the POV character we hardly ever see non-veggie vampires. Even the non-veggies we see tend to come across as civil and restrained. Aside from Jasper’s slip in New Moon, the Cullens can talk all they want about how hard they have to fight their urges. But after a while all the civil, restrained vampires make civility seem like the norm, and that makes sparklepires as a species look pretty safe except when they take a direct interest in killing a specific person.

Because being around vampires seems so safe on the whole, it seems kind of weird nobody would ever get the desire to have a liaison with a warm body again, just to remember what it’s like. And if so, then it seems kind of weird nobody knows that impregnation with humans is possible.

* Alarmed, Edward calls Carlise, and Bella isn’t sure how she’ll talk to him. “Would he laugh at my conclusions, tell me I was crazy?” Does that sound like the guy who invented feeding on animals because he thinks enough of humans not to want to kill them or vampify them if they still have lives to live?

* I will admit that there’s a nice bit here, and it’s the revelation that she’s going to have a baby causes Bella to grow up a little. Think that maybe there is in fact more to life than Edward’s perfect face and Edward’s perfect dick. That maybe being caretaker for a life is a good thing.

Granted, very little’s actually done with it, but having that moment was kind of nice.

* Bella then wonders why Edward’s suddenly so angry, and “I was sure I had it. He must be so worried about the baby. I hadn’t gotten around to freaking out yet. “My brain worked slower than his.” Oh and he’s gotten so much use of it, hasn’t he? He just overthinks everything, doesn’t he?

* Sure he does, since he immediately identifies Bella’s fetus as a threat to her and decides for her that Carlisle’s going to get it out. I suppose I’m meant to be appalled at Edward immediately deciding to do this with no input from her, but let’s us be reasonable if we’re going to ask the characters to be. This is something totally unexpected (however dumb that is), something he has no idea how to deal with, and something that could very well kill his wife. He’s protecting his dearest loved one from a bad spot he put her in. I haven’t got an opinion on abortion, but I don’t know that I totally disagree with him here.

* The cleaning lady shows up and starts yelling at Edward, implicitly over what’s happening Bella (who cares?). And it goes on for a little while even though, as usual, our POV character is totally out of the loop. She says things like Edward starts to sound pleading and begging but that’s of pretty limited usefulness when we have no idea what’s being said. Keep it short and to the point, okay?

We do actually hear one word of the conversation. “Morte.” “I knew enough Spanish for that one.” What if I don’t? What if I’m a tweener who thinks studying foreign languages is stupid? These books were, theoretically, being marketed to that age group, right?)

* “As if I could discount something because it was a legend. My life was circled by legend on every side. They were all true.” No, is that what all the vampires and lupine shapeshifters mean? The first sentence would’ve said plenty by itself. So we’re going from no help, right to too much.

Incidentally, didn’t she have a line somewhere back where she was flat-out annoyed with how many legends were turning out to be true? Hell, I seem to remember at one point she was dismissive of the Quileute legends of werewolves, and that was after she found out vampires are real. Yeah, not being dismissive of legends when you live up to your neck in them makes sense, but when did that start happening for Bella?

* Close out Book One on Bella tearfully calling Rosalie for help. It doesn’t say what for, but I bet you don’t have to guess it’s bribing Rosalie for protection with the promise of a baby around the house.

Book Two: Jacob, Chapter 9 - Waiting For the Damn Fight to Start Already

* “Preface - Life sucks, and then you die. Yeah, I should be so lucky.”

Um, what in the hell??

* As the heading indicates, we now switch over to Jacob’s perspective. Implicitly, this and the epilogue to Eclipse were in response to readers who didn’t like Jacob to help them understand him better.

Also, rather than Bella’s brief and often tangential chapter titles, well, that really is the title of the chapter, not one of the snarky ones I’ve been substituting.

* We open on Jacob griping that some werewolf named Paul has imprinted on Jacob’s sister that I don’t remember ever hearing about. Durrr, I wonder where Steph could be going with this after we just found out Bella’s pregnant!

* Jacob’s griping wanders off into what convenient excuse the Cullens will use for Bella not coming back from her honeymoon, or if they’ll even bother and just suddenly disappear into thin air one morning. He fantasizes about getting the pack and going out to get the Cullens (fantasizing because he’s already been turned down by the others). The thought’s a sweet one because he knows Edward well enough to know that if he does get any of the others, Edward will come after him without a thought. Because Edward over thinks everything, and never seizes upon his first emotional impulse.

* Then Jacob goes to see another werewolf who’s playing with the girl he’s imprinted on. The little girl. Who just turned three. Ewwwww. I don’t care how Meyer tries to justify this, this is a grown man grooming a girl who can’t even tie her shoes yet to grow up to be his wife. Ewwwww.

Also, the other werewolf’s child bride “pulled his hair like a horse’s reigns.” A reign with a G is something you can’t touch, so no. Think about it like this: once upon a time there was a cartoon called Reign. It was about Alexander the Great. What spelling of the word do you think was intended?

Jacob says the werewolf’s way more jazzed than any parent would be to play “stupid kiddie games” with his underage paramour. What does that even mean, that Jacob’s just a cynical bastard who doesn’t know what parenthood’s like? Or is that true, because the child the book focuses on is mentally older than her parents within a few weeks of being born? I’m just asking because in the next chapter Jacob makes some surprisingly accurate observations, implying he has a pretty good handle on life in the real world.

Anyway, the other werewolf suggests that maybe Jacob trying to get a date, or a life. So what’s the message on that one? Is the series finally admitting how pathetic its main characters are for obsessing over Bella?

* Sam howls for the pack to gather, and Jake runs off, wolfing out with a “silent shimmer that made me something else.” Uh, listen, it’s cold! Shimmers are light, they’re visual. These couple chapters are making me wonder if Steph understands what light is.

The meeting’s because they’ve heard Bella’s back from her honeymoon and suffering from some kind of “rare disease in South America,” wink wink. None of them but Jacob want to attack, though, since they don’t have any proof. How law-abiding for a bunch of mystical warriors. Kind of calls all that car theft and such on the Cullens’ parts into focus, maybe?

Sam hits Jacob below the belt asking “Are you sure this is what you want? Is it really the right thing? We all know what she wanted.” Even after saving her from diving off a cliff. As they say, Jacob’s probably just a glutton for punishment.

Then Seth hits Jacob below the belt, asking what Jacob’s going to do when Bella fights on the Cullens’ side. I wonder if his opinion of her’s colored by his opinion of Edward, as if becoming a vampire makes you tough. I kinda see Bella curling up into a ball as her mind shuts down at the horrific spectacle of two factions she both considers friends fighting. Like she has every single time something bad’s happened.

“She’s not Bella anymore,” Jacob retorts. Who is Bella, exactly? Even the author’s said she avoided describing Bella more than she had to in order to make it easier to insert yourself into her shoes.

* “Nope, the pack wasn’t attacking anyone today. But I was.”

Over Bella.

Chapter 9 - Sure As Hell Didn’t See That One Coming
* You were the only one, Jake.

* Jacob retreats back to his place where he talks to his dad about his newly-revealed sister, and we hear “It’s hard -- the girls were older than you when your mom passed,” and if not for her new boyfriend “she probably would have taken off again real quick. Maybe that was why Billy didn’t kick him out.” Gee, it seems like she was only introduced to also introduce some quick pathos. Also seems like the author still thinks a guy’s the only thing that matters to a girl.

Oh, and also sayeth Billy, “She’d rather sleep on the floor than lose you.” Show it. Let us see this character’s face. Let us see how she acts toward Jacob that she feels close to him. With all the space Meyer had to work with, is that asking so much?

* Jacob heads over to the Cullen house, planning his strategy (mainly forcing his way in, seeing Bella and wolfing out so the others can have their evidence and attack), but Carlisle politely meets him at the door. “Carlisle was just so…human or something.” So please tell me and tell me true, Steph, what a sparklepire is. With all the space Meyer had to work with, is that asking so much?


* Carlisle lets Jacob in since he’s not an evil lord of the night, and Jake sees Bella really for real is sick, it wasn’t just a story. Also, Rosalie’s hovering around her protectively because this is the only chance she’ll get to be this close to being a mom. Even Edward points out in a bit, “Bella’s life means nothing to her.” Which Bella’s exploiting. I dunno, maybe if these books actually had complex morality instead of just pretending they did, that’d work.

Rosalie, or “blondie” as Jacob takes to calling her (it’s not like she deserves something more flattering) “was easier to ignore than I ever would have dreamed.” Wait til you’ve seen things from my side, Mr. Black.

* Jacob and Bella talk, with Bella snapping, “sounding a little more like the way she usually talked to me.” Oh you guys are such good friends.

More striking than that his how massively, how quickly, Bella’s got pregnant. “There was no way she could be pregnant. Not that pregnant. Except that she was.” Even a werewolf’s chained by ideas of normalcy.

Edward takes Jacob aside and explains why nobody’s done anything about this fetus, which is plainly killing its mother. Bella won’t let them. “Jeez, she was running true to form. Of course, die for the monster spawn. It was so Bella.” In a little bit we also get, “Make Bella see sense? What universe do you live in?” Although if you kind of think about it, that kind of awareness coupled with Meyer writing Bella in a minimalist fashion could be read as “Bella thinks this/acts this way because it’s the easiest way to advance the plot.”

It’s a little bit nice the author seems to be acknowledging the shortcomings of her story, but you’d think she might take the opportunity to fix it. This is a perfect chance for everybody to grow up and fill out as characters. At the very least, she could explain why it’s laudable that Bella’s always so willing to throw her life away. Or when Edward says Jacob couldn’t possibly hate him as much as he hates himself.

* Then Edward does something that’s earned him a lot more condemnation, but again this time…I’m not so sure.

He tries to get Jacob to talk Bella into aborting the baby, with the alternative of having “puppies” with Jacob instead. Who presumably won’t eat her from the inside out. Although I don't see any particular reason their wolf mojo couldn't manifest right in Bella's womb since she'd still be married to Edward and presumably still surrounded by vampires. Oh, like big, mature Bella could stand to be separated from Edward for nine months, and like Edward could resist the urge to be around to do everything for her, no matter how good an idea that would be.

The thing is, Edward doesn’t say that as a derogatory remark when he says it. He comes across as pretty desperate to save his wife’s life if that’s what it takes.

I don’t know if he’d be forcing his will on her if his family hadn’t lined up behind Bella, but…I believe for this moment he wants to save her. Besides, at literally every turn, Bella’s shown she needs to be protected from herself even more than all the vampires after her. I hate both of these characters, but Bella’s history of poor judgment and pointless attempts at sacrifice add up to a bigger negative on her side. And if I were reading this for the first time, how would I know what kind of hellspawn she’d be stubbornly releasing upon the world? This isn’t exactly Rosemary’s Baby, where you can sympathize with the character and get some inkling of why she loves her child even though he’s the frigging antichrist. Bella’s the idiot’s idiot and I’ve had, I think, good cause to hate her since she landed in Forks. Edward kind of wins by default.

* Jacob agrees to Edward’s plan, although I’m not sure if it’s the one to abort the fetus or to kill Edward when the baby kills her.