Stephenie Meyer's ideas aren't necessarily the problem -it's her writing. Not only has Meyer failed to expand her vocabulary to prevent using the same adjectives continually, but she continues to construct meaningless conversations between characters that doesn't progress the plot in any shape or form. These meaningless and shallow conversations continue for a couple of hundred pages indicating that perhaps most of this novel is padding as the author is slightly lost at sea without quite knowing how to construct a novel. This is nothing unusual as Meyer has struggled with plot and pacing throughout her previous novels but never to this dire extent. In Meyer tradition most of the novel is taken up by irrelevant conversations and a day-by-day description of what the characters have been doing. These conversations involve characters doing a lot of whispering, laughing and chuckling at every comment - even the serious ones, and describing the colour of everyones eyes continually. Similarly to her previous works, the real plot begins to unfold during the last few chapters and if you blink, you will essentially miss it.
There were some good ideas here, although none are original ones. Renesmee could really have been developed further and could have been quite a complex character who is both good but with vicious tendencies. The difficulty I had was with characterisation. I can see how both Bella and Edward are simple archetypes in which adolescent girls can project themselves. The difficulty is that Bella's simple characterisation here is not consistent with her previous behaviour. In fact, none of the characters behave in concordance with their previously established views. Bella quickly changes her mind about marriage and motherhood without any reason whatsoever. She is willing to die for a hybrid human-vampire child that is killing her and in which she has no chance of survival unless she becomes immortal. Similarly her father doesnt want to know anything about vampirism or what has happened to his daughter and basically is unconcerned about her wellbeing. If I was turned into part of the un-dead legion, I'm sure my family would notice and be more than a little concerned! Bella's mother who was previously against the idea of marriage at a young age becomes an advocate for it and Edward, who was unable to procreate since he has no fluid sires a child. Meyer shows a fundamental lack of writing ability as she contradicts her previous works and changes her own universe simply because it suits her to do so. This is not the work of a thoughtful and talented author who overcomes character constraints with creativity and forethought. Throughout the novel Meyer never allows the reader to forget they are reading a piece of fiction. You can almost visualise strings attached to each character as Meyer manipulates them as she chooses on a whim.
My biggest difficulty with the novel was with Jacob imprinting on the child Renesmee. I am not comfortable with an adult character deciding that an infant child will grow up to become their sexual mate. What shocks me is they these children who are 'imprinted' don't have a choice in the matter. Jacob obsessively carries Renesmee everywhere, becomes jealous when her own mother holds her and cannot bear to be apart from the toddler. Somehow this doesnt sit well with me. Although the appeal of Twilight, for me, has always been that the characters are so dysfunctional and exacerbate their own problems that it borders on the amusing, imprinting verges on the obscene. I dont think Meyer is quite aware how co-dependent, psychologically troubled and dysfunctional her characters are. What makes this worse is that Meyer seems genuinely unaware she has created characters who are so unwell. If Meyer did not intentionally create them to be examples of obsession and pathological dependence then she needs to work on characterisation and narrative extensively so she is better able to construct character according to her own designs.
Although the previous novels in the Twilight saga were simply fun, trashy novels by an amateur who was able to tap a market, Breaking Dawn is an embarrassment. It lacks solid characterisation, structure, contradicts previously established continuity, and has a myriad of plot pacing issues. Not all of this should be attributed to Meyer as the editor certainly has a role to assist.
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