Did ‘Breaking Dawn’ Ruin the Twilight Series?

By now you may have heard that Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer’s teenage-vampire-in-love series Twilight, sold 1.3 million copies in its first day in bookstores this weekend. But some of those copies just may be headed back: A Twilight fan who was disappointed by the twists and turns of the 764-page novel has launched a “Return Breaking Dawn” campaign on Amazon’s message boards, urging fans who hated the book to return it to the store they bought it from. A Borders employee claims on her blog that she’s already seen returns, and one commenter on Amazon says that the local Borders has had fifteen copies returned already.

All these posts have plenty of commenters debating the book’s merits; some love it, while some feel it completely ruined the series. The L.A. Times’ Denise Martin didn’t like it and says that unlike J.K. Rowling in her series finale, “Meyers bunted.” But based on all the totally crazy shit that happens in the book, it doesn’t seem that way to us.

Thanks to the hugely entertaining live blogs of Breaking Dawn by LiveJournal blogger Cleolinda Jones — well worth a read even if you don’t know the books — we now know that the following insane things occur in the final volume of the Twilight series (spoilers ahoy!):

• Bella, the human, and Edward, the vampire, get married.

• Then they have rough sex that leaves her bruised and battered. (Also, he bites a pillow and covers her with feathers.)

• Then she gets totally pregnant with some kind of demon death baby who grows at a superhuman rate, can read thoughts in the womb, drinks blood in utero, and breaks Bella’s ribs, pelvis, and spine from the inside.

• Some werewolf stuff happens.

• The baby is delivered via Cesarean section, which is a polite way of saying that other characters rip Bella’s stomach open with their teeth. (“Seriously, they cannot make this into a movie. I cannot imagine for one second how they could make this into a movie appropriate for teenage girls and keep this part in it.”)

• Bella becomes a vampire and develops superpowers and has sex with Edward a lot of times.

• Everybody lives happily forever after.

Cleolinda’s No. 1 unanswered question is a good one, though: What’s it like doing it with the undead? “Was it like fucking a popsicle?” Alas, we’ll never know. Cleolinda’s review, though, really makes us want to buy the book, not return it:

I have to say, y’all, that what follows is possibly the most awesome crackfic of any of the series so far. I love it and kind of want to snuggle it a little. Seriously, I keep hearing about all the True Fans freaking out, and honestly? I don’t see anything in the new book that wasn’t in the previous three. As in, I don’t get why you’re offended now. I mean, yes, there’s sex (yes, sex) and gore, and the previous section made me want to curl up and die, but I have no problems with Breaking Dawn that I didn’t already have with the other three (frequently, vehemently, and at top volume), and Breaking Dawn is far better written on a purely stylistic level to boot. So.

Unhappy with Breaking Dawn? Don’t burn it–RETURN it! [Amazon]
’Twilight’: A snap judgment on ‘Breaking Dawn’ [LAT]
Cleolinda’s Breaking Dawn reviews [Occupation: Girl]