In Which I Beg for Sweet Release From Breaking Dawn: Chapter 19 -- Burning · 10:42am Jul 10th, 2018
Bella turns into a vampire and it hurts.
And that’s literally the whole chapter.
I am not fucking kidding.
We go back to Bella’s perspective right as she vomits blood. We get a brief recap of what she saw from the last chapter, only with a lot of descriptions of pain. Bella manages to cling to consciousness long enough to see (blalgh) Renesmee before blacking out.
Her tiny face was so absolutely perfect that it stunned me. She was even more beautiful than her father. Unbelievable. Impossible.
Edward. Edward. My life and his were twisted into a single strand. Cut one, and you cut both. If he were gone, I would not be able to live through that. If i were gone, he wouldn’t live through it, either. And a world without Edward seemed completely pointless. Edward had to exist.
CM + 2
There’s lots of descriptions of pain and burning and paralysis. It might be interesting if I cared about the characters and it wasn’t so interminable.
If I couldn’t scream, how could I tell them to kill me?
Towards the end, she hears the Cullens talking about nothing really consequential. Alice is a bit bitter that she can’t see (huagh) Renesmee in her visions.
“I see vampires best, because I am one; I see humans okay, because I was one. But I can’t see these odd half-breeds at all because they’re nothing I’ve experienced. Bah!”
Finally, the agony dwindles in Bella’s body, recedes to nothing, and she can open her eyes.
Clinginess Meter: 34 x 4
Geez. This chapter is nothing but pain. Fifteen pages of nothing but pain. I guess it’s an apt metaphor for my situation at the moment. How far am I through the book? Oh, god, I’m barely halfway through.
Chapters Left: 20
Towards the end of Atomic Blonde, there’s a fight scene that can be summed up as “Charlize Theron and some bad guys beat the increasingly bloody snot out of each other for ten minutes”. It’s bloody and one of the more brutal fights in recent cinematic memory. Everybody involved gets the shit very thoroughly kicked out of them; there’s one part where Theron and the guy she’s fighting are both on the ground, try to push themselves up to continue the fight, and are so exhausted they collapse back down. This is only halfway through the scene, by the way. And did I mention it’s all edited to look like one take?
I’m increasingly beginning to feel like I’m in that scene.
I swear, if there’s ever a chapter this uneventful again, I’m just going to stick random bits of trivia at the end so you have some semblance of entertainment. I’m completely out of analysis.
And all I keep thinking is "what's left?" Like, she had a baby, I guess she's a vampire now, any further plot is going to have to be crafted whole-cloth. :|
Meyer could have used this explanation for both this murderbaby and the werewolves instead of giving her two different arbitrary limitations. This new arbitrary limitation really sucks, by the way. “Oh, I had no idea this guy would get mauled by a bear. I can’t see bears, I’ve never been one.”
Fell of the wagon for a bit, so I got to appreciate a massive dose of horrible stlidity all at once.
Sorry, did I say "appreciate?" I meant "endure." Yeesh.
4898556
Perhaps "enjoy", but in the diplomatic sense of the word.
4898519
Whole cloth? More like wholly stupid cloth! Badum-TISH.
But seriously. You've got about eight chapters of not much, followed by a ridiculously limp plot for the remainder of the book. It's not completely whole cloth, but A: the foreshadowing that was there had no point outside of being foreshadowing, and B: the plot's so ridiculously stupid that being crafted whole cloth would probably be better. As for what takes it so long, well, you'll see next chapter. Gaining super senses has never been so dull.
4898521
But that'd require creativity, and Twilight shies away from creativity like real vampires do from sunlight. Whenever something creative pops up, it gets pitched far, far away, never to be seen again.
4898758
Holy stupid cloth, Batmare, this book's a crapshoot. :B