Saturday, October 16, 2010

Chapter Thirty-nine: I am so done.

Let's end this book, once and for all! I am so, so done with Twilight.

Turns out that it was Bella that really decided matters. Of course it was! And as the visitors all leave, Edward says that the Volturi won't be bothering anyone for a while, though they'll probably come back someday. Hello there, sequel bait!

Anyway, everyone leaves. Edward tells more about just how scared the Volturi were, how Bella would have made them fight at a disadvantage since she was just that amazingly powerful and sparkly. Apparently, the wolves did their part too, since Caius is terrified of actual werewolves, so seeing 16 of them in a gigantic organized pack was a bit much, even if they were technically shapeshifters.

Oh, so remember how nobody in the novels ever brought up the fact that the Quileute werewolves were actually shapeshifters, but that there were real werewolves in Europe and Asia? You'd think that would have been thrown in the books at some point if it weren't something that Meyer came up with at the last minute. But it's okay, because Edward has a great explanation for this:

"It never came up."
Sigh.

Alice explains her ridiculous plan to Bella, and that she couldn't tell Bella everything because she's not a good liar and wouldn't be able to hide it from everyone else. Wait, you mean Bella's not perfect??

It comes up that Nessie will be fully grown in about six and a half years, and that Jacob might have some competition in the form of Nahuel, the half-vampire boy from South America. You know, because Renesmee is literally the only non-relative female of his kind he's ever seen. There is a sad bit here, where Edward explains that seeing him and Bella and Renesmee as a happy family makes Nahuel more hopeful, because until then, he thought he was an evil creature just because he killed his own mother.

Bella remarks that the day belongs to happiness. She pays lip service to Irina's death, but then hand waves it away, much like the audience has at this point. Everyone can be happy now, yay!

Bella and Edward head back to their cottage, where Edward says it's time for the traditional, celebratory post-battle sex. But Bella actually says no for the first time in her life. Instead, she plays with her shield and lets Edward enter...her head. Mentally. It's the first time ever, and she's saved up all her super special memories just for this moment. It might be touching, if I cared. It'll probably work well with some sappy music as the last scene in the movie.

And the worst series of books I've ever read ends with Bella and Edward arguing over who loves each other more, and then deciding that they'll have forever together. The freaking end.

I'll be back with a recap soon, but for now, thank the sparkle-gods that I'm done with this torture. I've read everything Twilight had to offer, and I've survived. Free at last!

...what do you mean there's a new book about that vampire girl from Eclipse that surrendered to the Cullens?

...wait, there's a half-finished retelling of Twilight from Edward's perspective, too?

DAMN IT.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Chapter Thirty-eight: Guess what? Everyone's okay.

Alright, so the Volturi start mentally attacking the Cullen Crew, ready to try to take them down for whatever reason they come up with in the next couple minutes. But who could have guessed it -- Bella's power stops every single one of their attacks! It's a sparklepire miracle! Actually, I'm surprised she even notices the slightest discomfort (and really, that's all she does feel) from their attacks, since she couldn't even tell they were trying to do anything when she was a wimpy human. Alec throws his numbness gift at them, and that fails too, although its a bit reminiscent of Novocain.

So, as the Cullen allies start imagining which of the Volturi they'd most like to kill now that they have the upper hand, Aro says that it's time for them to vote on how to proceed, and pretends that nothing is wrong, reminding everyone that violence doesn't solve anything. Of course, he's still looking for a way to win this battle without killing Edward and Bella, since they'd be very useful; Bella is happy in some sort of masochistic way, since she realizes that the Volturi can't win unless they do kill her. Haha, she wins?

So, it comes to a vote. Caius votes to kill Renesmee. Marcus votes to leave the poor mutant alone. It all comes down to Aro...

But wait! Edward senses something exciting! First, he forces Aro to clarify that if they were 100% certain that Renesmee wouldn't be a threat to their secrecy, they'd let her live, which Aro agrees to. Oh, you tricky sparklepire, Edward!

It turns out that Renesmee is rare, but not unique! And he knows that, because...Alice is back! Alice is so back, that -- not a joke -- six consecutive words in the narrative, and five consecutive words of dialog are nothing but repetitions of the word "Alice." Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice!

Anyway, I'm going to go through this way more quickly than the book does. Alice found some vampires down in South America. One of them had a sister who was once in Bella's pregnant with a mutant situation, only she died during childbirth. The baby then turned its aunt into a vampire. They lived together, the baby reaching maturity seven years later. He's now 150 years old, his name is Nahuel, and he's here today to set the record straight.

Turns out Nahuel has some sisters too, all thanks to his dad, Joham, who sees himself as some sort of mad vampire scientist creating a super-race! Good times. He even has his own daughter, who is not venomous.

So, Aro considers this, and votes not to kill Renesmee, but instead to visit Joham and probably kill him instead. It's a sort of consolation prize, but it'll have to do. The Volturi turn to leave, Carlisle reminds them that they probably shouldn't hunt in the area, since the Cullens would like to remain anonymous, and everyone is friends again. Or not, but they at least say they are.

And then everyone cheers. It doesn't really seem like a "cheering" moment to me; more like a "phew, we just barely got out of that one" moment, really. But hey, I wasn't there, they can celebrate not getting killed however they like. Everyone kisses and they all get to live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, there's still one more chapter. JUST END, YOU STUPID SERIES!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Chapter Thirty-seven: Vampires shouldn't talk this much.

I just spent a couple hours reading a much better book with vampires in it, so why not write about a shitty vampire book before bed?

The two sides get within 50 yards of each other, meaning that, because they are super-sparklepires, they're basically withing instant striking distance. Caius is pissed off, because he wants to kill some Cullens, damn it! But Aro is still formulating strategy.

See, Aro sees that everything is all true about Renesmee, and that they can't just slaughter objectively innocent sparkly ones in front of so many witnesses. It's just not good business. The witnesses, for their part, are not exactly ready to crush, kill and destroy anymore.

Bella tests her powers. Yup, just as incredibly amazing as always. Even more so, maybe.

Okay, Caius is on to Plan B: werewolf discrimination! The Volturi have been hunting werewolves for thousands of years, so how can they let these werewolves live?

But Aro has seen everything, and knows that this plan won't work ever. See, because the La Push werewolves aren't werewolves! They're just shapeshifters. If they were real werewolves, they wouldn't be wolves during the day, and such. They are not Children of the Moon, even though Meyer didn't bother telling us that for the first 3.9999 books.

Caius tries to make the charge stick, but Aro subtly points out that any obviously flawed accusations will probably turn the vampire world -- like 80% of which is in this damn field -- against them instantly. By the way, with all these vampires here, they should totally start up an impromptu vampire baseball league, or even a vampire soccer league, since a lot of them traveled from Italy, where there's very little baseball. Vampire sports in general would be awesome.

Caius decides he wants to talk to Irina, who clearly screwed this all up from the beginning with her false accusations. But hey, it was an honest mistake. He just wants to know why Irina made the accusation in the first place. If you recall, she was pissed because the were...shapeshifters killed her love interest, Laurent. Irina has the option of making a formal complaint about the fact that the Cullens were okay with the La Push Pack taking down her sparklelover.

But Irina refuses, showing a good deal of moral fortitude, and saying that there was no crime. As a reward, she is killed instantly. Good times! Irina now becomes the most significant character that we're supposed to like that's been killed, though on a scale of 0-100, her level of relevance is about a 0.5, so it's not exactly as big a deal as Meyer probably thinks it should be.

But the idea is to rile the sparklepires up, and it pretty much works, since a couple people on the Cullens' side decide to jump out at the Volturi. There's a struggle, but of course, nothing bad happens, and everyone is held back just in the nick of time.

Look, this is all going nowhere. Let's skip ahead a couple pages, okay?

So, back to the matters at hand, Aro speaks to some of the witnesses. He goes to Amun, who witnesses that Renesmee does grow and stuff, and that she probably doesn't need to die or anything. He then runs away to safety. Siobhan says that the kid isn't a danger at all, and that no laws were broken. Aro agrees, but then says that she is an unknown factor, and thus is dangerous, since they can't know she'll always keep quiet about the whole vampires are real thing. Apparently, he's even concerned that humans might be able to kill them now, what with nukes and whatnot. It makes you wonder why they needed to be so secretive in the first place, if humans never posed the slightest danger to them until recently. Aro says it was for the sake of convenience...but how is that convenient at all?

The nomad Garrett offers another, rather obvious perspective, that the Volturi are basically making up anything they can to come up with an excuse to kill lots and lots of vampires. This takes like three pages, but I've pretty much summarized it already.

Aro says people basically have three choices: agree with the Volturi, fight against them, or leave peacefully even if they disagree, which seems a little out of place, but I guess it scores them political points with the undecided voters. A lot of the Volturi "witnesses" decide to take the third option, since this is all getting a little ridiculous at this point.

Aro points out to his army that they are now outnumbered, but they confirm that they're okay with fighting to "protect their world" even if that would mean they lose a few of their number in the battle.

So Aro, Caius and Marcus counsel. It is boring.

Meanwhile, Bella prepares Renesmee and Jacob to leave. It's supposed to be touching, but it's really not.

Everyone says their goodbyes to their loved ones, just in case. If you cared about 99% of the characters here, this might be meaningful.

And then Bella feels the pressure of the mental attacks from the Volturi start to push against her shield, and the battle is ready to begin! This would be exciting, if this weren't Twilight.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Chapter Thirty-six: Oh look, more vampires.

Okay, I hate this chapter, because it feels extraordinarily cheap to me, even for this series. Before we get into what happens in this chapter (and beyond), let's remember the problems with dealing with the Volturi:

  1. The Volturi are going to be enraged about what they believe to be an immortal child. They are extremely unlikely to even pretend to listen to whatever the Cullens say, which is why they had to amass a virtual army of vampires just to try to get the Volturi to slow down for a few seconds and listen, otherwise it would be instant death with no conversation, debate, or discussion.
  2. Aro wants what he wants. Even if they get the Volturi to slow down -- which, remember, would be a minor miracle in itself -- Aro is likely to come up with excuses with which to collect Edward, Alice (were she to be there), and possibly Bella and/or Renesmee.
Remember, this is what we've been told for the second half of this book: the Volturi are going to rush in, dispense judgment, and that's that. So, what happens?

The Volturi slowly reveal themselves, with the guard slowly giving way to their leadership. To quote Meyer:

Their progress was slow but deliberate, with no hurry, no tension, no anxiety. It was the pace of the invincible.

The problem is not that this is unrealistic. In fact, it's exactly what one does when they believe they are in a position of certain victory in case of conflict, whether that be in a war or in a game: you take your time, consolidate your position, and then win. No need to force things when that might lead to mistakes that give your enemies a chance to win.

The problem is that this is exactly the opposite of how we've been told the Volturi would act by every source in this book. You can't do that! You can't tell us the Volturi are going to act one way, which is a big problem, and then have them act exactly in the way that gives your plan a chance!

Sigh.

Anyway, there are 32 Volturi, as well as another 40 or so vampires there as witnesses for the Volturi, more or less; once they see justice dispensed, they can go tell the world about it. Also, they might get the chance to kill and fight and burn things, which is always fun. Irina is there too, not really feeling like a part of either group.

Edward reads the minds of Aro and Caius. It seems that they have a complex strategy, where if Irina's accusation is proven false, they'll come up with another reason to kill the Cullens. Which means they never intended not to listen; they only intended to win no matter what was said. Which is completely different that what we've been told by everyone for the last 300 pages. Granted, we were told they would eventually try to find any excuse that fit even if the Cullens could make them listen, but the really, really hard part was supposed to be getting them to listen at all...which apparently, the Volturi planned to do all along. Sigh.

The wolves come, and now there are 17 of them, because with so many vampires hanging out with the Cullens, it was inevitable that more kids would get called up from the minors to join the pack. The fact that these kids are generally really young, barely teenagers, would be really sad if I thought they were in any danger at all.

The Volturi stop to consider what to do should it come to a battle, since (not counting their witnesses), they're actually outnumbered for a change, and don't recognize some of their opponents. Carlisle takes the opportunity to chat up Aro a bit.

Aro brings up the immortal child issue, though he seems a little sad about having to kill Carlisle. But Carlisle points out the good news -- he doesn't have to be killed at all, for Nessie is just a freakish, mutant child, and not a tiny vampire!

Caius doesn't take well to this, and brings up Irina to identify Renesmee. Which she does, but she also points out that Renesmee has obviously grown since the last time she saw her. Thus, not a vampire. Oops.

There's a lot of confusion as to just what the hell is going on here, so Aro calls up Edward to read all of his memories. Edward goes out to meet Aro, and Jane makes a little smirk, which pisses off Bella. This incites Bella to throw her shield out further than ever before, reaching Edward way out where he's about to give his memories to Aro. Of course, this would be a bad thing, so she pulls it back. But now she knows she's a superpowered sparklepire after all. Of course she is.

Aro reads Edward's mind for a bit, and then realizes that something very different has happened here. Given that he's thousands of years old, and that his first reaction to everything he saw is described as "amused," I sure hope Aro didn't spend too much time in Edward's mind watching him and Bella sleeping together, because that would be way creepy.

Aro wants to meet Renesmee, and eventually all parties agree to this. Bella, Jacob and Emmett come too, as do a few of the Volturi, just to make sure everyone feels secure. Jane is jealous that Aro got Bella a present (the necklace, which she is wearing). Oh, girls.

Aro is amazed about everything, and sees Renesmee as a new chapter in sparklepire history, while Caius still wants to kill shit. Aro calms him down for a moment, then had Renesmee touch him, and sees everything. He tells Renesmee he's not going to hurt anyone, but everyone else is pretty sure that's a lie.

Aro makes some comments about the wolves. Edward reads his mind, and sees that he'd like to keep them as, like, guard dogs or something. Edward informs him that it doesn't quite work that way, no matter how loyal they may be to the Cullens. The whole eating people thing would probably be a dealbreaker when working with the Volturi, you know?

So now Aro is thoroughly perplexed as to what he should do. He needs some time to think it over and come up with a new strategy. If only he had the end of a chapter to give him a short break...hey, look, there's one right now!