Okay. I've now finished the first three Twilight novels, and, because I'm a sucker for punishment, am halfway through "Breaking Dawn" as well.
Seriously, though, I was curious. I mean, given how abysmally bad even book 1 was, I couldn't help wondering how much
worse book 4 must be if even people who loved the first three were ready to rip Smeyer a new one after reading it.
Of course, the only way to find out was to read the entirety of the damned thing, and I'm telling you, there'd better be a sparkling Purple Heart waiting for me when I'm done.
I think I can safely say this much already, though: Throughout the amassed badness of the first three books, there were a few scenes that I think I might have liked when I was, say, twelve years old. Of course they were usually immediately followed by things that would have made me spit nails even at age twelve (or perhaps
particularly at age twelve, when teenage rebelliousness was kicking in full force), but overall, I think an professional editor armed with a chainsaw, an awareness of gender issues, a grasp of basic earth logic, and the willingness to beat the authorial ego into submission would have been able to hack away at the combined contents of books 1-3 until they ended up with one single volume of somewhat bearable teenybopper vampire romancing.
Book 4, however, is an utterly lost cause. I wouldn't have thought it possible before, but I guess I can see what all the ex-fans are on about – even after three volumes of pointless sparkling and undead patronising, this is still a totally different level of badness. I just – wow. Congrats, Mrs Meyer, you made me speechless, and I haven't even got to the dentally assisted c-section yet.
On the other hand, I honestly can't wait until the movie comes out. I'm gonna rupture something in the movie theatre when RPatz starts sparkling, I just know it. Pity they'll probably never get to filming book 4, because I
so want to see him bite that pillow…
On a side note, German speakers on my flist, have you seen the
titles of the German translations? "Bis(s) zum Morgengrauen"? The pun, it burnsssssssss ussssssssss!
*goes to refresh latest Twilight post on fandom_wank*