When we last left Bella, Jacob Black had just simultaneously thrown a wrench in her plans to become a Vampire and gotten her grounded for a really long time by revealing ton her father that she owned a motorcycle (go team Jacob!). What's a girl to do? I guess plan on fleeing as soon as you're graduated to Alaska where you will pretend to be attending college, but actually have your boyfriend, Edward, attend to you as to make sure you don't kill anyone in your fresh vampire blood lust. While this is going on we hear of an every rising body count in nearby Seattle (dead people!? I'm listening), which not only Charlie Swan (as a police officer) is interested in, but something the Cullen's have been keeping an eye on. Because much like a Harry Potter book, there's no such thing as a coincidence.
Bella is soon relieved of her punishment of being grounded, on the stipulation she tries to spend more time with people other than her vampire boyfriend. Mostly what her father means is, Jacob Black, who he prefers far over Edward (and I did too, way to ruin the one good character, but I'm getting ahead of myself here). Edward uses the new found freedom to bring up that Carlisle and Esme (his "parents") had given Bella tickets to visit her mother Renee in Jacksonville Florida for her birthday. So Bella and Edward visit Florida, only for her mother Renee to say something along the lines of "wow you two really are inseparable and he seems to always be protecting you". Bella writes her mother off by making her feel crazy, which I guess is what happens when you used to seem like a pretty decent girl, and somehow in the course of three books became kind of conniving.
Bella and Edward return and Jacob has been calling all kinds panicked after ignoring Bella's calls before she left for Florida. Being inept, Bella doesn't realize that her trip away could have meant she was changed into a vampire, thus starting an all out war between the Cullens and the werewolves. Jacob even goes to Bella's school to make sure she hasn't been changed yet and there's a little stand-off between Jacob and Edward, sadly though, neither bothers to entertain ME by tearing the others arms off a'la Chewbacca (be patient Wes, it'll come eventually). So Jacob tells Bella that Victoria (the red haired Vampire that's hunting Bella for revenge against Edward for her fallen love James, a vampire who hunted Bella in the first book, and was killed by the Cullens) came back into town looking for her, and that was the reason Edward actually took her to Florida.
Since Alice can see the future (a skill that seems to get a little more powerful in each book as to the suit the storyline) Bella decides after getting the day off from work unexpectedly to race down to LaPush to see Jacob before Edward can stop her. Edward's still apprehensive about letting Bella hang out with werewolves because they might accidentally kill her, even if the viewpoint is only slightly more hypocritical than when Bella assumed the werewolves were the ones killing people in New Moon. Bella fills Jacob in on the events that took place in Italy and Jacob fills Bella in on the entire story of when Victoria was in town and how it almost came down to a fight between Cullens and the werewolves because there might have been some territory crossing. Jacob tells Bella about imprinting, which I've heard about in groundhogs before (thank you Margo Handwerker), but evidently werewolves do also. What happens is once they lay eyes on someone, they fall instantly in love with that person and will do anything to be around them, to protect them, and be whatever it is they need. It had already happened to members of the werewolf pack, once between the leader Sam and his girlfriends cousin (ouchy!), another time between one of the werewolves and a girl that sat next to him in school, and thirdly on a two year old girl.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you Stephenie Meyer? I don't care about the character, I'm concerned about you, for thinking about that. Lets not dwell because that might be an entire article to itself just there, but I don't care about the myth here, that's just icky.
Things are heating up, and when Edward leaves town to kill some big game and drink it's blood, he leaves Bella in the care of Alice, against Bella's will, because all she wants to do is go hang out with werewolves again. Though this does give Rosalie the chance to tell her story about how she became a vampire. An upper middle class potential trophy wife to be, Rosalie is the prettiest of the Cullens. Basically she becomes betrothed to an asshole without knowing it, is attacked by her drunken fiance who left her to die in the snow. Carlisle felt bad for the pretty frostbitten girl and turned her. There's even a pretty cool, albeit overly dramatic, story about her getting her revenge on the fiance. Complete with Rosalie wearing the wedding-dress-to-be while murdering him. You know, the kind of stuff these books could use heaping more spoonfuls of. Rosalie does all of this though to give Bella something to chew on as per what she would be giving up by becoming a vampire, the simple things like having kids and, well, that's pretty much about it.
After school, Jacob uses Alice's gap in her vision of the future surrounding werewolves to sneak up and steal Bella away to the reservation again. Though the visit doesn't last long as Jacob tells Bella he would rather her be dead than turned into a vampire. Smooth. Though this last trip to LaPush is what makes Edward realize he's just bigoted against werewolves and he really isn't ever going to be able to stop Bella from seeing Jacob anyways (plus we all know what happens to teenage girls when you tell them to not do something). Bella returns from being held captive/being by watched by Alice to a note from her dad that Jacob had called to apologize and that she's missing things from her room. Edward comes into her room and smells a vampire, but it's not Victoria (thank GAWD, this story needed more vampires badly). Bella of course forgives Jacob and calls to accept his apology. Edward asks for the phone so he can inform the werewolves to be on the lookout for vampires who aren't ginger harbingers of Isabella Swan death. The conversation leads to Edward and Jacob starting to get the werewolves and the Cullen family to work together.
So Bella goes to the reservation to hang out with the pack for a night while they have a bonfire, tell some Quileute legends about the origins of their people, and how it was when the first vampires came to the northwest. Jacob is the great great great (I'm not sure how many greats) grandson of the first werewolf, Taha Aki. Evidently Taha lived long enough to have had three wives and this third wife, to protect him and their sons during a fight he was losing with a vampire, stabbed herself in the chest to send the vamp into blood lust. In it's frenzy for blood, it fought poorly, and lost to Taha Aki. Exactly the kind of thing you want to tell Bella about right?
So after some plot point reiteration, we get to another interesting part. Jasper's back story. So Jasper, the tall blonde weak-willed vampire of the Cullen family was changed during the Civil War by a trio of vampire women who wished to rule a territory south of Texas into Mexico. Being a vampire in the south is evidently different than the wandering nomad vampire that kills as needed in the north. There's gang warfare going on all over the place to fight over the territories with dense population where it would be easy for a vampire to feed. The covens would usually use the tactic of creating a bunch of fresh vampires to raid another coven's territory then trade out young vampires as needed.
I want to take a moment to give Meyer credit for something here, she added something to her vampire myth I'd never heard before, and being a credit where credit is due kind of dude, I have to point it out. Evidently the newly created vampire is the strongest form of vampire in the Twilight universe, as it's body and muscles still contain mostly human blood. As human blood is where pretty much EVERY vampire mythos says they derive their strength from, it would make sense that a vampire with a body still filled to the tippy top with human 0+ would easily be able to wreck a vampire who has to feed for every drop in his own body.
So anyways, back to Jasper. Jasper a former military man himself, made an excellent vampire war tactician, and helped another vampire Maria run what was the most successful coven in all of the south. Eventually Jasper was sick of all the warring and the killing and went on to run a ferry on the Me-Kong river, no wait, that was John Rambo. Jasper left Maria and began to wander with a couple of vampires when he eventually ran across Alice, who seeing the future, was waiting for him in a diner in Philly. Alice knew Jasper wanted out of the killing life and the two of them went to join the Cullens.
Bella goes down to visit Jacob on the reservation and this where Meyer completely ruins his character for me. Jacob flat out tells Bella he's in love with her, and she of course responds with "yeah I know, I love Edward" and all is pretty much like you figure it would be until he steals a kiss. When I say steals a kiss, I don't mean in the sweet way where he sneaks up on her and steals a quick kiss. I mean Jacob mouth rapes Bella while she protests and attempts to shove him off of her yelling "no!" the entire time. Even after Bella belts Jacob in the mouth hard enough to fracture a bone in her hand, Jacob is smug about how much he's certain his magic kiss will make Bella realize that she loves him back. In one terrible moment Meyer takes Jacob Black, the ONE character I can truly enjoy in these books and turns him into one of those douche-bags you see at a bar in a shirt with too much print on it and a beard trimmed like George Micheals in the 80's waiting to date rape the next girl that pays attention to them. No means no, never forget it kids.
So Bella graduates from high school. Alice throws a graduation party at the Cullen mansion and the entire school shows up out of curiosity. Even some of the werewolves show up, because Bella invited them before she was violated. Instead of tearing his arms off, Edward decides that it would be best if the werewolves and vampires could work together to defeat what they are now certain is a vampire army created by Victoria in Seattle. So, fucking, CLOSE arm tearing!
So that's the way of it. Jasper teaches the werewolves about how newborn vampires fight and they hatch a plan to lead Victoria's army to the clearing by using Bella's scent then hiding her on top of a mountain. Working together they're more than confident the can claim victory. So confident in fact that Bella pleads with Edward to stay with her out of the fight, because no matter how many times she sees with her own two eyes that these are super-humans with not unlike Superman invulnerability, she's out of her mind with fear that someone will get killed.
All of this is interspersed with Bella trying DESPERATELY to get Edwards penis inside of her. Somehow a night of Bella being determined to finally get some vamp wang turned into her finally breaking down and getting officially engaged to Edward, with the promise that he would TRY to break her off some, without breaking her neck and drinking all the blood from her body, before changing her into a vampire. Which evidently is a problem when you're a vampire trying to give it to a human. So Edward, in his old fashioned ways, doesn't give her anything but an engagement ring, which Bella refuses to wear anyways. Is there anything about Edward that won't make a girl swoon?
The fight between Victoria's army and the united Cullens and werewolves approaches fast and they hide Bella's scent by having Jacob carry her to the top of a mountain where she's to hide out the whole thing. A snowstorm overtakes her encampment on the hill so Edward, who has no body heat is forced to let Jacob spend the night with her in the sleeping bag while Bella in her half wakefulness listens to them have a conversation about their jealousy of one other and generally about what it's like being a vampire and werewolf.
So after Jacob leaves for the fight the next morning, Bella FINALLY comes to the conclusion about what a terrible person she is for leading Jacob on and sends Edward to bring him back. Jacob comes back and throws a mini temper tantrum about how he might as well go let a vampire kill himself because Bella is just going to hurt him more, and when Bella frantically thinks the worst of her supposed friend Jacob, he asks for a kiss. Basically saying "kiss me or I'll go kill myself". Meyer did everything her power to turn this character from decent guy into a douchebag date rapist extraordinaire. So Bella, queen gullible herself, asks Jacob to kiss her for real this time. Mid lip lock, it strikes Bella, she DOES love Jacob. Not as much as she loves Edward, but loves him none-the-less. Bella pictures what life would be like if they were together, the kids they would have, growing old together, the whole nine.
Like I needed MORE reasons to hate Bella. This little bitch can't even decide who she truly loves and who she doesn't, she's stuck between two men essentially, and she's positive she wants to be changed into a vampire for eons and eons?
The worst part? Edward doesn't even get pissed at her about it! Edward is never going to tear the arms off this guy no matter how bad I want it! Before I had time to vomit on the book and throw it across the room, the moment I've been waiting thousands of pages for had finally arrived. Fighting. Glorious warfare between vampires and werewolves. Oh where have you been through this whole thing. It arrives just in time to spare Edward from really explaining why he felt it was okay for Bella not only to kiss the mouth raping Jacob, but to break down into tears in her obvious love of him.
Jasper's plan works like gangbusters and the army follows Bella's scent right into the trap set by the united werewolves and Cullens. Except for Victoria and a new vampire by the name Riley. Seth, a werewolf left to send information between Edward and the pack, and Edward square off against Victoria and Riley. The fights are pretty much going well but Bella panics and pulls the third wife stunt by cutting her arm open with a jagged rock. The blood causes distraction like Bella hoped for and the fight is over shortly after. Edward even decapitates Victoria (hey decapitation is good). Edward burns the bodies of Riley and Victoria and they head back to see how everyone else fared.
When they get back to the scene of the real battle, Jane and a couple of the members of the Volturi show up to find themselves unneeded in the fight against the army. They were really hoping they could clean house on both the Cullens AND Victoria's army. The werewolves hide in the forest from the Volturi in the forest because I guess the Volturi don't know werewolves exist. Bella doesn't know it yet, but finds out quickly that Jacob was hurt in the fight trying to protect one of the younger werewolves who was fighting foolishly. Of course Jacob will be fine, werewolves heal quickly.
The story ends with Bella going to Jacob and telling him that even though he was right to believe that she did love him, she loves Edward so much more. They agree to stay friends in spite of the love between them. It concludes with Bella telling Edward she's prepared for everything now; to turn into a vampire, to say good bye to her family and friends, and to do it all the proper way with a wedding. Even after Edward sees this, and in his excitement says "we can run away to Vegas, no ceremony" Bella shows maturity (*GASP*!) and says she has to do it properly. Edward even tries to give Bella some hot Angel losing his soul to Buffy action, but she makes HIM wait this time.
My thoughts;
Even though Meyer decided to ruin the one character I was pulling for in the series with one swift kick to my I-give-a-shit gland, this was easily the strongest book so far. The pacing was finally consistent, and if the size of this review has anything to show for her effort, Meyer kept it going with plot points instead of relying heavily on the romance of the story. The romantic tensions between characters and soap opera drama between Bella, Edward, and Jacob this time played itself out as a single element of the story instead of being it's driving force as was attempted in the earlier books.
Fleshing out back stories for Jasper and Rosalie also finally started to show that characters outside of Bella were capable of depth, and again, it gave you a reason to at least care if they lived or died to an extent. In the earlier books most of the characters in the background were just that, background. No different than the trees or the high school. Hell I would have cared more in New Moon if Bella's truck died than if Rosalie did. Now I feel about the same about either Rosalie or the Truck dying.
The ridiculousness of Jacob forcing himself on Bella, then her inevitable coming back around to admitting her love for him was ridiculous, but not really beyond what I would expect from Meyer as a storyteller, it fit her M.O. if you will. This is a good sign though, as you can tell that it at least managed to illicit a reaction from me, instead of indifference or laughter which is all the prior books usually got from me, I found myself actually caring that Meyer was ruining a perfectly sensible character.
It all just goes to show what, as a guy, I'm willing to forgive in the end if you show me some vampires and werewolves killing one another. The body count in this book was acceptable finally, with enough giant bloody piles of Native Americans and vampires being burned throughout the book to hold my testosterone driven attention. A theme I REALLY hope continues in the next book.
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