Previously: It was too fast. No one knows what happened.
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Marines: The fact that we are still recapping this is no longer a joke. (K: This is the book that doesn’t eeeeeeend, it just goes on and on my friiiiiend.)
I briefly forgot where we even are in the story, but it all came rushing back when Bella describes Victoria’s headless corpse, which Edward then dismembers. Bella laments that she can’t go over to her boyfriend and, I don’t know pet him? comfort him? cheer him on? as he dismembers a body. She does watch all of this closely, though, in case somehow dismembering a corpse hurts him.
Also, I guess these vamps don’t bleed or…?
Catherine: I don’t think they do. I can’t remember them ever bleeding in this? But I’m not gonna pretend like I’ve been paying super close attention or anything.
Kirsti: My brain just went “But if they don’t BLEED, they can’t get boners LOLOLOL SORRY BELLA” except now I need the brain bleach.
Mari: We had enough of that discussion back in Buffy/Angel days. NO MORE.
Seth and Edward gather up all the stray pieces of vampire and burn them. Bella has dumb commentary while she watches, including the fact that the strong smell of burning vampire makes her uncomfortable.
K: She also says that it smells like incense and all I can think of is Xander in season 3 saying “Whoa! It smells like church in here. No, wait… Evil church.” Clearly the smell of burning vampire is a lot like evil church. Or something. IDK, you guys. This book has killed half my brain cells.
Annie: And yet she had absolutely zero problems with all those humans being led off to their deaths in the previous books. In case you needed reminding of how horrible Bella is.
Mari: Edward and Seth are not uncomfortable, though, because they are joking and also Edward gives Seth his fist and Seth fist pounds it with his wolf nose. THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT HAPPENED. Followed closely by our favorite:
“Seth coughed a laugh.”
Tell me more about this wolf coughing a laugh, please. Just kidding. Please just let this book die. (C: I HATE the goddamn dog descriptions in this book! Gah!) (K: Do you even own a face 2.0: have you ever owned a dog?)
Edward turns toward Bella all wary and Bella doesn’t get why. It really proves how dumb Edward is that he thought Bella might be wary of him after he murdered a vampire and set it on fire. Bella’s over here like, “huh. Why is he walking toward me slowly with his hands raised???” He’s surrendering to you idiocy, Bella.
Literally, this goes on for a full page where Edward is like, “please don’t be afraid of me,” and Bella is like, “AFRAID OF YOU? WHY?”
Wait, I should make it clear that that is a direct quote. Here we go:
“Afraid of you? Why?”
Bella walks toward Edward but trips over her own feet or over a twig or over a piece of vampire or over contrivance, I don’t know. She’s clumsy at this moment so she can literally fall into Edward’s arms and start crying because she’s totally NOT scared about the vampire campfire she just witness. Definitely not.
After she’s able to breath again, Bella asks Edward if he’s okay. He is and confirms that all the other vamps are okay too because WE ARE ACTUALLY NOT GOING TO SEE THE BABY VAMPIRE ARMY FIGHT. OH MY GOD. WHO IS THIS WOMAN? HOW HAS SHE BUILT THIS UP FOR FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN PAGES AND THEN WE DON’T EVEN SEE IT?
Catherine: Meyer does that a lot. Builds a premise which, while stupid and flawed or whatever, is still the CLIMAX OF THE BOOK. And then…just kind of narratively wanders away into a forest so she can look at trees or some shit. Pancho must not have had as much of a willingness to teach her about climaxes as he did about eating out.
Annie: Frankly, I’m cool that we don’t get to suffer through Meyer’s description of a fight. She does a horrible job of narrating action and she doesn’t have an editor. So it sucks, but also it’s awesome, because I don’t think I could take another 150 pages of this book where Meyer awkwardly ‘stumbles and clambers’ her way through the narration of a baby vamp fight.
K: Every time something like this happens, I think of Tolkien, because he was a CHAMPION at the fade-to-black fight scene. Like, the Battle of the Five Armies in The Hobbit? Bilbo gets knocked out and someone tells him about it later. I guess some people just aren’t good at writing action. In Steph’s case, however, she’s also not good at writing characters or plot or dialogue or words. Hell, she’s not even good at writing punctuation.
Mari: Bella passes over the fact that the baby vampire mess is over and Victoria is finally not going to be a plot that walks out of a forest ever again to go back to asking why she could possibly be afraid of Edward. I want to cry and puke at the same time right now.
Edward has to explain that he thought maybe she’d be turned off by watching her boyfriend murder someone and Bella snorts at that and then takes a moment from this mile a minute thrill ride to be impressed with her snorting.
“I snorted. Snorting was good; a voice couldn’t tremble or break during a snort. It sounded impressively offhand.”
““Bella, I just”– he hesitated then forced the words out–“I just beheaded and dismembered a sentient creature not twenty yards from you. That doesn’t bother you?”
He fronted at me.
I shrugged. Shrugging was good, too. Very blasé.”
Bella says she’s never worried about murdered in her vicinity because she’s always worried about Edward. This reminds him that she pulled that stunt with a rock (I totally don’t remember this part) (C: I think he means when she used a chunk of rock to cut her wrist to distract Victoria. That “stunt” where she put her life in danger to protect him.) and he becomes LIVID. Bella defends herself, saying she wanted to help because Seth was hurt. Edward explains that Seth was pretending to be hurt as part of their master advanced plan strategy. Bella is like, “oh.”
These two crazy kids feel relieved for a hot second before Bella remembers that Edward mentioned something about a complication sometime after Jacob brooded away. Edward says it’s nothing, and totally no reason to panic, but they are running out of time.
K: LOL, JK there’s another seven trillion page book to go.
Mari: Edward can’t explain what he means because he hears something in Seth’s head. Seth starts howling in pain and then Edward drops to the ground, making pain faces too. We then have to put up with a page of Bella asking everyone what is going on but no one being able to tell her but then her “realizing” some super complicated explanation she shouldn’t be able to “realize” and I’m recapping it this way because 1.) I’m tired and b.) I don’t actually know what’s going on and cat.) I don’t care.
Here, read it yourself:
“And I realized in that instant, when he said Sam’s name, that he was not speaking of himself and Seth. No unseen force was attacking them. This time, the crisis was not here.
He was using the pack plural.”
…the pack plural? Is this how like a group of crows is a murder of crows? A pack of broody werewolves is a Sam of broody werewolves? Huh?
Catherine: What a ham-handed way of saying “there was trouble somewhere else and Edward was seeing it in Seth’s head.”
Annie: You should be Meyer’s editor! Quick! Call her before she’s done that new book she’s working on.
K: “Whassat Lassie? Timmy’s stuck in the well?” is literally all I can think of.
Mari: Edward continues to have one-sided conversations with Seth and sends him straight home and not into the forest. Edwards runs in the opposite direction with Baby Bella in his arms. Bella asks AGAIN what is happening with the Sam of wolves and Edward finally tells her that the Volturi showed up.
OH MY GOD WHAT A STUNNING TWIST OF EVENTS! The only other villain in the story showed up to cause problems after the first villain was killed??? Meyer is a master of surprise storytelling. And by that I mostly mean SURPRISE, her storytelling made all the money.
K:
Mari: We run for two pages as Edward exposits that even though the other villains are here, things will be totally fine and no tension actually exists in this story. Bella makes crying sounds and keeps telling us she’s “on the edge.” Me too, Bella.
Bella asks what happened before when Seth and Edward had matching headaches, or whatever, and in the most prolonged painful way, Edward finally explains that one of the baby vamps was hiding and Jacob got hurt. “Of course,” Bella whispers and then passes out. Not me too, Bella. Unfortunately.
K: Excuse you, Mari. She doesn’t do anything as basic as pass out. She “slipped off the edge I was clinging to inside my head.” Unfortunately for all of us, she doesn’t die.
Catherine: Bella passing out is often how Meyer transitions from one scene to the next without having to do any of that icky ‘describing things’ or ‘painting a picture with your words.’
Mari: Unfortunately again.
When Bella comes to, all her vampire friends are touching her for some reason. Honestly, she wakes up to multiple pair of ice hands on her. Big weirdos. She can hear the conversation before she’s fully awake, of course, because that is her special power. Alice is telling everyone that the Volturi will be there in 5 and Bella will wake up in 37 seconds. That’s oddly specific. Did her vision have a stopwatch included? I’m confused.
Edward whispers in Bella’s ear that Jacob is going to be fine and Bella wake wakes up. (K: More specifically, “I found my way back to my body.” WTF??) Carlisle and Edward take turns assuring her that even though Jacob was hurt badly while trying to protect Leah, he’s healing rapidly and is going to go right back to normal.
Bella notices that there is an extra vampire girl on the ground near Jasper. She’s a baby vamp that surrendered so they kept her alive. Also, Jasper got bit because he was trying to protect Alice. The Baby Vamp starts howling and going crazy and Carlisle tells her to control herself. Baby Vamp is struggling, though, because Bella smells so yum. Bella is all, “um, shouldn’t I leave now?” but she can’t because the Volturi are still coming. Any second now.
Bella just stares at the Baby Vamp until the Volturi appear a few paragraphs later.
K: This entire section is utterly pointless. Like, I get that it’s supposed to be Bella seeing a baby vamp for the first time and realising what her life is going to be like when she’s turned. But SHE DOESN’T DO THAT. She literally just stares at this girl for like three straight pages while the girl groans and thrashes about how tasty Bella smells. (Which, when you cut it down to a sentence, it turns out, sounds pretty dirty…)
Mari: Jane arrives with Felix and some other shadowy Volturi. There are forced pleasantries and then Jane asks why they kept Baby Vamp alive. Carlisle said that she surrendered so he saw no reason to kill her. Jane thinks that’s stupid, and Carlisle tells her to do whatever she wants. Jane asks questions about how many vampires there were in total and seems impressed (in a worried way) that the Cullens seemingly took out 18 baby vamps, 1 toddler vamp, and their creator.
Jane starts mind-torturing the Baby Vamp to get information from her. Her name is Bree.
Oh.
Catherine: Yeah. The character Meyer created and awkwardly forced in so that she could write another book. It’s all coming back to me now. Make it stop.
Mari: It’ll be over soon.
Bree confirms that there were about 20 of them and their instructions were to follow Bella’s scent, crawl here for 500 pages, die off screen and probably never be mentioned again. (C: LOL) (A: A+ Synopsis of this bullshit.) Bree was confused so she surrendered when Carlisle offered.
Jane is impressed, but wonders why Victoria would put this whole plan together. Edward explains about how Victoria had a grudge against Bella. Jane laughs and is just like, “yeah.” Because Bella. Jane tries her mental pain thing on Bella again, just in case, but it still doesn’t work.
Anyway, there is nothing here for the Volturi to do. Jane says it’s a shame they missed a fight and Edward says they were just a half hour late. He hears something in Jane’s head that “confirms his suspicious” and Bella knows this because she “cheats at narration.”
Jane gives Felix the order to kill Bree. Carlisle tries to take responsibility for her, but no good. Bella closes her eyes, but she can still hear the gruesome noises of the Volturi killing Bree.
Poor Bree. On the bright side, you get a novella.
Wait. Man. It sure sucks to be Bree.
Catherine: Okay, but she didn’t have to live to see Breaking Dawn and we do. So, does it?
Mari: The jury is out.
Next time on Eclipse: Bella worries about Jacob in Chapter 26.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
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I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.