Bella is waking up with Carlisle, Alice and Edward standing over her. She's hurt (head, leg, ribs) and bleeding. She's also been bitten by James and the venom is burning her. The other wahmpires are standing around while Carlisle tries to get her some first aid. Carlisle also needs Edward to suck the venom (and blood) out of her hand.
There's no sign of James, Emmett or Jasper. I assume Esme and Rosalie are still back in Forks. So, drivers, start your engines!
Carlisle orders Edward to suck out the vampire poison while Carlisle fills her with morphine for the leg. Edward is briefly conflicted. Edward sucks her blood. Edward succeeds, then stops and everybody is happy. Carlisle finishes bracing Bella's leg and it's off to the hospital.
End of chapter.
Think I'm kidding? It's six pages long. Six pages. Six. Half the first page is the title of the chapter. Six paperback-book sized pages. Six. It's six pages in which everything we'd been taught about Edward's blood lust has turned out to be a huge exaggeration. All that moaning and griping about how impossibly hard it might be and, hey what do you know, breezed on through in half a dozen pages. Twenty odd chapters of "I'll kill you out of blood lust" and "we can't touch because it's too much" and painful proximity in the dark and really, it all amounts to a gigantic, overblown lie and everything is hunky-dory in SIX (insert swear word of choice) PAGES.
This is the climax to the Hunt story and essentially a climax to the entire book and it's 6 pages long. Irving's molars, after 20 chapters and this, THIS, is all we get. No grand battle with James. No last second battle over Bella's slowly bleeding body. No turmoil or blood-lust or struggle. No Carlisle holding Edward back when he snaps. The grand finale isn't even a fizzle, it's Meyer pulling the curtain off the ongoing lie that is the rest of the novel.
Six pages.
In Which Bella Becomes A Domestic Abuse Victim
Bella awakes in a hospital this time (lots of waking up in the opening page of chapters lately) and Edward is there to fill her in. Mom's on the way, we told everyone you fell down some stairs and we killed James for you. Seems that despite all of Laurent's big words that task wasn't very difficult. It was so easy we took care of it off camera. Good times.
Edward kisses Bella and her EKG stops beeping. Somebody needs to get Carlisle in on this, maybe he can prescribe something. Blood pressure meds or insulin or ephedrine or adrenaline or something. Girl's not going to make it to happy-vampy land if he gets any more physical.
Renee shows up and they have a good discussion, Bella tells her she's going back to Forks and everybody is happy.
Bella tells Edward she wants to be a wahmpire, he argues with her, she tells him that she knows Alice has already seen it in a vision and we're all spared any suspense or drama because now we know what's going to happen. Bella gets some meds and falls asleep cuddling with Edward.
The end.
SumUp F-
Some basic rules of literature:
- SHOW don't tell. We want to see James get his, not hear about it after. We certainly don't want to hear about it like it was a weather report. SIX PAGES!!!!
- Build UP the Tension: We get one short chapter of anticipation. One of running and boom, she's ok. Thanks, 20 some chapters of nothing, then 2 of build up and you end it in a half-dozen pages. Yes, I am going to go on about it. So much rage.
- Don't Break Your Own Rules: Edward has unstoppable blood lust. James is very powerful. Where did all that go? It's fine if there's a reason, but there was no reason. At least SM tried to get Alice's powers to work consistently, sort of.
- Dangling Threads: It's called denouement. You know, all that stuff after the climax? We get one chapter of Mom & Edward chatting in a hospital room and some mushy B&E conversation.There's one chapter after this, hope you cram some stuff in about all those other people you took the time to introduce us to.
One chapter left. It's called an Epilogue, but it looks like just another chapter. Which is not what an epilogue is, but I don't care.
I swear to you, I'm absolutely furious about chapter 23. Think back to Star Wars. There's a ton of build up about the Death Star being a huge, indestructible planet-killing fortress. Now imagine that you get a scene after all the ships take off and you cut to two injured guys talking about how they shot it once (off-camera) and it blew up. No rebel pilots died, just a few minor bumps and bruises. Man, that was kind of a breeze. Rebel command is a bunch of whiners.
No. What you got was a dozen deaths, ten minutes of battle and a last second rescue, shot and huge explosion. That's a climax. That's satisfying. That's a payoff.
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