Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Listening Library Unabridged Edition (August 2, 2008)
Duration: 20 hrs 29 Min
Narrated by Ilyana Kadushin and Matt Walters
Borrowed from Library
Synopsis:
Once upon a time in a highschool cafeteria, an average looking girl named Bella glances across the room and sees her future vampire husband........Oh snap thats Twilight......
Mini-Review
So who hasn't read or has not at least heard of this series? Probably not many of you. The love story of a human girl who falls in love with a vampire and has the ability to make young girls scream and older women go weak in the knees. I read this of course the night it came out along with half of the world...but thought listening to this would be a fun way to revisit Bella and Edward before the movie gets a hold of it and destroys everything I liked about the novel.
I loved the Twilight series and while I liked Breaking Dawn for what it was the one thing I hated was the feeling that Edward and Bella had become different characters. I still loved their romance and happy go lucky ending, I just felt Edward became the background wuss boy (um whats up with offering your wife up to laboring puppies....hmm and then Jacob considering, a little bigamy going on here.....) while Bella became the strong confident female that she never was in the previous books, even with necessary character growth she seemed different. So was it just me or did it seem that the pre-Breaking Dawn couple were completely different and was it just me again or was Jacob hung out to dry like a limp dog? However that being said, we all know what happens, we all know about the demon seedling that gets born and we all know the climax leads to a big fluffy rainbow that you either loved or hated, so I wont bore you or myself by writing a lengthy review.
Thoughts on Narration:
Breaking Dawn was spilt into two narrators, Ilyana Kadushin for Bella and Matt Walters for Jacob. I highly enjoyed Jacobs part, Walters did great voice tone, pitch and drama to the certain scenes and I felt the emotion, anger, disgust...all of it was read well and came across believable. Ilyanas Bella unfortunately gave me a massive headache, mostly due to the fact that my version of the written reactions were 180 degrees different than hers. Everything seemed so causal and her voice never changed it was a steady valley girlesque voice that never went dramatic, never went sad...the tone was very hard to match to the Bella in my head. Although Stewarts Bella in the movie is hard for me to see as well, I think we all have an idea of who our own Bella is and I guess her tone has never come across for me outside of the books.
The audio was tremendously almost painfully long..(20 HOURS) .I started listening to the cds the first of the month and just finished over the weekend, so due to tricky narration, flat dramatic spots and a lengthy time frame I would only suggest this to die-hard fans of the Twilight Series. You could probably read BD 20 times rather than listen to the audio version.
Rating
Breaking Dawn is recommended to mature teens/adults and contains: violence-including graphic pregnancy and deliver violence, action, suspense, sensuality and sexuality (told not shown), characters that get wussified and blissful romance.
Book Overall- 4/5
Audio Presentation- 2.5/5- Read it don't Listen to it!!!
Part of my Whisper Stories in my Ear Challenge
Wow, 20 hours!!!! That takes some dedication to listen to the entire thing. I've never listened to an audio book, I feel like I will get hung up too much on the voice and won't actually listen to the story. Sounds like Bella's narrator is a bit bland in this one. Loved reading your thoughts though Tina!
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I'm so iffy about audio books is wondering if the voice will work for me. Sounds like this one didn't cut it. It wasn't one of my favorites anyway. Thanks for you thoughts!
ReplyDeleteI keep trying audios and failing. I always have issues with the voices.
ReplyDeleteWell, as a Twihard fan myself I have to agree with you on the narration. They could have done absolutely better.
ReplyDeleteIf the audio is really good I don't mind having long audiobooks. Shadowfever was nearly 20hrs too and I didn't mind a bit. But, sometimes it just feels too long.
Thanks for the awesome review!!