With the world’s attention focused on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series over the last, oh, decade, no one would blame you for overlooking Stephenie Meyer’s romantic, supernatural-themed Twilight Saga.
But quietly, Meyer’s vampire young-adult series, has captured multiple spots in Amazon’s charts and other bestseller lists. The fourth and final tome, “Breaking Dawn,” has held the No. 1 pre-order slot on Amazon for months, even though it doesn’t hit shelves until Aug. 2.
Penned by a Mormon housewife living in Phoenix, Ariz. – she majored in English at Brigham Young University – Meyer says the idea for the series came to her in a dream.
That nocturnal vision turned into an epic, contemporary tale about Bella Swan, an otherwise unremarkable teenaged girl, and the two “boys” in her life: Jacob Black, a strapping Native American lad, who happens to be a werewolf; and Edward Cullen, a devastatingly handsome, if somewhat pale, 17-year old who is both the love of Bella’s life and a vampire born in 1901.
In case you didn’t know, vampires and werewolves are immortal enemies – at least in the Twilight universe – leading to an angst-ridden love triangle that has played out over three books, “Twilight” (2005), “New Moon” (2006) and “Eclipse” (2007), the latter of which managed to knock the final Harry Potter book out of the No. 1 spot when it was released last August.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers expects similarly great things from “Breaking Dawn.” So much so that they recently upped the 768-page (no joke) book’s initial run from a mere 2.5 million to 3.2 million copies, making it the largest first run printing in umbrella publisher Hachette Book Group USA’s history.
While there are no confirmed details about what happens in the finale – Meyer is tight-lipped and advance copies haven’t been sent out since unfinished copies of “New Moon” were going for upwards of $300 on eBay – it’s safe to assume that Bella’s fate, to become a vampire or to lead the life of a mere mortal, will be decided.
When “Eclipse” left off, 18-year old Bella had survived the latest threat on her life, been accepted into college and reluctantly agreed to marry Edward, the sole condition he had for turning her into a vampire, which is what Bella desperately desires. If he doesn’t turn her soon and freeze her in time as a teen, she’s scared that she’ll look too old to be with Edward forever.
But the culmination of the series is just the jumping off point for Twilight frenzy.
Two thousand tickets for the Aug. 1’s “Breaking Dawn” concert at the Nokia Theatre, billed as an “evening of story and song” with Meyer, sold out in under 45 minutes. And fans are eagerly awaiting the release of the series’ titular movie adaptation, due in theaters on Dec. 12, featuring Robert Pattinson (who played Cedric Diggory in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”) as the vampire and Kristen Stewart (“Into the Wild”) as the clumsy but endearing object of everyone’s affection.