She is less restrained, alas, in her macabre descriptions of the pregnancy that immediately follows. And it's when Bella, suffering from morning sickness and gestating a vampire, starts vomiting ''a fountain'' of blood.

The series has always been grounded in Bella's human voice, which is imbued with adolescent fragility and unwavering passion for Edward, which has a kind of winsome purity rare in young-adult fiction. Bella as the masochistic teenage mother-to-be of a monster — a foetus that breaks her ribs when it kicks — she is not only hard to identify with but positively horrifying, especially while guzzling human blood to nourish the infant. (She adamantly refuses an abortion, which even Edward begs her to consider)

And this is just the beginning. So, happy reading!