The Host

The Host: A Novel By Stephenie Meyer

I’m a little late to the party with this one. I’d seen quite a few people who claimed to hate Twilight give this a thumbs up, so I knew I’d have to get around to it sooner or later as I didn’t actually hate Twilight (until the last two books anyway). So this one? Um, it’s kind of disappointing actually. With Twilight you knew what you were getting into - a cheesy YA the girl totally loves the vamp book. That was really all it claimed to be, that was what it was. This is supposed to be some big sci-fi epic but for chicks too because it’s Stephenie Meyer -- love triangle (actually more than a triangle and fairly un-interesting given one of the guys involved is probably only “loved” since he was, in Melanie’s eyes, the last man on earth who wasn’t her brother when she met him and her attachment to him seems to be more like obsession than love). 

So what is The Host? In short a bunch of aliens known as souls show up on planets and take over their lifeforms as, you guessed it, hosts. See the souls are just little worms and they need to be implanted into another being in order to survive. Earth and humans being their most recent acquisition. How the first soul implanted itself into a human is beyond me, I must have missed that, nevermind how they took over the whole planet. That is exactly what they did though. Yup we were conquered by itty bitty worms who are implanted into our necks. Once inside of us they take over our bodies. Rarely, we are strong enough to fight against their mind and body takeover. When that happens they usually remove the soul and instead of letting us carry on, dispose of us.

That brings us to our main characters - Melanie and “The Wanderer”. Melanie is one of the rare humans who the Souls who had not found, captured, and taken over. She, her brother Jamie, and a guy they bump into Jared are living their miserable risky looting lives when Melanie sees her cousin on tv. She doesn’t have the glassy eyed look of a host. Melanie leaves her boys to find her and, of course, is captured. “The Wanderer” is implanted. All does not go as planned. Melanie is quite strong. While it is normal for an adjustment period, to have some of the host body’s memories, even their thoughts, at first -- well, it’s not normal to do what Melanie is -- refusing to relinquish control.

The shared body ends up in a desert compound where Melanie’s brother and Jared are living with other humans. Most of the story from there, as you can imagine, is the humans trying to figure out to do with the enemy while realizing that maybe, just maybe, she’s telling the truth when she says that Melanie is still alive within the body -- she’s sharing whether she likes it or not.

Part of the camp wants to kill “IT”. A smaller, much more important par of the camp (her brother and the owner of the compound property), wants to let “HER” live. 

Much of the story reads more Melanie/The Wanderer is a schizophrenic character than an alien / human takeover. Something about the back and forth felt off and not like two different species at battle at all. Wanderer seemed to convenielty understand or not understand things -- I was never sure if that was “Melanie is stupid so she doesn’t have that memory to access” thing or “Wanderer has taken over enough she’s lost access for now and just never needed that info before now” thing.

Wanderer becomes so very human yet seems to think her race is perfect even when calling them parasites and admitting they steal bodies from people -- killing the beings who the bodies belong to. Whether or not a body could survive a soul being removed and have its rightful owner come back to life seems random - in a way I am okay with that, they’re basically shut down it some mutant alien coma, sometimes for years, but it seems to be more a plot device than something that has an actual reason, medical or otherwise. The ending seems to conflict so much of what led up to it. 

Overall it’s an okay but not great. Apparently it will be turned into a trilogy (note to authors: every book does not need to be turned into a trilogy). Would I read the followups? Possibly, if it stumbled across my desk at the right time, but I wouldn’t exactly rush out to pre-order it