"The Host" by Stephenie Meyer
Tonight, I finished reading The Host by Stephenie Meyer, the bestselling author of the Twilight saga of young adult vampire novels. The Host is Meyer's first foray into "adult" fiction and I hope this is just a sign of many things to come. I really enjoyed this book a lot.
Why is The Host categorized as "adult" fiction?
What makes it different than the other Meyer books? Well, the themes are
more mature, that's for sure. The romance is amped up a couple
notches, but I think any 16 year-old would be fine reading it.
A large portion of the story takes place in a complex of underground caves which I thought was a bit of a cop-out from a writing standpoint. Putting the characters into such a limited set of scenery conveniently eliminated a lot of potentially complex variables in the story. Meyer makes an effort to make up for it, though, by defining her characters with abundant detail. The dialogue between the characters was so natural to me, I often found myself laughing out loud as I read because it was so amazing to me how believable the characters were.
Could The Host turn into another series of novels for Meyer? I wouldn't complain, but I kind of hope she doesn't limit herself to it.
The basic premise of the book is that Earth has been invaded by an alien race that embeds itself into the human body as a parasite. The humans that once controlled those bodies are seemingly shut off. The story begins as a young woman named Melanie -- an "uninfected"human rebel who has been hiding from the aliens -- is captured and is implanted with a "soul" (one of the parasite aliens) named Wanderer.
Melanie isn't about to just fade away like humans are supposed to. She makes life for Wanderer challenging and... interesting, but it's Melanie's memories that form the basis for changes in Wanderer's outlook on humanity, love, and life.
I thoroughly enjoyed the way Meyer plays the alien Wanderer as a way of looking through a fresh lens at humans in various circumstances. There were multiple times, as I was reading, I was impressed by the genius of that.
It's available in hardcover wherever your favorite novels are sold.
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Freakin' w00t.
I really hope Stephenie makes this into a series. I really enjoyed this one from cover to cover.
If I could change anything about it, I would have made the conflict more terrifying. Put another way, I would have put the characters into more danger before finally letting them off the hook. The ending wasn't at all what I expected, and I felt that it could have been more heart-wrenching.
Stephenie does such a good job of embedding you into the situation and the characters. I wish she would have leveraged that more so as to heighten the sense of terror the reader feels as they follow along in the story.
Creating an immersive world is another thing Stephenie does very well. The level of detail she creates to hold up the backstory is amazing. The descriptions of the other worlds the souls inhabit, along with their creatures and habits is fascinating. Stephenie really has a vivid imagination.
I look forward to all of Stephenie's future works.
Erik,
I agree with your assessment. The aliens in the book are a bit too "soft" and the whole situation with them running the planet "as humans" wasn't that terrifying, not as much as it should have or could have been. The situations from the Twilight series where Bella is being pursued by (non-Cullen) vampires were much more frightening, so I know she's capable of writing it.