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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
It has become common to see book, movies, and television shows surrounding the themes of zombie apocalypses and alien invasions. "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer joined those ranks in 2008, as her first book moving away from the Twilight series. This particular alien invasion is along the lines of the old movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," except that we, the readers, enter into this world long after the invasion is complete and humanity as we know is long gone.
The aliens, or Souls, are parasitic, jelly fish or octopus-like (sort of) creatures that are placed in humans through an incision on the back of the neck. They then stretch their tendrils or appendages across the brain, connecting all across the synapses of the human. Successful placements mean the human personality suppressed or pushed out and the Soul becomes the person. Wanderer is new to earth and has been selected for placement in a human suspected of being a member of the resistance with the express purpose of gaining information to track the last surviving humans on the planet.
Wanderer is strong and well-known among her people because she's one of the only Souls to have lived on eight of their conquered worlds, and her strength will be necessary for the task ahead. What Wanderer doesn't expect is that her host's mind will still be present, speaking to her, blocking the memories they need and flooding her with others. Other time, Wanderer finds herself beginning to care about the people in Melanie, her hosts, life and wanting to help Melanie track them down to make sure they're protected. This leads to a whole new set of trouble for Wanderer and the humans she is trying to protect from her own people.
Stephanie Meyer does an excellent job of creating an alien species that can invade and, to their minds, improve human society without any being the wiser. In fact, its was the change of an increase in nice people and respect that eventually revealed the alien presence to the rest of humanity, but by then it was too late. The journey that Wanderer takes as she learns about humans, and begins to see them as a society that didn't deserve the invasion was really interesting to read. Who would have thought that a novel completely from the perspective of the alien invaders could be so good? A movie was made based on this novel may years after it was published, which does not do this book justice at all! This leads to the best piece of advice a Librarian can give: don't just a book by its movie!
The aliens, or Souls, are parasitic, jelly fish or octopus-like (sort of) creatures that are placed in humans through an incision on the back of the neck. They then stretch their tendrils or appendages across the brain, connecting all across the synapses of the human. Successful placements mean the human personality suppressed or pushed out and the Soul becomes the person. Wanderer is new to earth and has been selected for placement in a human suspected of being a member of the resistance with the express purpose of gaining information to track the last surviving humans on the planet.
Wanderer is strong and well-known among her people because she's one of the only Souls to have lived on eight of their conquered worlds, and her strength will be necessary for the task ahead. What Wanderer doesn't expect is that her host's mind will still be present, speaking to her, blocking the memories they need and flooding her with others. Other time, Wanderer finds herself beginning to care about the people in Melanie, her hosts, life and wanting to help Melanie track them down to make sure they're protected. This leads to a whole new set of trouble for Wanderer and the humans she is trying to protect from her own people.
Stephanie Meyer does an excellent job of creating an alien species that can invade and, to their minds, improve human society without any being the wiser. In fact, its was the change of an increase in nice people and respect that eventually revealed the alien presence to the rest of humanity, but by then it was too late. The journey that Wanderer takes as she learns about humans, and begins to see them as a society that didn't deserve the invasion was really interesting to read. Who would have thought that a novel completely from the perspective of the alien invaders could be so good? A movie was made based on this novel may years after it was published, which does not do this book justice at all! This leads to the best piece of advice a Librarian can give: don't just a book by its movie!
*shudders* Much as I loathe that sparkly marble pedophile garbage, I grudgingly admit that this book isn't half bad. But then again I did read it 3 years ago, when I wasn't as critical about the mindless fodder I read in those days...
This book was too long to have this boring of a plot and pointless ending
I've always love Stephenie Meyer's books. This one was suggested to me by a friend she gave me the book and told me to not quit it. It was a little confusing at first but by the end you are feeling every emotion that you have ever felt and even some you haven't. Amazing book, so much power and emotion put into the words.
Written after her famous Twilight Saga, Meyer takes a break from vampires and delves into aliens.
As someone who read Twilight and was able to enjoy to a degree, I picked up this when it came out, borrowing a copy from the local library. Meyer had started writing in 2005 (or rather, her first novel was published in 2005) and given that there was a three year gap between her first book and this one, I was curious about it. I wondered if perhaps, now that she had a little experience under her belt, if her writing had improved and gotten past that novice level she was at when writing Twilight.
In short, the answer is yes, yes her writing did improve, hence why I was able to give The Host a solid three stars this time, rather than the 2 or 2.5 I had given most of her previous series.
To start, Meyer's world was interesting-that is, namely her aliens, the Souls. They're real form is a small, centipede like body which they then insert into a host body and take over. A bit in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, yes, but the idea is still neat. That, combined with how these Souls will experience the final moments and have the memories of their Host body when they come to is also really cool.
For our protagonist, Wanderer (named for the fact that she had lived on eight worlds before Earth, more than any Soul in their world) the memories of her host body are crucial to her world. The body she's inhabiting belonged to a young woman called Melanie Stryder, who was part of a group of surviving humans. Since humans are considered violent and dangerous to the Soul society, Wanderer's duties are to unravel those memories and find those other humans. However, there is an issue with that, see, unlike most Host bodies, Melanie's conscientious is still alive and well inside the body. She can't control her body, she can't expel Wanderer, but she can hide her memories and "talk" in Wanderer's head.
And here, we see one of Meyer's greatest gifts as a writer. She is very imaginative. She has the ability to take very familiar concepts and make them into a breath of fresh air. Everyone knows about body-snatching aliens, but the concept of that alien having to share their mind with the person who's body they inhabit was a new idea.
Now, if that's not complex enough, Meyer added a few new problems for the alien lead. First and foremost, humans are not like other species she's been before. They have strong, intense emotions that are demanding and overwhelming and they affect the alien inside the body. In this case, Wanderer is strongly affected by the memories of love Melanie has for her little brother, Jaime and a man by the name of Jared. It actually comes to the point that Wanderer, through the feelings and memories of her host body, comes to love those two as well and together, they form an unlikely partnership to go and find them.
And as you can guess, they do find her loved ones and remain with them in an underground fortress (for lack of a better term) found by Melanie's Uncle Jeb. However, the reunion is not a sweet one as the humans there have no idea Melanie is alive inside the body, all they can see is the alien.
Ultimately, they decide to keep her alive for two reasons one, because they've never heard of an alien coming back to the home of the host before and two, because her little brother, Jamie voted against killing her which negated Jared's (Melanie's boyfriend) vote to kill her.
Cue time skip and after a while, rather than keep her in the prison-like cave she'd been staying at Wanderer and Melanie are free to move about the cave and get put to work by doing things in the field, making soap and preparing meals. Wanderer even gets a nick-name, Wanda via Uncle Jeb and makes a few friends, one of which is Jamie as well as a fellow by the name of Ian and tells them stories about her travels before she came to Earth.
In those stories, we get another look at Meyer's vivid imagination once again, which was another high point for this book.
However, in this part of the story, we also see some of her old weaknesses crop up once again.
As with Twilight, Wanda is supposedly a good, selfless, virtuous person and anyone who thinks otherwise is evil. Such as the case of Ian's brother Kyle, who attempts to kill her during the novel. And yes, I don't condone murder, but seeing as how the world is ending and her race of people brought it about, I think what Kyle did in that situation was reasonable. But do other characters see that? Even ones who are supposed to be good like Uncle Jeb, or his own brother, Ian? Nope.
Kyle is evil. Kyle is wrong. Because Wanda apparently is untouchable and pure.
And in that same vein, I don't view Wanda as selfless for one simple reason-she's so stupid about it. Kyle tries to kill her and she lies about it and everyone knows it. Selflessness does not mean you're stupid or that you can't value you're own life. Wanda doesn't make her choices based on not wanting to hurt people, she makes them because she can't make an informed decision, not even to save her own life.
And then you have Meyer's treatment of female characters again. Though there are really only two in this book, it's clear who is *supposed* to be the one who's better. Wanda. Because Melanie is rough around the edges, she gets angry and when confronted with someone who wants to kill her, will actually try to fight back.
She's less than Wanda because Wanda does not do those things, Wanda is simply too good for them.
Melanie was the better character for me actually, she was more real, more believable and she had her flaws sure, such as she boldness (which is what got her into trouble in the first place) and her rather crass at times choice of words (well at least compared to other characters) but her virtues outweighed that.
She was brave. She was loving andAs soon Melanie was given the choice to have her life back, she chose to protect others-even if it cost her, her freedom. Wanda had the choice to give Melanie her life back the entire book and waited for over half of it to even offer up that chance and yet she's the selfless one?
Yeah, not buying that.
On more minor notes, Jared and Mel had some insta-love at the start I wasn't fond of, but since the world was ending, I guess speeding up those thing makes sense a little. And Ian, (Wanda's eventually love interest) was pretty boring. Wasn't defined by anything expect how he felt about Wanda.
And lastly, the ending...
Overall, serious flaws, but enjoyable premise and the transition Wanda and Melanie make from enemies to friends was actually really sweet and believable and made for a compelling read.
As someone who read Twilight and was able to enjoy to a degree, I picked up this when it came out, borrowing a copy from the local library. Meyer had started writing in 2005 (or rather, her first novel was published in 2005) and given that there was a three year gap between her first book and this one, I was curious about it. I wondered if perhaps, now that she had a little experience under her belt, if her writing had improved and gotten past that novice level she was at when writing Twilight.
In short, the answer is yes, yes her writing did improve, hence why I was able to give The Host a solid three stars this time, rather than the 2 or 2.5 I had given most of her previous series.
To start, Meyer's world was interesting-that is, namely her aliens, the Souls. They're real form is a small, centipede like body which they then insert into a host body and take over. A bit in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, yes, but the idea is still neat. That, combined with how these Souls will experience the final moments and have the memories of their Host body when they come to is also really cool.
For our protagonist, Wanderer (named for the fact that she had lived on eight worlds before Earth, more than any Soul in their world) the memories of her host body are crucial to her world. The body she's inhabiting belonged to a young woman called Melanie Stryder, who was part of a group of surviving humans. Since humans are considered violent and dangerous to the Soul society, Wanderer's duties are to unravel those memories and find those other humans. However, there is an issue with that, see, unlike most Host bodies, Melanie's conscientious is still alive and well inside the body. She can't control her body, she can't expel Wanderer, but she can hide her memories and "talk" in Wanderer's head.
And here, we see one of Meyer's greatest gifts as a writer. She is very imaginative. She has the ability to take very familiar concepts and make them into a breath of fresh air. Everyone knows about body-snatching aliens, but the concept of that alien having to share their mind with the person who's body they inhabit was a new idea.
Now, if that's not complex enough, Meyer added a few new problems for the alien lead. First and foremost, humans are not like other species she's been before. They have strong, intense emotions that are demanding and overwhelming and they affect the alien inside the body. In this case, Wanderer is strongly affected by the memories of love Melanie has for her little brother, Jaime and a man by the name of Jared. It actually comes to the point that Wanderer, through the feelings and memories of her host body, comes to love those two as well and together, they form an unlikely partnership to go and find them.
And as you can guess, they do find her loved ones and remain with them in an underground fortress (for lack of a better term) found by Melanie's Uncle Jeb. However, the reunion is not a sweet one as the humans there have no idea Melanie is alive inside the body, all they can see is the alien.
Ultimately, they decide to keep her alive for two reasons one, because they've never heard of an alien coming back to the home of the host before and two, because her little brother, Jamie voted against killing her which negated Jared's (Melanie's boyfriend) vote to kill her.
Cue time skip and after a while, rather than keep her in the prison-like cave she'd been staying at Wanderer and Melanie are free to move about the cave and get put to work by doing things in the field, making soap and preparing meals. Wanderer even gets a nick-name, Wanda via Uncle Jeb and makes a few friends, one of which is Jamie as well as a fellow by the name of Ian and tells them stories about her travels before she came to Earth.
In those stories, we get another look at Meyer's vivid imagination once again, which was another high point for this book.
However, in this part of the story, we also see some of her old weaknesses crop up once again.
As with Twilight, Wanda is supposedly a good, selfless, virtuous person and anyone who thinks otherwise is evil. Such as the case of Ian's brother Kyle, who attempts to kill her during the novel. And yes, I don't condone murder, but seeing as how the world is ending and her race of people brought it about, I think what Kyle did in that situation was reasonable. But do other characters see that? Even ones who are supposed to be good like Uncle Jeb, or his own brother, Ian? Nope.
Kyle is evil. Kyle is wrong. Because Wanda apparently is untouchable and pure.
And in that same vein, I don't view Wanda as selfless for one simple reason-she's so stupid about it. Kyle tries to kill her and she lies about it and everyone knows it. Selflessness does not mean you're stupid or that you can't value you're own life. Wanda doesn't make her choices based on not wanting to hurt people, she makes them because she can't make an informed decision, not even to save her own life.
And then you have Meyer's treatment of female characters again. Though there are really only two in this book, it's clear who is *supposed* to be the one who's better. Wanda. Because Melanie is rough around the edges, she gets angry and when confronted with someone who wants to kill her, will actually try to fight back.
She's less than Wanda because Wanda does not do those things, Wanda is simply too good for them.
Melanie was the better character for me actually, she was more real, more believable and she had her flaws sure, such as she boldness (which is what got her into trouble in the first place) and her rather crass at times choice of words (well at least compared to other characters) but her virtues outweighed that.
She was brave. She was loving and
Spoiler
At the end, when Wanda intends to give Melanie her body back, Melanie herself votes against it, saying that Wanda can do more for her family and friends than she ever could which is actually true since she blends in so well into the Soul society.)Yeah, not buying that.
On more minor notes, Jared and Mel had some insta-love at the start I wasn't fond of, but since the world was ending, I guess speeding up those thing makes sense a little. And Ian, (Wanda's eventually love interest) was pretty boring. Wasn't defined by anything expect how he felt about Wanda.
And lastly, the ending...
Spoiler
Yeah mixed feelings about it. As with Breaking Dawn, the characters never really have to give up anything. They all get their happy endings. Melanie gets her body back, and Wanda gets a new one, but she's not stealing a life because the human inside had not come back after the previous Soul that had inhabited her was removed. The body would have died if Wanda hadn't been placed inside. They found other colonies of humans and yeah, again they got everything they wanted and had to give up nothing.Overall, serious flaws, but enjoyable premise and the transition Wanda and Melanie make from enemies to friends was actually really sweet and believable and made for a compelling read.
Better than I expected it to be. She took her MC from Animorphs, who took it from an episode of Star Trek, TNG, but I’ll forgive the stealing of good ideas if they’re well developed and it was well developed. She’s gotten better at her craft since her Twilight days. Not going to win any prizes, but I look forward to the Book Club discussion.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I think this was my third time reading this book since it was released a few years ago, but every time I read it, I'm completely sucked in again. There are just no words to express how amazing this book is, how much I love all of the characters, and how much I want NEED Stephenie to write the sequels.
So it's like we finally found a man who will love his girl even if it turned into a worm right.
Even though the love rectangle in here is messy and complicated, I loved it.
I loved Ian and Wonda together sooo much.
I breezed through the book right away cause it's just soo good. The characters are real interesting to me with all their ranges.
Even though the love rectangle in here is messy and complicated, I loved it.
I loved Ian and Wonda together sooo much.
I breezed through the book right away cause it's just soo good. The characters are real interesting to me with all their ranges.
It could've ended a 100 times but I was never disappointed that it continued.