You all probably already know that I'm a huge Twilight fan so I thought I'd try out Stephanie Meyer's The Host. It reminded me a lot of Twilight in the fact that it had an unlikely romance and hint of science fiction. It's written in a very similar style to Twilight, probably not the best writing ever, but a very addicting story that I couldn't put down once I got into it.The first couple of chapters are fairly slow and setup the story to come later. A basic synopsis is that the earth has almost completely been taken over by alien hosts known as souls. The souls are inserted into human bodies so that the human bodies are not killed, they are merely taken over by the souls. Most human minds just go away when the soul is inserted into their body, but not Melanie. A soul named Wanderer is put into Melanie's body, and the two share Melanie's body. Melanie shares memories of her former life with the soul, and the two of them together search for the love and family Melanie has lost.
Like I said, the first couple of chapters were slow as Meyer builds the story and tries to build an understanding of the host/human relationship. Once the book gets past developing that story, it was actually fairly intriguing to see how Melanie and the Wandered related to each other and to see how the entire story panned out. It was a little hard for me to imagine Melanie and Wanda as separate beings, but I think that's what Meyer wanted. This wasn't my favorite book, but it was a fun light read with just the right amount of romance and science fiction without being over-the-top.
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nice recap. I think I had commented earlier that it took me a week to read 100 pages, but once I got into it, I read the rest in like 2 days or something. As you know, I'm a big Twilight fan as well, although inexplicably I think Stephenie Meyer is a mediocre writer on a good day. But she's a decent storyteller, even if there are messed up themes in her books.
ReplyDeletespoilers ahead She's such a good storyteller that I CRIED when I thought Wanderer was going to die. I cry in books that I get into, so it's not a complete phenomenon for me, but still. I find it disturbing that Meyer feels the need to have two people in love with one person in all of her books. The all consuming love thing is also waaaay over the top.
But I did enjoy it overall. I probably won't read it again though.
I really enjoyed this book, but I agree that the beginning was a bit slow. I think the story really began for me when Wanderer and Melanie went in search of Jared and Jamie. The book gave me a lot to think about, and I didn't expect that. I hope she writes a sequel.
ReplyDelete--Diary of an Eccentric
Just finished this. Right on the heels of reading New Moon, I can't help but see how much better a story it is than the Twilight saga. The writing is still fairly basic, but the way this story developed I enjoyed it much better. Though it had romance, it didn't make me gag, which is impressive.
ReplyDeleteI too cried at the same point that Carrie did. Like she said, a story has to be good for me to get to that point, so I give Stephenie kudos for that, for sure. I really did enjoy this story, though I do wish she had taken the idea a little further and developed a theme that went beyond romance: defining humanity, justice, sacrifice, etc.