Author: Stephenie Meyer
Published: May 2008
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Series: The Host #1
619 pages (hardcover)
Summary: Earth has been invaded by a parasite-like species of aliens, called Souls, who has seemingly taken over nearly every human body in the world. Wanderer is one of these Souls. A sort of celebrity in her own world, she is known for having been in the bodies of countless different species all over the universe, and after invasion and subsequent complete take over of Earth, Wanderer finds herself making this blue planet her home for a human life term. The trouble is that her host body, Melanie Stryder, was once part of the human resistance force and is quite resistant to Wanderer, so much that Wanderer cannot completely take over her mind. Melanie’s memories and feelings are strong, and Wanderer soon finds herself yearning for Melanie’s younger brother Jamie and lover, Jared, who Melanie and now, Wanderer too, desperately hopes is still safe. Forced to co-operate with her unwilling host, Wanderer ends up risking her life to go find these loved ones for Melanie, and for herself.
My Thoughts: My exams are finally over so I finally got around to finishing The Host (and hopefully, more books in the near future!) Anyway, how did I feel about this book in general? Well, I approached it cautiously because it is by Stephenie Meyer and I have this love-hate relationship with her Twilight franchise, not to mention that parasite-like aliens taking over Earth isn’t exactly an original idea (hello, Animorphs). After reading The Host, I sort of have mixed feelings towards it, but I’d say it’s leaning a little more on the positive side.
First of all, the first two-thirds of the (thick!) book is kind of dry and average, a little on the dull side but mildly entertaining. Most of this portion of the book is used to set up the story, the characters, building the relationships between them and getting you — the reader — to care about the characters and their unique predicament. The beginning portion spends an unnecessary amount of pages doing this, not to mention the fact that I think Meyer needs to better her storytelling techniques a bit. She tends to write about everything that happens, so even minuscule events are extended into whole paragraphs. No surprise, there were quite a few useless scenes, or scenes that were overly extended; for example, in my opinion, all the scenes involving soccer (in an underground cave …) were pointless and added nothing to the story, and the scene were Wanderer/Melanie was being given a tour of the caves the humans were living in went on for too many pages. Every nook and cranny of the cave was explained and described and, well, it’s a cave. So it wasn’t that interesting to read.
The characters are a strength of this book though. Meyer tends to use archetypes when it comes to character creation, so we have the chivalrous Ian, the perfect man Jared, the slightly kooky old man Jeb, the complete bitch Sharon, etc. I actually don’t really mind archetypes, even if it makes the characters a bit too predictable, so I enjoyed most of the characters (didn’t really like Jared). I felt quite attached to Wanderer by the end of the novel, so much that I almost felt like crying for her. Almost, haha. I also love Ian and I think the book did an amazing job describing and building up his feelings for Wanderer.
The last half or third of the novel is quite different from the first half or two-thirds. There were still some useless scenes and overextended scenes, but the story got really good. I was completely hooked, even though I kept rolling my eyes at Meyer’s completely uncreative alien names (Bats, Dolphins, Singing Flowers, etc.) and medicine names (Clean, Heal, Smooth, etc.) There’s not really much I can say that won’t give away what happens, but it was pretty awesome. The story finally gained some intense momentum, stuff was actually happening and character tensions were at an all time high.
The book should have ended on the chapter titled “Finished” … but it didn’t. And that was when the book kind of rolled downhill. “Finished” had a good ending that was very fitting for the novel and the story should have just ended there, but no, the book rolled on for an extra long, two chapters. This ruined the ending, in my opinion, not to mention it was boring and suffered greatly from ridiculously long and unnecessary scene syndrome. To me, it didn’t seem that the extra two chapters were to tie the story up like a proper denouement should do; rather, it seems that it was setting itself up for a sequel. Which it doesn’t need. (Then again, it’s not the first time Stephenie Meyer butchered up an ending to something with great potential).
The TL;DR: The beginning starts off slow, but the story really takes off and grabs your attention later, only to plummet off a cliff at the end. Characters are likable and lovable. Meyer needs to think of better alien names (although then again, she was never good at making up names … Renesmee, anyone?) I would have given this book four stars, but the ending was just so awful, and as it is the last part of the novel, it’s your last impression of the book and well, that’s not cool. So instead, I give it this:
My Rating: 3.5/5
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