The Host

The Host
Stephenie Meyer
Sphere Books

624 Pages
6th May 2008

Guest review by Elizabeth de Jager of My Favourite Books.

I genuinely can’t imagine a scarier scenario. Aliens invade Earth. And they stay. Not only do they stay to co-habit Earth, they take over by bonding with the humans (whom they call their host) in a parasitical way. They repress the host’s personality completely and take over their day-to-day lives. In some instances, the host personality dies and is overcome by the “soul” implanted into its body. Humanity becomes changed forever by the souls who find that they bond truly well with their human hosts.

I don’t like bugs – no matter how beautiful. So I had a preconception about how this was going to turn out already, and in the back of my mind, I ran through the various horror movies out there in the same sort of genre and I sort of despaired. How to do something new and fresh? The concept already had my skin crawling before I even read The Host by Stephenie Meyer. Which is not the best way to start reading a book to review.

I know the author through her Twilight books she did, in the past, and was unsure how she was going to handle this futuristic, Sci-Fi styled book with its overtones of horror and romance.

The fact is: she pulls it off. The aptly named soul, Wanderer, becomes implanted in a rebel human, Mel. Mel is a fighter and she refuses to let Wanderer take her over completely. She becomes a passenger in her own mind and slowly but surely a strong relationship grows between host and soul. We follow them on a journey filled with hate and despair as they strive to find Mel’s brother and her boyfriend/lover, Jared. A group of humans headed by Mel’s uncle, Jeb, (who immediately in my mind turned into Sam Elliot) discover Wanderer and Mel, in the desert, close to death. And this is where the story genuinely unfolds and the author’s writing skills comes to the fore.

A tremendous amount of internal dialogue and keen observations on human behaviour is dotted through the book. It is beautifully written and the style is consistent all the way through. But having said that, I couldn’t quite suspend my disbelief that the souls were all such gentle folk, even the Seekers, the ones who hunt humans and bring them in for implantation. Wanderer is rendered as incredibly saintly, yet all through the book I felt that I wanted to throttle her, to make her be more proactive and less reticent. Which, naturally, from a writer’s point of view is exactly what you want to do: stir up emotion in the reader. Mel remains as an interesting counter-point to the very selfless Wanderer (or Wanda) and I found it interesting to follow the storyline to see how the author played it out right to the very end.

It is a good book, no doubt about it. It is skilfully written with a lot of thought having gone into the society the souls press upon humanity. Stephenie Meyer will no doubt spearhead a new romance-Sci-Fi sub-genre, doing what she did for vampires in Twilight and making sci-fi even cooler than before.

Yeah, you were lucky there de Jager! ;) You came close to saying that sci-fi wasn't cool enough on it's own! Thanks very much for the review, Liz :) Visit Liz at My Favourite Books!

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