Book review: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

I picked up The Host about a month before the movie came out, and I watched the movie first. This was probably a good choice because had it been the other way around, I might not have enjoyed the movie for all the changes made to the story.

I started reading the book in my usual way, taking one chapter at a time between other books, but within a few days, I was skipping my other books to read several chapters at a time. I got about a third of the way through and I could not stop. I read the other 440 pages in one night, finishing around 7 AM with burning eyes and a sore back. And it was totally worth the discomfort. If I have any complaints it would be something like, “Why isn’t Meyer working on a new book by now?” Seriously, I don’t care what she chose to write next. She could do a western and I’d give it a shot.

The Host is the story of Wanderer, a planet-hopping alien with a proud history among her people as an explorer of new worlds occupied by the souls. (Not the proper word for their race, but their terminologies change from planet to planet depending on the language of their current hosts.) Wanderer is placed in the body of Melanie Stryder, but quickly discovers that her host is still aware and fighting against her attempts to access Melanie’s memories. Wanderer is meant to turn these memories over to the seekers, the soldiers of her race, so that any remaining humans she knows can be located and converted.

This is an alien invasion story in the final stages of the war, and the souls have mostly secured the entire population by this point. What I like is how the story takes place from the perspective of the enemy coming to understand that their “peaceful” invasions are a nightmare for the hosts they occupy. There’s also an intriguing glimpse into alien societies due to Wanderer’s long life of planet-hopping. Among her people, she is revered because she’s been to eight other planets and lived one life cycle on each. So she works as a teacher to her people, many of whom have never traveled to more than one planet.

But with Melanie always in her head, Wanderer finds herself falling in love with the people her host cares about most of all, her brother Jamie, and her lover, Jared. Wanderer leaves on a road trip to Tucson to consult with a Healer about leaving her host, but during the trip, Melanie convinces her to take a detour that leads them back to Jamie, Jared, and Melanie’s aunt and uncle, who have created a small community of humans hiding in the middle of nowhere.

The humans are understandably not happy to see an enemy in their midst, but Melanie’s uncle, Jeb, is insistent that they not only keep her alive, but slowly come to accept her as a part of their group. Not everyone is so hot on this plan, and several times, Wanderer is almost killed. But Jeb’s plans bring around some of the refugees, and soon Wanderer finds herself returning to her calling as a teacher.

Another thing I like is the take on romantic triangles. Wanderer loves Jared because of Melanie’s memories, but Jared has hardened his heart to her. Another refugee, Ian, who tried to kill Wanderer upon her arrival, has a change of heart that begins with guilt and turns into something deeper. But herein lies the problem. Melanie is still inside Wanderer, and she still loves Jared. She loathes Ian for his interest in Wanderer, and this makes romance somewhat difficult when one’s chaperone is directly inside one’s head. The issue is further complicated when Jared realizes Melanie is alive inside Wanderer, now called Wanda as a nickname. Melanie doesn’t like his affection toward Wanda either, because Jared is Melanie’s man, not Wanda’s. So poor Wanda is stuck between loving two men, and not being able to have either because of Melanie.

Wanda’s love for her refugees leads to her returning to civilization to gather supplies for them, and upon returning to the compound, she learns that one of the seekers tracking her has been captured after killing a human. Wanderer has no love lost for this seeker, but she cannot embrace the humans’ need for revenge, and she must find a solution that will save one of her people while still keeping her new family safe.

And, I have to say, I really like the solution Wanda comes up with. Meyer’s got a gift for coming up with pacifist solutions to her conflicts, and I felt the same way about the conclusion of Breaking Dawn. I also like how the ending doesn’t conclude like the movie does. In the movie, everything is tied up so neatly with a few minutes of epilogue, and there’s this balance struck between the souls and the humans. The problem with this ending is that it’s a lot to happen in a few months, especially when one considers how almost the entire planet, a population of billions, is occupied. Also, the movie suggests that all humans would just come back to their senses after the removal of the souls, while the book makes clear that some humans cannot ever recover themselves from this invasion. The resolution in the book only hints at a possible peaceful future without pushing for a happily ever after. It’s clear that there will still be hard times ahead. But Wanderer has love, and so does Melanie, and they both have hope in a better future. I love this kind of ending, and definitely prefer it over the ubiquitous happily ever after.

I give The Host five stars, and I’d recommend it to most fans of sci-fi, with the possible exception of people who only like “hard” sci-fi. There’s certainly a lot of devices and concepts familiar to the genre, but the souls’ terminology for all their technologies are bound to simpler human words, and fans of hard sci-fi might not like the lack of techno-jargon. But I think most everyone else will enjoy this as a refreshing take on the alien invasion trope.