by Lisa Asanuma

Created on: January 18, 2009   Last Updated: September 01, 2011

I was very reluctant to read The Host by Stephenie Meyer. Originally I was very interested by the idea itself, of a species of aliens who embedded themselves in humans, with one human fighting back, and the possibility of an impossibly inextricable love triangle... But then I'd gotten over my starry-eyed obsession with the Twilight series, and found the preview provided on Meyer's website as less than inspiring. The glimpse we were given showed once again a scared but determined girl, and an overly-aggressive and overly physical older male. This wasn't quite a rehashing of Bella and Edward, but it was similar enough for me to get bored with the idea.

I couldn't help but be curious, though. This is Stephenie Meyer after all, and anything else that can be said about her books, they are indeed obsession-inducing, even to the reluctant reader. Besides, let's be honest here, I wanted to be able to talk about it with everyone else. And so, when The Host became available, I looked into it.

As I started to read, it was actually worse than I was expecting. Not only was the main character uninspiring, the narrative jumped around and felt very jerky and uneven. We were supposed to believe that the main character, a "soul" as the aliens call themselves, called Wanderer, was slowly bonding with Melanie Stryder, the human she's taken over who won't fade into nothingness as she was meant to, however, we see little to no of this bonding going on. We understand that Wanderer begins to sympathize with Melanie, but that's only because she tells us she does, not because we see it for ourselves. We just have to take her at her word, and her word isn't very convincing, as she seems to be fighting it herself every minute. Yes, we see a few of Melanie's memories through Wanderer's eyes, but all that leads us to do is like Melanie more than Wanderer, if only just.

The first ten chapters of the book were like this, jerky narrative skipping gaps in time that didn't make sense. But I kept reading, and I'm glad I did.

However unbelievable Wanderer and Melanie's slow bonding process is, the pay off of it is well worth it. The minute the two of them join forces to go looking for Melanie's younger brother Jamie and her love, Jared, the story starts to become interesting, and when they actually find the humans, it gets darn near fascinating.

Publisher's Weekly calls it a "Love Triangle involving two bodies," but it is in fact more of a love square. The romances involved, though, while riveting, especially in Wanderer's case, are almost a secondary reason to read this novel. this is in fact, one of the most bizarre books I've ever read in my life. Some of Wanderer's past lives read a bit like a Miyazaki film, and Meyer's patented approach to genre writing as ignoring all the rules applies to The Host as much as it ever did to the Twilight series.

In comparison with the latter, there are definite similarities, for example the younger-brother character willing to look beyond classifications and see people for who they truly are, etc. Another large similarity is encompassed in Meyer's odd assumption (or at least repetitive insistence) that non-human characters have to be not only more powerful than humans, but as near perfect as the written word can express them. The Host has one thing the Twilight books never so much as attempted to address, however, and that is the triumph of the human spirit. Ultimately, I have to say that this book is a fantastic read.

Learn more about this author, Lisa Asanuma.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.