Living the Fictional Dream

The one constant about Stephanie Meyer’s books is that I cannot put them down once I start them. I read the Twilight, Meyer’s young adult series, first, and was totally sucked into the world of Bella, Edward, and Jacob with each new release. Last Wednesday, I found The Host, Meyer’s new adult novel.

The tagline is “science fiction for people who don’t like science fiction,” and that’s a fairly apt description. There are elements of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but the main focus of the novel is the characters and their relationships. There is plenty of romance, of course (What would a Meyer book be without true love?), but friendship and familial relationships are also there, front and center.

Wanderer is a soul — an extra-terrestrial that can only live through a host body. Her kind have taken many planets, and justify their actions by the improvements they leave on the societies — peace, trust, pleasure. But Earth gives the souls more than they bargained for with all its strong emotions and its crazy fifth sense (smell!), and Wanderer — who has lived on nine planets in her lifetimes — personally gets more than she bargained for when her host body’s consciousness, Melanie, refuses to leave. Under Melanie’s influence, Wanderer seeks out her little brother, Jaime, and her true love, Jared, and finds herself amongst a small cell of “rogue” humans, which leads to much more than Wanderer ever anticipated.

The love triangle between Melanie, Jared, and Wanderer is fascinating. It’s not often that a love triangle involves only two bodies. And what’s also interesting is Wanderer’s observations on humanity as a whole, and her struggle to understand the value of love, rage, and individuality versus utopia.

I started this massive tome on Wednesday night and was finished by lunchtime on Friday — it was that engrossing. Meyer’s writing style always affects me that way. Her world is so vivid and compelling that once you enter, leaving is like being ripped away.

I’m not a huge fan of the first person point of view, but in Meyer’s hands, it works. I had worried that the feel would be too similar to the first person narrator in Twilight, but that was not the case at all. Wanderer’s voice was very different than Bella’s, and sets an entirely different tone. there is no mistaking the two. Wanderer has none of Bella’s rampant teenaged insecurities (which was actually a bit of a relief).

I don’t want to say too much more, as I don’t want to spoil the plot. I’ll just say that if you were pondering giving The Host a go, I would definitely recommend picking up a copy. It is well worth the price of admission — even the hardback price!