Book Review: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Twilight, it's not. It's significantly better.

The Host refers to an invasion of the body snatchers-type scenario. Aliens invade earth stealthily, taking over human bodies. Some of the human minds don't go away, though, and therein lies the rub. What do you do when a parasite and its host become friends, and belong in both an alien society and a rebel human society?

] The book starts out slowly, or rather, too early in the story. The first hundred pages are essentially back story. We meet a whole cast of characters we won't ever meet again. The idea seems to be to help the reader understand the alien culture better before our hero gets put in with a bunch of humans scrounging for their survival. I am used to reading books that take a while to get going, and I love SF, but this was still a little bit of a slog for me.

The next 500 pages, however, are paced well, deeply charactered, and have a satisfying plot line. It's not hard SF - those looking for some biological way for this to be plausible will have to look elsewhere. Meyer raises some significant questions - is humanity a matter of biology, or a matter of character? Can love be biologically limited? If an alien were to invade earth, stop war and crime completely, solve all of our health problems, and ensure the biological salvation of homo sapiens and the earth's other species, would that necessarily be a bad thing?

I will admit, the ending was a little unsatisfying. Too pat, not powerful enough. I think of the first ending of the book as the end. You'll know it when you get there. It's more powerful. The 2nd ending is for the readers who have to have a Disney-happy ending to their fiction. Nothing wrong with that, just not my preference.

We loved this book - highly recommended.