'The Host' by Stephenie Meyer - Book Review

The Host is Stephenie Meyer's first adult novel. The human race has been taken over by parasitic but peace-loving aliens called souls. Melanie, the human host of a soul called Wanderer, is resistant and refuses to fade away, leading Wanderer on a journey unlike any she's experienced in her nine lives in other hosts' bodies around the universe. The Host is not Stephenie Meyer's best work. While the premise is intriguing, the story is slow and the characters are under-developed.

Melanie is part of a human group resisting the alien invasion of Earth. She gets caught and a soul named Wanderer is inserted into her body. Melanie's consciousness won't fade away, however, and her thoughts and memories move Wanderer to love the people Melanie once loved. This leads Wanderer to set out to find her host body's family, and what follows is the story of her time with the humans of the resistance movement.

The Host is marketed as "science fiction for people who don't like science fiction." This is true. The science fiction aspect is that it involves aliens who possess technology well advanced beyond ours, but it's firstly a love story on several levels. There's friendship and familial love as well as romantic love in likely and unlikely places. Ultimately, it's about the power and hope of love.

The Host brings up good discussion topics, such as the depth and range of human emotions, and whether and when it's right for one society to impose its standards on another, especially at the cost of sentient life.

Though the premise is interesting, the story itself falls flat. There were long stretches of time when I didn't pick up the book because it wasn't compelling. The action picks up about two-thirds of the way through the book, if you make it that far. Many of the characters, including main ones, seem like caricatures and stereotypes. If you are looking for something as gripping and intoxicating as Meyer's Twilight series, this is not it.