Review: "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer
So Abi lent me this so I could see if it was as bad as the Twitlight saga. I've not finished it, but I've no particular desire to continue, either; I probably shall, so I can form a proper opinion, but so far here are my thoughts.
Basic premise for the uninitiated: Earth has been taken over by "souls," which take over the human bodies and have pretty much made everything better. Only some humans are understandably well miffed at this, and are fighting back.
The book was sold as a love triangle involving only two bodies. Like the cut said, I really really wish it had been a love story with only one body. I wanted Melanie and Wanderer to fall in love SO BADLY; it would have been original and interesting and there would have been all kinds of crazy problems to overcome. Like, you know, the lack of the extra body, and the shock and probably the anger of Wanderer's people, and Melanie's issues with having her body totally controlled by the person she loved. The plot! The crazy! The interesting! I'd have fallen in love with that book, if Meyer had been clever enough to write it.
But no, it couldn't happen like that, could it? There had to be a Generic Attractive Man who, of course, saved Melanie from a fate worse than struggling to survive with her little brother. He doesn't appear to have a personality, apart from that he's too noble to sleep with darling Melanie because she's something like 17 and he's 22. I would have liked Edward a lot better if he had had these issues too, given that he was, what? 108, and Bella was 18.
Also, Wanderer is too human. Apart from the token references to the other species she's inhabited, and to the way humans have fucked everything over and this is why the souls are the good guys (what extraordinarily topical subtext, Meyer!) there's absolutely nothing in her narrative voice or her personality (which I haven't found that many traces of, actually, but then I'm not ever so far into it and there's still a massive amount of book to go) to indicate that she's an alien. There is a lovely Doctor Who fanfiction where the main character is an alien and you can tell, just from listening to her tell the story, that she's an alien. There's no physical description of her until about chapter three, but you know. Whereas Meyer describes what Wanderer looks like outside of a human body in the preface and then practically stops. This annoyed me. I wanted proper aliens, damn it; that's what I read sci-fi for, and Meyer, you have failed to deliver yet again.
I also wish Wanderer wasn't quite so stupid. She's presented as a character who has been inhabiting new bodies for a very long time; in fact, a lot of characters are awed by her reputation, and it's noted several times that she's gone farther afield than most souls. But still she's stupid enough to get attached to Melanie and refuse the help she is offered. If she's so experienced, surely she should be able to put her own bloody pride away and know when to accept help? I understand that Melanie is stronger than anyone else Wanderer has ever possessed. I'd just like to be able to credit her with a little more common sense.
Another problem I have is the same problem I had in Twilight; Meyer fails utterly to muster up any kind of empathy for the "evil" characters. What I really love to see when I read is an author who at least tries to understand all her characters, even those who are in the wrong. It makes for well-rounded characters all over the place and it tends to make things a lot more interesting morally; as a reader, you don't know who to support. While in Twilight it was just that Bella Swan was a self-important little shit with no regard for anyone who wasn't just as pretty or "clever" as her, this time it doesn't seem to be Wanderer being a bitchcake. It's just Meyer not caring about the evil types. There's a boy called Kyle whose misgivings about letting Wanderer/Melanie into the rebel camp are entirely justified, but he gets a gun pointed at him for being sensible and we are then told that he apparently needs a gun pointing at him more often. There's also the Seeker, who goes around being unrepentantly horrible to Wanderer/Melanie and gets absolutely nothing but bad press from everyone. Surely she's got reasons for this? What are they? At the moment she doesn't appear to have any, which makes her look like a cardboard cut-out excuse for a character. Fail.
I was told that while this isn't as "addictive" as Twitlight, it's better written. In my opinion, when Meyer's writing isn't quite as glaringly obvious, offensive or hideous to read... it's just boring.
I never give up on books because they bore me and yet this one just takes the biscuit. I'm not even a quarter of the way into it yet and already I am losing the will to live. I can say that the writing is commendably less obvious than in Twilight (Meyer did say she'd geared this more towards adults, and my theory is that teenagers like Twitlight because they don't have to think; they just get told everything) and there is, unlike in Twilight, actual plot. However, that's it so far. It's just killing my brain cells one by one with the tedium. I am not invested in either Wanderer or Melanie. I am, as in Twilight, more interested in the so-called evil characters (in Twilight it was the lovely Cullen-hating nomad Victoria; in The Host it's Kyle and/or the Seeker) than the good guys.
I will persevere so I can do a proper review, but at the minute I have another book to try out and I am sorely, sorely tempted to defect to it. Already I seriously dislike The Host, and I don't think anyone would have been interested in it at all were it not for the thoroughly undeserved success of the Twilight Saga.
Bye everybody
-Avariel, wrestling with Pliny the Younger (not literally)
Basic premise for the uninitiated: Earth has been taken over by "souls," which take over the human bodies and have pretty much made everything better. Only some humans are understandably well miffed at this, and are fighting back.
The book was sold as a love triangle involving only two bodies. Like the cut said, I really really wish it had been a love story with only one body. I wanted Melanie and Wanderer to fall in love SO BADLY; it would have been original and interesting and there would have been all kinds of crazy problems to overcome. Like, you know, the lack of the extra body, and the shock and probably the anger of Wanderer's people, and Melanie's issues with having her body totally controlled by the person she loved. The plot! The crazy! The interesting! I'd have fallen in love with that book, if Meyer had been clever enough to write it.
But no, it couldn't happen like that, could it? There had to be a Generic Attractive Man who, of course, saved Melanie from a fate worse than struggling to survive with her little brother. He doesn't appear to have a personality, apart from that he's too noble to sleep with darling Melanie because she's something like 17 and he's 22. I would have liked Edward a lot better if he had had these issues too, given that he was, what? 108, and Bella was 18.
Also, Wanderer is too human. Apart from the token references to the other species she's inhabited, and to the way humans have fucked everything over and this is why the souls are the good guys (what extraordinarily topical subtext, Meyer!) there's absolutely nothing in her narrative voice or her personality (which I haven't found that many traces of, actually, but then I'm not ever so far into it and there's still a massive amount of book to go) to indicate that she's an alien. There is a lovely Doctor Who fanfiction where the main character is an alien and you can tell, just from listening to her tell the story, that she's an alien. There's no physical description of her until about chapter three, but you know. Whereas Meyer describes what Wanderer looks like outside of a human body in the preface and then practically stops. This annoyed me. I wanted proper aliens, damn it; that's what I read sci-fi for, and Meyer, you have failed to deliver yet again.
I also wish Wanderer wasn't quite so stupid. She's presented as a character who has been inhabiting new bodies for a very long time; in fact, a lot of characters are awed by her reputation, and it's noted several times that she's gone farther afield than most souls. But still she's stupid enough to get attached to Melanie and refuse the help she is offered. If she's so experienced, surely she should be able to put her own bloody pride away and know when to accept help? I understand that Melanie is stronger than anyone else Wanderer has ever possessed. I'd just like to be able to credit her with a little more common sense.
Another problem I have is the same problem I had in Twilight; Meyer fails utterly to muster up any kind of empathy for the "evil" characters. What I really love to see when I read is an author who at least tries to understand all her characters, even those who are in the wrong. It makes for well-rounded characters all over the place and it tends to make things a lot more interesting morally; as a reader, you don't know who to support. While in Twilight it was just that Bella Swan was a self-important little shit with no regard for anyone who wasn't just as pretty or "clever" as her, this time it doesn't seem to be Wanderer being a bitchcake. It's just Meyer not caring about the evil types. There's a boy called Kyle whose misgivings about letting Wanderer/Melanie into the rebel camp are entirely justified, but he gets a gun pointed at him for being sensible and we are then told that he apparently needs a gun pointing at him more often. There's also the Seeker, who goes around being unrepentantly horrible to Wanderer/Melanie and gets absolutely nothing but bad press from everyone. Surely she's got reasons for this? What are they? At the moment she doesn't appear to have any, which makes her look like a cardboard cut-out excuse for a character. Fail.
I was told that while this isn't as "addictive" as Twitlight, it's better written. In my opinion, when Meyer's writing isn't quite as glaringly obvious, offensive or hideous to read... it's just boring.
I never give up on books because they bore me and yet this one just takes the biscuit. I'm not even a quarter of the way into it yet and already I am losing the will to live. I can say that the writing is commendably less obvious than in Twilight (Meyer did say she'd geared this more towards adults, and my theory is that teenagers like Twitlight because they don't have to think; they just get told everything) and there is, unlike in Twilight, actual plot. However, that's it so far. It's just killing my brain cells one by one with the tedium. I am not invested in either Wanderer or Melanie. I am, as in Twilight, more interested in the so-called evil characters (in Twilight it was the lovely Cullen-hating nomad Victoria; in The Host it's Kyle and/or the Seeker) than the good guys.
I will persevere so I can do a proper review, but at the minute I have another book to try out and I am sorely, sorely tempted to defect to it. Already I seriously dislike The Host, and I don't think anyone would have been interested in it at all were it not for the thoroughly undeserved success of the Twilight Saga.
Bye everybody
-Avariel, wrestling with Pliny the Younger (not literally)