rating: 4 out of 5Okay, Sara keeps doing this, so I thought I would throw a review on. Sara got me "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer for Christmas, and I am just now getting around to reading it. In the onset, I can say that I did read Twilight, but not any of Meyer's other books. I admit to being a lukewarm fan ... Twilight was kind of weak, even juvenile for me. In fairness, it is a "young adult" book, but I got a little tired of the weak, almost whiney teenage girl (yes, several of Sara's girlfriends will now officially hate me ... guy's perspective here).
With that, I was a little reluctant to start Host, but had heard it was written for adults (not crude or anything, just higher on the readability scale and a bit less soft and squishy). So when I finished C.S. Lewis' Narina series, I dove in (that is another, arguably, "Young Adult" series, but it doesn't use that as an excuse).
Wow - the editorializing in this is really distracting ....
Anyway -- The Host. While it will never make it to my top 10 (or even top 100), it was a good read. Simple premise is that symbiont aliens invade and take over Earth, with a few holdout pockets of real "humans" left. (For non-sci-fi geeks, symbiont aliens mean they are a second life form that only survives by bonding to a first life form. In this case, a "worm" that attaches itself to the human spinal cord and brain, thereby taking over control of the human and burying the host body's control and personality). The heroine in the story is a symbiont that can't quite make her host's personality "go away." In desperation, she makes a driving trip across the desert, literally tripping over some clues her "host" was told about by a reclusive uncle. She finds this pocket of human holdouts (including her little brother and her boy friend), but she has to win their loyalty and acceptance.
As I say, not the best in the world, but it is a long book and I wasn't bored with it. Meyers writing has definitely improved since Twilight (in my humble opinion), and the characters are pretty engaging. If you like Meyer's other books, you will probably like this one as well.
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