The First Book!! (Finally!)

Yesterday I finished reading The Host by Stephanie Meyer for the second time. I kinda had to re-read it, not because I liked it, but more because I was really prejudiced against it the first time I read it. I had to try it again with an open mind.

Basically I didn't particularly care for what I had heard about Ms. Meyer's stories and I had a lot of bad reviews and Mary Sue accusations floating around my head the first go around and that's just not very fair to her. She did what I can't, she's got the guts to get her stories out there, no matter how insane they may or may not be, so I gotta at least give her a chance, so I did.

...And it's still insane. It's an ok story, if you're a sci-fi kind of girl who also happens to enjoy love triangles and other romantic-ey things, if you're willing to look past the sheer craziness of it all, it's ok.

I'll give a summary.

These parasite things living on a different planet have to latch onto a host body to live. Eventually they expand in their travels and land on earth. The parasites are really timid and do everything for the good of their community. They wouldn't hurt a fly. So what happens when they take earth for a spin? Does their gentle nature override the fighting, violence loving humans who seem to have no other redeeming quality? Sorta. Not all the way though. The parasites (they like to be called "Souls") take on some of the habits of their hosts, including everything from a love of junk food to a love of certain specific other people, even though the body's original mind is long gone.

What happens is this, a Soul is stuck in a human woman who knew what was going on before she got taken, so when the Soul wakes up, the original owner of the body wakes up too. Kinda odd having two voices in one brain, but that's what happened. The body (whose name is Melanie) loves this guy named Jared with everything she has, and loves her little brother with even more (definitely not in the same way), so as a result, it influences the soul inside her to fall for Jared and have the same maternal instincts toward Melanie's brother, Jamie.

Melanie never goes away like she is supposed to, so she shows the Soul (whose name is Wanderer) what she knows about finding her family, so they set off. Eventually they find each other, and everything would be happy except Jared and Jamie found a whole community of other non-parasite infested humans and don't want a Soul in their place. They scare the crap out of Wanderer (who shall henceforth be known as Wanda) due to threatening with guns and clubs and knives and trying to kill her and stuff.

Eventually she earns most of their trust, but Melanie is still inside her and gets really jealous when Jared kisses her, and really freaking mad when this other guy, Ian, who just likes Wanda, kisses her (she doesn't particularly care for Ian and she feels like Jared is cheating on her with a Soul). So... Wanda has a dilemma. She doesn't want to lose Melanie, but she's tired of getting yelled at for kissing Ian (who wants Wanda) and Jared (who wants Melanie). She can be transplanted, but it's kinda messy, and who would want a parasite in their brain anyways?

But yep, to those of you who are interested in that kind of thing, go right on ahead and check it out. Not a bad story at all, just kinda farfetched for my taste. ...Ok, really farfetched for my taste. I don't really plan on reading Stephanie Meyer's other books (vampires aren't really my thing). After all that kissy-face overload and stuff I think I need something less romantic. Hmm... I was given Dunk about a month ago, maybe I'll try that one out.

Later!

-Kj