Posted By Jen Sylvia on May 1, 2013

“But even as I tried to look at the happy ending, I couldn’t escape the horror of this choice. This was the secret I should die to protect. The information I’d been desperate to keep safe no matter what hideous torture I was put through.

This was not the kind of torture I’d expected:  a personal crisis of conscience, confused and complicated by love for my human family. Very painful nonetheless.”

The “souls” of The Host are an invasive force, tiny glowing centipede entities. They are introduced into the human host body by insertion into the back of the neck where the soul implants itself into the spinal column and brain, removing the human inhabitant entirely. Fascinating. However, there’s no explanation is given as to how the souls, tiny as they are, were able to actually accomplish their first human body snatching experience.

Regardless, Earth is this delicious cornucopia of before-unknown empirical sensory input to the souls. The souls saw the violence on this amazing planet and efficiently and cleanly body-snatched and took ownership, assimilating humankind. There are ridiculous, mind numbing passages describing how the alien souls would infiltrate human hosts, live their lives, and then invariably invite the human friends over who left all freshly soul minted. It was going so well . Except the uncouth humans realized what was happening and fought back.

So there was violence. There were people who ran. And, in very rare cases, there were people who ended up sharing the body with the invading soul. Throwing salt on the wound, the memories of the body would seep into the soul’s nature, for what are humans but slaves to their bodies? This is new and uncertain territory for the souls, learning about violence and petty things like jealousy and passion. Yet, according to Meyer, these souls are of the utmost gentility: “Because he was a soul, by nature he was all things good: compassionate, honest, virtuous, and full of love.” It isn’t virtuous to commit certain genocide.

Worse, the souls have the specific ability to inhabit any host and rifle through its memories at will. Wouldn’t they realize the truth of why humans would fight back, that to lose themselves in entirety is a war that each human would fight to its last to prevent? There’s even mention, with actual sadness, of another race that committed mass suicide rather than be taken. Alas, Meyer avoids this internal inconsistency like a rabid dog.

It is an interesting idea, to explore inhabiting a human body from the alien’s point of view. However, the structural presentation for this, in the guise of a defeated planet and a love triangle of three identities, two in one body, poorly examines the concept and ultimately ruins it. The beams supporting the alien argument threaten an already inadequate plot, but it is the cardboard characters and contradictions that brings the collapse itself. Meyer attempts to let the souls go both ways and have their body too, and it just cannot achieve logical coherence.

It’s via Wanderer, a well-traveled, obviously gentle alien soul that we are granted a window seat on the crazy go round. Wanderer has traveled to almost every occupied planet. She’s been implanted into one of the human rebels, Melanie, for the dual purposes of giving her a body to experience earth in, but also to give information to the Seekers about any remaining humans. The peace loving aliens. Are given bodies. That humans didn’t want to give up.

But I digress. Whatever Meyer’s ultimate goal is, its overshadowed by dragging dialogue, an overly meek character that refuses and forgives any and all violence, yet wants the human soul that still exists in this body to leave. And, because humans cannot control what the heart wants, Wanderer finds herself in the uniquely sticky position of falling in love with Jared, Melanie’s true love. Melanie, the human with such willpower that she still clings to her body after having attempted to jump to her death to prevent being body snatched, still remains. Eventually, the conflict is so great, and Melanie’s desire to find Jared and her brother, Jaime, so strong, that Wanderer succumbs to her own and Melanie’s baser wants, heading to the desert to find the resistance.

Suffice to say, Wanderer finds the camp with the help of Melanie. They are saved by Melanie’s uncle, Jeb. It’s Jeb who realizes that Melanie is alive and present. Jeb renames Wanderer to Wanda and allows her to live and help the humans because of Melanie. And because of Wanda’s obvious Gandhi-like sensibilities.

The resistance doesn’t particularly enjoy this. But like training a wild horse, Jeb gets the humans used to Wanda. Particularly frustrating in Meyer’s presentation here is that Jared still sees Melanie’s body and wants Melanie. Melanie wants Jared. Wanda wants Jared because she’s in Melanie’s body. Ian, who originally hates Wanda because she’s alien, learns to love Wanda’s soul. Wanda wonders if she could love Ian if it weren’t for being in someone else’s hormonally driven body. For 400 pages, it’s internal dialogue between Wanda and Melanie, Wanda talking to Ian, Melanie taking over her own body to bypass Wanda to speak with Jared, and Wanda and Melanie realizing they really like each other. And throughout it all, no one thinks to ask, “Hey, Wanda, have any idea how to get the aliens out of our bodies?”

It’s Wanda who, after heaping insufferable punishment on herself for what her kind has done, with 100 pages remaining, decides to show the rebels how to get the souls out. Yes, Wanda is now prepared to die for Melanie, Jared and Jaime’s happiness. Surprisingly, soul removal is super easy, it just needs to be coaxed out with the love it requires to exit its host body.

The irony. It burns.

I will wholly cop to loving the volcanic bunker, and to liking Jeb and Ian’s character development for what they were. I will even give points to Meyer for Wanda’s actions and emotions during one human’s touching death scene. But it is there that all praise ends. I’ve even seen the film. It is  the wants and desires of a YA novel shoved into an adult book, claiming that love rules all, and that for love, women will martyr themselves repeatedly.

Read at your incongruity tolerance level peril.

The Host, Stephenie Meyer 2009, 619 pages (hardback)

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Categories: Bookworms
Tags: Alien species, Ian, Jaime, Jared, Kyle, major motion film, Melanie, Seeker, souls, Stephenie Meyer, The Host, Twilight, Uncle Jeb, Wanda, Wanderer