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This weekend I read Stephenie Meyer's other book The Host, which features exactly zero sparkly teen vampires. Depending on your perspective, that could be either a very good or a very bad thing. The Host is an adult sci-fi romance that at over 600 pages is still a pretty quick read.
Here's the main premise: alien parasites have taken over the planet and turned it into a peaceful utopia. There are very few humans who have not been implanted with a "soul," and those that remain live in hiding. When Melanie Stryder is captured, she becomes the host for Wanderer, a soul thousands of years old who has live on eight other planets. Melanie still refuses to give up, and she fights with Wanderer for control. As Wanderer attempts to settle into her new life on Earth, she experiences Melanie's memories of her brother Jaime and boyfriend Jared and begins to love them too, eventually setting off on a quest to find them.
I enjoyed the book more than I expected. I was anticipating lots of love triangle drama, and there was a little of that, but I thought the story was more about the fight to survive and about the strange emotional problems of two consciousnesses trying to inhabit the same body. In the later chapters, there's also some exploration of the ethics of the invasion. I'm not sure if a series is planned, but The Host definitely wraps up in a way that leaves plenty more to explore in this world.
Here's the main premise: alien parasites have taken over the planet and turned it into a peaceful utopia. There are very few humans who have not been implanted with a "soul," and those that remain live in hiding. When Melanie Stryder is captured, she becomes the host for Wanderer, a soul thousands of years old who has live on eight other planets. Melanie still refuses to give up, and she fights with Wanderer for control. As Wanderer attempts to settle into her new life on Earth, she experiences Melanie's memories of her brother Jaime and boyfriend Jared and begins to love them too, eventually setting off on a quest to find them.
I enjoyed the book more than I expected. I was anticipating lots of love triangle drama, and there was a little of that, but I thought the story was more about the fight to survive and about the strange emotional problems of two consciousnesses trying to inhabit the same body. In the later chapters, there's also some exploration of the ethics of the invasion. I'm not sure if a series is planned, but The Host definitely wraps up in a way that leaves plenty more to explore in this world.
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