Review and Blog Tour: The Host

The Earth is being taken over by aliens, who use human bodies as hosts for their souls.  Melanie and her brother, Jamie,  are running to avoid being taken over by an alien when they encounter Jared, another rebel.  The three of them band together and become like a family.

Melanie sees her cousin on TV one day and realizes she hasn’t been taken over by an alien (you can tell by the eyes) and decides she needs to go find her and bring her into their fold.  While Melanie is out, she is discovered by a “Seeker” and throws herself down an elevator shaft to avoid being captured.  Her body is recovered and healed and the soul of an alien named Wanderer is implanted into her body.

Wanderer/Melanie lead a simple life teaching about other worlds these aliens live in at the college level.  Wanderer is supposed to search Melanie’s thoughts to find out where other rebels are and report her findings to a Seeker.  Melanie’s personality is strong, though, so Wanderer meets with resistance.  Wanderer is told to report to Tucson and claims to be afraid to fly so that she can drive.   She has developed a kinship with Melanie and decides to abandon her car and search in the desert for Jared and Jamie.

Much to her surprise, Wanderer discovers a rebel camp and they take her in – initially for research purposes, but things get complicated when people in the camp start to become fond of her.  Wanderer also has feelings for many of the rebels and at times her emotions conflict with Melanie’s.  There are other humans who resent her presence and want to kill her.

The rebels survive by staging raids on the aliens.  Jamie injures his leg on a raid, and it becomes seriously infected.  Wanderer insists on going on a raid to help find medications to save him.  Wanderer decides to tell the rebels how to remove a soul from a human body without harming the soul or the human.  They in turn must agree to remove her soul from Melanie’s body and send all the souls they remove to another planet so that they can survive.  You need to read the book to find out what happens next.

When The Host by Stephenie Meyer arrived and I discovered that it is science fiction and over 600 pages long, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.  I quickly found out there was no need to be worried.  Even though this book is science fiction, it’s not technical, filled with unfamiliar words or “way out” there.  For me, it was a great story about relationships and accepting others for who they are on the inside rather than for what they look like on the outside.  I found this book to be engaging and thought provoking.  This is my first experience with Stephenie Meyer’s work and if her other books are like this, I can see why they sell so well – she’s a great storyteller.  You really get your money’s worth with this book!  An excerpt of The Host is available on Stephenie Meyer’s website.

The Host will be touring on blogs all through the month of June.  It was featured on Twilight Lexicon yesterday and will be on My Friend Amy tomorrow.