Book Review: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

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Let’s just forget about depressed-vampire-and-kinda-annoying-human-girl-love-story a.k.a. Twilight Series for a moment and take a look to The Host, another book from Stephenie Meyer. Actually I already read the book couple years ago but I have no deep impression except that the book somehow a lot better than Twilight but annoyingly similar in some ways.




Well, Meyer did a pretty decent job in The Host compared to Twilight Series (okay, Twilight is not that bad, but sparkling vampire with too good to be true ending, lack of climax, etc—so... No, that book definitely not my favorite one). She created a world where alien exist. Alien race called Souls takes over the Earth and its inhabitants (yup, it means us, human). Souls are parasite-kind-alien, trying to take over human mind and made the body their own. And, here it is our heroine—one of the oldest Souls called Wanderer or Wanda. She’s (or should I just called her it) a newbie in earth and somehow falling in love with a vision of human male in her human body’s mind (her human body called Melanie, and actually she’s still alive in the back of Wanda’s mind—complicated huh, I know). So, Wanda—apparently she forgot that she’d been a parasite for thousand years—betrayed her own (alien) kind and started a journey to find Jared—male in her or Mel’s mind—and Mel’s brother.

Like Bella in Twilight Series, Wanda the Alien also a martyr kind heroin who wants to look stronger than she actually is. Just like Bella, she got sympathy from hot guys pretty fast, saved Jared, the guy whom Wanda fall for. Err okay, I’ll try to not to compare The Host with Twilight too much and judge the books for it is. The good point for the book is the creativity. Universe in The Host itself is very unique, so many planets with many kind of alien races besides Souls itself, I think it deserves one point. I’ll be generous and give one more point for love story between alien and human being (even though I have to admit that the storyline sometimes a bit too much. Yes, she’s a nice alien whatsoever, but every handsome guys fall for her? Euh! She’s a betrayer for her own kind, remember?!). I give one minus point for lack of bravery from the writer to kill one of main characters. See, in the war world, somebody must dead. But apparently the writer herself admitted that she doesn’t have the heart to kill anybody. One more minus point for the flat story-ending, I mean, the book doesn’t even have any real battle, just about Wanda moved to the other human body. I’m a bit disappointed. Apparently, Meyer has the same story-development-issue that also happen in Twilight (sigh, sorry I’m comparing again).

Overall, The Host is a good enough book to buy. A-must-read-one for you all who love Meyer works. The book could be better if only Meyer manage to get rid her own stagnancy. Let’s just hope for better sequels (I have to warn you guys that the book isn’t ended yet. Meyer announced that she planned for two sequels but none already published yet), with better battle scenes and most importantly better story development. So, for The Host, I give it rate three out of five.
I’ll end this review with wisdom from the book: love knows no race (but please, please be rational about it).

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