first pulished on Technorati
Image Robert A Heinlein’s Puppetmasters from the point of view of the alien invaders. Or the Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the point of view of the Pod People. Stephane Meyers’s Host is one more story where there is no black and white, only many shades of grey. The bad guys aren’t really bad, the good guys aren’t really good.
The Host is set in the not too distant future where the Earth has been invaded and conquered by small parasitic lifeforms which attach themselves to the victim’s brains. The alien minds are stronger than our own and they suppress, possibly destroy, the mind of the host body. Except that this is not what happens to our hero-Wanderer, who ends up with a rebellious body with a mind that remains conscious of itself and its alien invader.
What follows is a kind of dream world where almost every human is possessed by an alien-called a Soul. The Souls have science and medicine so far advanced as to appear magical. They are all kind and friendly. They never break any laws. Never argue. Shy away from any kind of conflict at all. The Souls are so offended by violence that they can’t even watch old TV Shows because of the hostility of even the most mundane show-such as the Brady Bunch-offending their delicate sensitivities.
In short, the world has become a paradise without violence, hunger, or disease. So naturally, there is a hidden group of humans hiding in the wilds, hoping to put an end to it.
The remaining humans, of course, don’t think this brave new world is all the much like paradise. They have seen loved ones turned into hosts and outright killed by the invaders. They have been living very primitive lives, stealing what they can from the Souls, living in a cave where they can’t be found. Our hero, Wanderer, finds this cave because her host body knows where to look for it.
There are a number of moving moments in this tale of a kind hearted alien and the humans who come to love and understand it-I mean her. But it is a long tale, filled with slow turns and meandering ambles through such topics as what it means to be human and what it means to be a Soul.
Wanderer becomes Wanda and is excepted as a member of the hidden human community, but only after many trails and tribulations to prove her worth. Once accepted, she becomes the very lifeblood of the community. She can walk in and take whatever the humans need instead of stealing it. She can talk to the evil Soul police force called Seekers and they believe whatever she tells them. Once Wanda is accepted, life becomes much easier for the surviving humans. But there is still the overriding fact that the Earth now belongs to The Souls and there is nothing, so far, that they can do about that.
The audio book clocked in at 24 discs and yet as the story winds down, there is still a feeling of incompleteness. After all, Stephane Meyers does love the Sequel, so I fully expect there to be a number of other books set in this Soul filled Universe. Maybe she will even set a book on some other world and only mention the Earth in passing, as she mentions the many other worlds conquered by The Souls in The Host.
The Host was a good read and there were a number of hopeful moments. It’s hard to miss the major point of the Host-that humans are right bastards and the earth would be so much better off if they were all taken over by aliens. Funny how our generation is the first one to really, really hate ourselves like this. After all, The Aliens were the bad guys in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Puppetmasters. But then, Vampires and Werewolves and Ghosts and the like used to be bad guys as well.
