Joseph Darnell

I have gone without reading any fiction for almost a year. It was high-time I picked up another novel, and with my new iPad, I wanted to test reading an e-book. I shopped around for The Host, and found the edition and price I was interested in from the Barnes & Noble e-reader bookstore.

Reading on the iPad is great. Granted, it was a learning experience, to read a 560 page book on an e-reader has it’s pros and cons. But I foun I had the hang of it before page 100. I’m glad I invested in the e-book format. I know now from experience that I can recommend e-reading. It really isn’t all that different from a hard copy, if your eyes are good.

The Host is the novel by Stephanie Meyer—the author of Twilight—she has written since she finished the  Twilight novels. The Host has nothing to do with vampires. This book is about an alien species that takes over the human race on earth. Really, it’s about one alien of this alien race, and her experiences with the human race, as she comes to favor mankind over her own kind.

In a clever way, the story is an update on the premise of Jekyll and Hyde. The idea with the classic Jekyll and Hyde is that there are two personas in each person; one good, and the other evil. Only one controls the heart of man at any given moment, but these two demeanors are in constant war with each other. This is just the tip of the iceberg with the Hyde story. I recommend you look into it for yourself. It’s a great novel.

In The Host, while there is not this sort of literal split personality like that of Jekyll and Hyde, there is a metaphor for it. The alien’s soul is like that of, maybe, somewhat like the holy spirit, actually. The heart of man is still present, and so the human heart, and the alien soul, are at odds continuously in the main character. Now, this is how the moral values are represented. This is not necessarily how the social and cultural differences of the characters are metaphorically represented. There’s a lot of science fiction to the story of The Host. That said, it’s much more than just a sci-fi flick. There’s drama, romance (not half as much as in Twilight), and suspense.

I like a good story that explores the conflict of the human heart. Man’s soul is basically evil. The Bible says so. It couldn’t be any clearer. However, we are either ‘ruled’ by our fleshed—the evil side of human nature—or we are living in the Holy Spirit, and our Lord lives through us; thus making it possible for us to do good. In so doing, as the Lord lives in us, we are ‘dead’ to the flesh. The metaphor found in The Host is great for expanding one’s understanding of such a spiritual dynamic.

While I do think that the Twilight series is a great work about great characters with a weak story (at times) I think something different about The Host. The Host is a great work about mostly great characters with a great story. So the strength of The Host is the overall story, and some of the characters are weaker than those found in the Twilight stories.

Do I recommend you read The Host? It is slightly more ‘mature’ than the subject matters of Twilight, while still being easier to grasp and easier to discern. A world of vampires with their complex moral ethical controversies are harder to deal with than the pure and simple outrageous possibilities of the aliens in The Host.

So, The Host is good for high school graduates, young adults, lovers of science fiction, and those that simply enjoy Stephanie Meyer stories. I’d give The Host ★★★½ out of five.