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The Host

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Overview

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed.

Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves-Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she's never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.

Featuring what may be the first love triangle involving only two bodies, THE HOST is a riveting and unforgettable novel that will bring a vast new readership to one of the most compelling writers of our time.

Editorial Reviews

In this tantalizing SF thriller, planet-hopping parasites are inserting their silvery centipede selves into human brains, curing cancer, eliminating war and turning Earth into paradise. But some people want Earth back, warts and all, especially Melanie Stryder, who refuses to surrender, even after being captured in Chicago and becoming a host for a "soul" called Wanderer. Melanie uses her surviving brain cells to persuade Wanderer to help search for her loved ones in the Arizona desert. When the pair find Melanie's brother and her boyfriend in a hidden rebel cell led by her uncle, Wanderer is at first hated. Once the rebels accept Wanderer, whom they dub Wanda, Wanda's whole perspective on humanity changes. While the straightforward narrative is short on detail about the invasion and its stunning aftermath, it shines with romantic intrigue, especially when a love triangle (or quadrangle?!) develops for Wanda/Melanie. 10-city author tour. (May) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Stephenie Meyer

I was born in Connecticut in 1973, during a brief blip in my family's otherwise western U.S. existence. We were settled in Phoenix by the time I was four, and I think of myself as a native. The unusual spelling of my name was a gift from my father, Stephen (+ ie = me). Though I have had my name spelled wrong on pretty much everything my entire life long, I must admit that it makes it easier to google myself now. I filled the "Jan Brady" spot in my family-the second of three girls. Unlike the Brady's, none of my three brothers are steps, and all of them are younger than all the girls. I went to high school in Scottsdale, Arizona, the kind of place where every fall a few girls would come back to school with new noses and there were Porsches in the student lot (for the record, I have my original nose, and never had a car until after I was in my twenties). I was awarded a National Merit Scholarship, and I used it to pay my way to Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. I majored in English, but concentrated on literature rather than creative writing, mostly because I didn't consider reading books "work" (as long as I was going to be doing something anyway, I might as well get course credit for it, right?). I met my husband, Pancho (his real name is Christiaan), when I was four, but we were never anywhere close to being childhood sweethearts. In fact, though we saw each other at least weekly through church activities, I can't recall a single instance when we so much as greeted each other with a friendly wave, let alone exchanged actual words. This may have been for the best, because when we did eventually get around to exchanging words, sixteen years after our first meeting, it only took nine months from the first "hello" to the wedding. Of course, we were able to skip over a lot of the getting to know you parts (many of our conversations would go something like this: "This one time, when I was ten, I broke my hand at a party when-" "Yeah, I know what happened. I was there, remember?") We've been married for ten and a half years now, and have three beautiful, brilliant, wonderful boys who often remind me chimpanzees on crack. Gabe is eight, Seth is five, and Eli is three. My favorite authors/biggest influences are (in no particular order) Orson Scott Card, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Maeve Binchy, Charlotte Bronte, Daphne DuMaurier, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Eva Ibbotson, William Goldman, Douglas Adams, Janet Evanovich... the list goes on, but I think I hit the highlights. I can't write without music, and my biggest muse is, ironically enough, the band Muse. My other favorite sources of inspiration are Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Coldplay, The All American Rejects, Travis, The Strokes, Brand New, U2, Kasabian, Jimmy Eat World, and Weezer, to mention a few. My favorite places to hang out on line are: www.fansofrealitytv.com (friendliest people on the internet, and also the best place for The Amazing Race, Survivor, and America's Next Top Model recaps. Not that I watch those shows...) www.ericdsnider.com (my favorite movie reviews) www.muse.mu (home of the incredible band, Muse. Absolution was easily the best alternative album of the year, and possibly the decade. Opinionated? Who, me?) www.ebay.com (no explanation needed, right?) www.imdb.com (where I search for actors to star in Twilight, not than anyone cares what I think.)

Customer Reviews

  • 5 stars out of 5A chilling paranormal read!

    Posted November 17, 2008 by Jennifer S., Killeen, Tx

    Stephenie Meyer's "The Host" gave me chills and thrills with this paranormal read. Filled with a great plot, endearing characters, and an unlikely and unexpected ending, I was completely entranced by this book. I loved it so much, I read it in just a few days, and ended up buying the complete Stephenie Meyer "Twilight Series", waiting anxiously for her next book!

  • 4 stars out of 5Great Plot

    Posted January 08, 2009 by Shawna, Whittier, Ca

    I must admit, I found the first few chapters of this book quite tedious. Eventually, however, I found myself unable to put the book down for long! I wish it hadn't ended, that I could keep reading more about Wanda and her family. I'd love for the author to come out with a sequel. Despite the bits that seemed to drag on too long, this book really was mesmerizing. Such great characters, you can't help feeling connected to them. I also love the fact that the author was able to write great sci-fi without feeling the need to add all the action-y fights, wars, explosions, etc. that so many others get caught up in. Just a great story!

  • 2 stars out of 5disappointment

    Posted January 26, 2009 by Anastasia, Hanover

    This may not be a fair review, because I couldn't finish it - reason being, I couldn't keep forcing myself to turn the page. I absolutely adored the Twilight saga, but I didn't get the "I can't put this book down" feeling while reading 'the Host.' It seemed to drag on, and didn't captivate me like her other books have.

  • 5 stars out of 5Slow start great end

    Posted January 29, 2009 by Denise, Los Angeles

    This book did start off rather slow. When I started the first few chapters I was expecting a great disappointment but as I read on I couldn't put the book down. I was so engrossed that I didn't even realized I had come to the end of the book. I really wish to see a sequel to this book.

  • 5 stars out of 5Stephanie Meyer does it again...

    Posted February 15, 2009 by Stacey, Cambridge, Ontario

    Having read all of the "Twilight" series, I have become an unlikely fan of Stephanie Meyer (I am over the age of 30). I wasn't sure I could read a new story without making comparisons; But she did not disappoint. If you are a fan of her series, you must put it out of your mind before you can really appreciate "The Host". It is nothing like her other books, which is why I loved it. That being said, I once again found myself engrossed and emotionally involved with these characters in a most unexpected way. Although I wait patiently for "Midnight Sun", I would really love to read more about Wanda and Melanie and do not hesitate to recommend this book.

  • 3 stars out of 5Too Slow, Great End

    Posted March 15, 2009 by LD, Brockton, Ma

    I really loved this book but had to force myself through the 1st half -a little slow. Once the story picked up, I couldn't put the book down. I still view Twilight series as the best story I have ever read though. I have read all Stephanie's books now and she does an incredible job pulling you into the characters and making you fall in love with them. I look forward to reading another one of her stories soon.

  • 3 stars out of 5Interesting but too slow

    Posted April 14, 2009 by Strahn, Tulsa OK

    I read this before I read the Twilight Series and it almost turned me away from reading her other books. The Host is just OK but not great. The plot /concept was good but the book took too many boring chapters to develop the story. The end was good. If Stephenie writes a sequel, I hope she doesn't plod along. Glad I gave her other books a chance. They're fantastic.

  • 5 stars out of 5It was amazing

    Posted May 02, 2009 by Lizzy, Seattle

    It was very interesting, and always had me wanting more! I definitely can't wait to read more of Stephanie Meyer's books....well, once she writes more

  • 1 star out of 5surprised

    Posted May 29, 2009 by Naomi, Fort Lee

    After reading the twilight series, I figured her writing would continue here in the The Host, but I wasn't fascinated with the storyline nor her writing. Although I thought the Twilight sagas were excellently written an great story line ...

  • 5 stars out of 5Better than Twilight

    Posted June 03, 2009 by Bklvr, Vancouver, BC

    I actually read this book before Twilight, so I may be biased because I enjoyed it so much. It's true, it has a slow start, but once it gets rolling the characters are very engrossing. I read a lot of books and put this on my list of favorites.

  • 5 stars out of 5Amazing!

    Posted June 30, 2009 by Blake R., Connecticut

    I was skeptical to read this book because I had just finished reading the Twilight saga and didn't think it could live up to what I expected. I was wrong though. I took awhile to get into the book. Once you learn what happened to Earth and understand some of the new terms that go with the story, you start to know more about the characters and fall in love with them just like in the Twilight saga. Stephenie Meyer does a great job connecting her characters with the reader. I would reccomend this book. Just keep reading it throught the beginning; it's worth it overall!

  • 3 stars out of 5Worth Reading

    Posted July 27, 2009 by Matthew, Pittsburgh

    An interesting book to read, but I found this book to be nothing like the Twlight series. When reading Twilight I could not put the book down and I would obsess over when I was going to read again. This book The Host I could put down and walk away for days on end, towards the end of the book I had to force myself to finish. Storyline is good, and the characters are interesting, but I was not thrilled with the overall product.

  • 5 stars out of 5Worth getting past a slow start

    Posted September 01, 2009 by Erin, Nederland, TX

    I read the twilight series like everyone else. So I was very excited when Stephenie Meyer came out with this book, because in my opinion, no one has been able to write emotion the way she can. Unfortunately The Host was a little harder to get into because she had to build up the background of the story first. I considered giving up after a few chapters, but I'm very glad I didn't. The Host is just as emotion-evoking as the Twilight series and is completely original in the science-fiction genre. I loved it and I'm looking forward to her next...

  • 2 stars out of 5Meh

    Posted September 08, 2009 by Kiesh, Brampton

    I found this book to be such a slow read, it is so different from the Twlight series. It took me a while to get through the book. Some parts were really good, but the majority of the good was just ok.

  • 5 stars out of 5Amazing Read

    Posted September 26, 2009 by Rob Yanka, burtonsville,Md

    This was an excellent book! I began this book with much trepidation after having finished her Twilight series,which of course I was very happy to have read and very sad to have finished! I didnt think anything else was going to be good as Twilight! However,Host was an excellent read and very very good! Other reviews have said slow start and too short info on original takeover of human race....I agree but wouldnt change a thing! The ending was gratifying and as a whole the story stands well as is. I am very happy to have read this and can't wait for another Stephanie Meyer book!

Additional Info

Imprint

Little Brown & Company

Filesize

1.19 MB

Number of Pages

1152

eBook ISBN

9780316032322

Excerpt from: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Chapter 1 -- Remembered
I knew it would begin with the end, and the end would look like death to these eyes. I had been warned.

Not these eyes. My eyes. Mine. This was me now. The language I found myself using was odd, but it made sense. Choppy, boxy, blind, and linear. Impossibly crippled in comparison to many I'd used, yet still it managed to find fluidity and expression. Sometimes beauty. My language now. My native tongue.

With the truest instinct of my kind, I'd bound myself securely into the body's center of thought, twined myself inescapably into its every breath and reflex until it was no longer a separate entity. It was me.

Not the body, my body.

I felt the sedation wearing off and lucidity taking its place. I braced myself for the onslaught of the first memory, which would really be the last memory--the last moments this body had experienced, the memory of the end. I had been warned thoroughly of what would happen now. These human emotions would be stronger, more vital than the feelings of any other species I had been. I had tried to prepare myself.

The memory came. And, as I'd been warned, it was not something that could ever be prepared for.

It seared with sharp color and ringing sound. Cold on her skin, pain gripping her limbs, burning them. The taste was fiercely metallic in her mouth. And there was the new sense, the fifth sense I'd never had, that took the particles from the air and transformed them into strange messages and pleasures and warnings in her brain--scents. They were distracting, confusing to me, but not to her memory. The memory had no time for the novelties of smell. The memory was only fear.

Fear locked her in a vise, goading the blunt, clumsy limbs forward but hampering them at the same time. To flee, to run--it was all she could do.





I've failed.





The memory that was not mine was so frighteningly strong and clear that it sliced through my control--overwhelmed the detachment, the knowledge that this was just a memory and not me. Sucked into the hell that was the last minute of her life, I was she, and we were running.

It's so dark. I can't see. I can't see the floor. I can't see my hands stretched out in front of me. I run blind and try to hear the pursuit I can feel behind me, but the pulse is so loud behind my ears it drowns everything else out.
It's cold. It shouldn't matter now, but it hurts. I'm so cold.
The air in her nose was uncomfortable. Bad. A bad smell. For one second, that discomfort pulled me free of the memory. But it was only a second, and then I was dragged in again, and my eyes filled with horrified tears.

I'm lost, we're lost. It's over.
They're right behind me now, loud and close. There are so many footsteps! I am alone. I've failed. The Seekers are calling. The sound of their voices twists my stomach. I'm going to be sick.
"It's fine, it's fine," one lies, trying to calm me, to slow me. Her voice is disturbed by the effort of her breathing.
"Be careful!" another shouts in warning.
"Don't hurt yourself," one of them pleads. A deep voice, full of concern.
Concern!
Heat shot through my veins, and a violent hatred nearly choked me.

I had never felt such an emotion as this in all my lives. For another second, my revulsion pulled me away from the memory. A high, shrill keening pierced my ears and pulsed in my head. The sound scraped through my airways. There was a weak pain in my throat.

Screaming, my body explained. You're screaming.

I froze in shock, and the sound broke off abruptly.

This was not a memory.

My body--she was thinking! Speaking to me!

But the memory was stronger, in that moment, than my astonishment.





"Please!" they cry. "There is danger ahead!"

The danger is behind! I scream back in my mind. But I see what they mean. A feeble stream of light, coming from who knows where, shines on the end of the hall. It is not the flat wall or the locked door, the dead end I feared and expected. It is a black hole.

An elevator shaft. Abandoned, empty, and condemned, like this building. Once a hiding place, now a tomb.

A surge of relief floods through me as I race forward. There is a way. No way to survive, but perhaps a way to win.

No, no, no! This thought was all mine, and I fought to pull myself away from her, but we were together. And we sprinted for the edge of death.

"Please!" The shouts are more desperate.

I feel like laughing when I know that I am fast enough. I imagine their hands clutching for me just inches behind my back. But I am as fast as I need to be. I don't even pause at the end of the floor. The hole rises up to meet me midstride.

The emptiness swallows me. My legs flail, useless. My hands grip the air, claw through it, searching for anything solid. Cold blows past me like tornado winds.

I hear the thud before I feel it. . . . The wind is gone. . . .
And then pain is everywhere. . . . Pain is everything.
Make it stop.
Not high enough, I whisper to myself through the pain.
When will the pain end? When . . . ?




The blackness swallowed up the agony, and I was weak with gratitude that the memory had come to this most final of conclusions. The blackness took all, and I was free. I took a breath to steady myself, as was this body's habit. My body.

But then the color rushed back, the memory reared up and engulfed me again.

No! I panicked, fearing the cold and the pain and the very fear itself.

But this was not the same memory. This was a memory within a memory--a final memory, like a last gasp of air--yet, somehow, even stronger than the first.

The blackness took all but this: a face.

The face was as alien to me as the faceless serpentine tentacles of my last host body would be to this new body. I'd seen this kind of face in the images I had been given to prepare for this world. It was hard to tell them apart, to see the tiny variations in color and shape that were the only markers of the individual. So much the same, all of them. Noses centered in the middle of the sphere, eyes above and mouths below, ears around the sides. A collection of senses, all but touch, concentrated in one place. Skin over bones, hair growing on the crown and in strange furry lines above the eyes. Some had more fur lower down on the jaw; those were always males. The colors ranged through the brown scale from pale cream to a deep almost-black. Aside from that, how to know one from the other?

This face I would have known among millions.

This face was a hard rectangle, the shape of the bones strong under the skin. In color it was a light golden brown. The hair was just a few shades darker than the skin, except where flaxen streaks lightened it, and it covered only the head and the odd fur stripes above the eyes. The circular irises in the white eyeballs were darker than the hair but, like the hair, flecked with light. There were small lines around the eyes, and her memories told me the lines were from smiling and squinting into sunlight.

I knew nothing of what passed for beauty among these strangers, and yet I knew that this face was beautiful. I wanted to keep looking at it. As soon as I realized this, it disappeared.

Mine, spoke the alien thought that should not have existed.

Again, I was frozen, stunned. There should have been no one here but me. And yet this thought was so strong and so aware!

Impossible. How was she still here? This was me now.

Mine, I rebuked her, the power and authority that belonged to me alone flowing through the word. Everything is mine.

So why am I talking back to her? I wondered as the voices interrupted my thoughts.





Copyright (c) 2008 by Stephenie Meyer