The Host Book Review Sample

The Host by Stephenie Meyer is the novel which will not leave one indifferent. To my mind, this novel touches one of the most timely and critical questions of the contemporary world – humanity. Even though the book tells a story about aliens who invade the world and subdue minds of human beings, we can track quite a similarity between that imaginary world and contemporary one. Thus, the main idea of the novel is actually triumph of humanity and love.
The whole novel is a struggle between an alien soul and a human soul. From the very beginning we are involved into the story which at first seems to be rather trivial – humans become hosts of aliens, souls, who attach to their bodies and control them. However, with every page we start to understand the whole complexity and depth of the main character Melanie. We appear to learn and understand her along with Wanderer. Melanie is a real fighter; however, she does not fight physically. It would have been much easier to take some more crucial steps to get Wanda (Wanderer) out of her body, but Melanie turns the soul into a human, teaching her how to love, respect and sympathize.
At first we see Wanda as a mechanism fulfilling its duty. She is very proficient in what she is actually doing. Nevertheless, we see her change and grow throughout the novel: at first she finds a real friend in the face of Melanie’s brother Jamie Stryder who actually first believed the soul. Later, strong love of Melanie to Jared Howe let Wanda experience the same feeling. Despite the fact that souls are very strong creatures, we can see Wanda evolve, and first and foremost emotionally. Wanda starts seeing the world from the human’s prospective; she realizes that one cannot capture somebody’s soul or body even for his or her benefit. Wanda realizes that each and every creature has a right for his own life, mistakes, and feelings – each and every human is alive.
I think that the climax of the novel, as well as the final step of Wanda’s evolution is her love to Ian. From that very moment we realize that Wanda is no longer simply the soul, she is a human being, as she is able to have her own feelings, she is able to love and compassion and these feelings are separate from Melanie’s. Not only does Wanda change herself, she changes each and everyone around her as well. She learns to respect humans, as well as teaches people respect her. From being an alien and an invader, she turns into an integral part of their society, reaching very valuable mutual understanding.
Even though I do not like science fiction novels, and consider alien topic to be rather beaten and exaggerated, I liked the Host. However, what I particularly liked was the idea of the Host – humanity. From my point of view, much has been told about violence and wars – it is high time to give way to humanity. Stephanie Meyer decided not only to cover this topic, she did really ‘spoon-feed’ the topic by illustrating several love lines. On the one hand, this approach makes it a real novel; however, it made me too bored by all the love struggles and hesitations of the main characters.