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The Host Hardcover – May 6, 2008
| Stephenie Meyer (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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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.
- Print length619 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLittle, Brown and Company
- Publication dateMay 6, 2008
- Reading age14 years and up
- Dimensions6.75 x 2.25 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100316068047
- ISBN-13978-0316068048
- Lexile measure640L
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Host
By Stephenie MeyerLittle, Brown and Company
Copyright © 2008 Stephenie MeyerAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-316-06804-8
Chapter One
RememberedI 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.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Hostby Stephenie Meyer Copyright ©2008 by Stephenie Meyer. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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Product details
- Publisher : Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (May 6, 2008)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 619 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0316068047
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316068048
- Reading age : 14 years and up
- Lexile measure : 640L
- Item Weight : 1.91 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.75 x 2.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #132,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,413 in TV, Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction
- #1,900 in Action & Adventure Romance (Books)
- #5,268 in Romantic Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on June 2, 2003. The stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke-up from a dream featuring seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head. "Though I had a million things to do (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children, dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write--something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering." Meyer invented the plot during the day through swim lessons and potty training, then writing it out late at night when the house was quiet. Three months later she finished her first novel, Twilight.
Twilight was one of 2005's most talked about novels and within weeks of its release the book debuted at #5 on The New York Times bestseller list.Among its many accolades, Twilight was named an "ALA Top Ten Books for Young Adults," an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade&So Far", and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. The movie version of Twilight will be released by Summit Entertainment nationwide on November 21, 2008, starring Kristen Stewart ("Into The Wild") and Robert Pattinson ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire").
The highly-anticipated sequel, New Moon, was released in September 2006 and spent 31 weeks at the #1 position on The New York Times bestseller list. Eclipse, the third book in Meyer's Twilight saga, was released on August 7, 2007 and sold 150,000 copies its first day on-sale. The book debuted at #1 bestseller lists across the country, including USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. The fourth and final book in the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn, was published on August 2, 2008, with a first printing of 3.2 million copies - the largest first printing in the publisher's history. Breaking Dawn sold 1.3 million copies its first day on-sale rocketing the title to #1 on bestseller lists nationwide.
Meyer's highly-anticipated debut for novel adults, The Host, was released by Little, Brown and Company in May 2008 and debuted at #1 on The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.
Stephenie Meyer graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English Literature. She lives in Arizona with her husband and sons.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviewed in the United States on June 13, 2022
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Notes from January 2019:
Plot and Setting: 4.8 -- A wonderfully unique take on alien invasion and human resistance. Even the conflicting love interests in this story are unique and intriguing. In general, I'm not a fan of love triangles and the angsty drama that tends to come with them, and this book includes a couple scenes that play into that melodrama more than is probably necessary -- but on the whole, the story is about humanity and friendship more than romance, which I appreciate. Some interesting world building (love the stories of Wanda's previous lives on other planets!) and a plot that goes in complex, interesting directions. I did wish for a little more clarity on time passing as a whole.
Characters: 5 -- Wanda is a fascinating character. I love how she's not only wholly different from humans due to her alien nature, but she's also unique among her own species. The complexity of her viewpoint and her shifting ideas about humans and souls is what makes this book great. Her relationships with the other characters are also complex and varied. I loved how possible they seemed, given the strangeness of the situation. The relationship between Wanda and Mel is especially fascinating, but all of her relationships - with Jeb, Jamie, Jared, Ian, Doc, Kyle, etc, etc -- are intriguing, especially as she shifts from viewing humans as horrifying monsters to beings who can (mostly) be trusted and loved. The inclusion of Maggie, Sharon, and Lacey is a wise and interesting choice, as well.
Mechanics and Writing: 4.8 -- A handful of minor errors -- about 4 paragraph break issues, a couple of compound word errors, and one spot where a line is repeated. Otherwise, very well written and well edited. Though I'm not a fan of the formatting choice that turns whole paragraphs into links to the song list appendix.
Redeeming Value: 4.5 -- No actual sex scenes, but it's clear Mel remembers intimacy with Jared and her body reacts strongly to him. The idea of passion as belonging to the body itself, almost as muscle memory rather than conscious choice, is interesting, as is the complexity of Wanda and Mel loving different men while sharing a body, but the physical aspects of that are played up a bit more than is strictly necessary. I did appreciate that sex was apparently reserved for "partners" who are committed to each other (marriage apparently not being a thing at all). Some violence, ranging from brothers wrestling to humans attempting to hurt or kill Wanda simply because she is not human. I appreciated Wanda's continual horror at aggression, violence, and hatred, but also the ways in which she comes to appreciate humanity and see the goodness in people, too. Interesting lessons on love, friendship, altruism, and human nature as a whole.
Personal Enjoyment: 5
Top reviews from other countries
I love the characters and how you feel like you could be Melanie wanting your body back but over time falling in love with this body snatcher and then not wanting them to leave.
The love triangle is so complex and so innocent that it made me think of the way I love the people in my life.
The discription of the people and the scenery from this first person basis just sucks you in so that sometimes you can't physically stop reading because your stuck in the same place.
Reading how Stephanie accidentally fell in to writing this book goes so well with the story she wrote.
Although I'd love a sequel to this book or even a whole series I wonder if leaving this as a stand alone novel actually allows our minds to embrace the important things in life and realise how unimportant some modern day technology really is when it comes down to true happiness.
The story is not gripping and hasn't particularly stayed with me. I know I stopped reading several times, not because I was bored per se but because I wasn't hooked, either. I was not absorbed, and was easily distracted from it. It's terribly heterosexual (as one would expect, to be fair), with a bunch of the tropes inherent to that (plus some good old fashioned nonsense about how important it is to reproduce, if memory serves? being a mother is apparently the highest calling ever in all her worlds), and Meyer does love to describe things repetitively or use excessive detail. She seriously needs a ruthless editor, but when you sell as many books as she does, I guess you also get to keep as many of your words as you choose, even if they're pointless ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All this said, the notion of the Souls is interesting (if arguably somewhat derivative), the description of the camp Wanderer ends up in is genuinely interesting, and albeit with several large pauses, I did finish the book and somewhat enjoyed it? I cared enough about the characters and was interested enough in the backstory of the world that I wanted to know where things would end up. The characters themselves aren't the most vivid I've ever read, but compared to poor old cipher Bella Swan, they're practically in technicolour. If it were some unknown writing, I doubt it would have got much attention; it would have been edited into shape so it would probably have less flab, but it still wouldn't have got any awards.
(It doesn't hurt that for the most part, the terrible pseudo science of Twilight was conspicuous by its absence. I think some moments had me side eyeing and thinking "just say it's alien tech, please!" but I don't recall any moments of cringeworthy nonsense like the vampire chromosome debacle.)
In short, if you can forgive Meyer for the crime that is the Twilight Saga, and you want some light entertainment you can get lost in for a while without having to engage your brain very hard, The Host is worth a quid. It is not about to set the world on fire, and if Meyer weren't attached, I don't know if it would ever have been published, but she is and it was, and unlike "Beau" and "Edythe" and all the other nonsense that's fallen from Meyer's fingers to milk the cash cow, this one is... okay.
You get right inside the head of Wanderer, in the book, as the story is told in the first person from the alien's point of view. The result is a few surprises that either don't come across well in the film (e.g. the degree of mistrust and mistreatment that Wanderer/Melanie experiences from Uncle Jeb's "guests"), or else aren't touched on at all (e.g. the fact that Wanderer is a female of her species). You also find out much more about Wanderer's past hosts, and get a better sense of the tussle between Wanderer and Melanie, and of the way they gradually forge a bond of friendship. The love-triangle (or maybe that should be love-quadrangle) between Wanderer/Melanie, Ian and Jared is explored much more effectively in the book than in the film, and is, in fact, the real core of the story.
One point worth making is that this isn't strictly a science-fiction story. It's really a love-triangle in which one of the people just happens to be an alien living inside the head of the woman who is at the centre of the triangle.
I watched the film again, after reading the book, and realised that it's actually quite a superficial and tame adaptation. Maybe someone will remake it, at some point in the future, and find a way of bringing out some of the more subtle aspects of the plot.












