The Host - Stephenie Meyer

All of our most paranoid dreams have come true : the Earth has been invaded by fearsome aliens, who steal our bodies from us and erase our personalities. Resistance is reduced to a lucky few, and even those are doomed ; but even then, a question remains : are these quite peaceful aliens really the bad guys ?

Earth is not the first planet to be conquered pretty much without bloodshed by the Souls. They are a race which cannot survive without a host, and so they specialize in the discovery and the taking-over of new planets and new sentient species. Most of them are centuries, even millennia, old : when their host dies, they just transfer to a new one. Until now, they never had much trouble to subdue a species, whether it was sentient flowers or giant bears.

But humans are different. For one thing, they look incredibly violent and vicious to the Souls, who are basically peaceful, trusting, and kind ; the taking-over of Earth does seem justified to them, if only to save humans from themselves. And for another, some humans resist being erased by the Soul who take over their body. It is even told that one of them regained complete control of his body, shoving the Soul in a corner of his mind ; of course, such horrific stories are only known to the Seekers and not widely advertised. The Seekers are the only one among the Souls whose Calling leads to violence and lies : other Souls pity them more than anything else, as they are forced to use repugnant means to ensure the end of any resistance on a planet.

The human Melanie Stryder was able to escape the Seekers for a long time, but now they have finally caught her. And to access the information she has in her mind, possibly the location of many other humans, they give her body to the legendary Soul named Wanderer, considered very strong among her kind. But Melanie is strong too, and driven by the need to protect those she loves. And not only does she defy Wanderer's attempts to access to her memories, she is also able to keep her own personality separate from that of the one she sees as a "parasite". Finally, as they are both pressured by a very unpleasant Seeker, Melanie convinces Wanderer to flee and try to find those she left behind. But how will her brother and her lover react when they see the body of the one they loved inhabited by the one who represents everything they hate the most ?

In this heart-wrenching book, Stephenie Meyer demonstrates that her success does not only lie with Edward and Bella, but in her writing, in her story-telling, and in her understanding of human nature. As her characters struggle to get rid of their prejudices and to literarily get in each other's shoes, we cannot decide which is the bad or the good guy. Even these Finney-like Body Snatchers don't seem so bad in the end ; after all, humans are violent, and Souls are not, and that's a fact (except for the Seekers, of course). And Meyer's talent is a its peak in the use she makes of the fantastic love triangle between Wanderer, Melanie, and her human lover Jared (triangle - but with two bodies only). As usual, she's at her best when dealing in the profoundly emotional - and irrational.

You cannot stay indifferent to this story weaving love, hate, defiance and trust in a beautiful tapestry ; you just might end the reading with tears at the close and a will for the story to go on forever. It's not surprising that Stephenie Meyer achieved such a success in so short a time : her books until now are masterpieces of emotion, every one of them.

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09/06/2008

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