'The Host' by Stephenie Meyer

The opening paragraph: "The Healer’s name was Fords Deep Waters. Because he was a soul, by nature he was all things good: compassionate, patient, honest, virtuous, and full of love. Anxiety was an unusual emotion for Fords Deep Water."

Setting and time: a system of caves, somewhere in Arizona desert, USA, in the near future, post-alien invasion

Key themes: alien invasion, dystopian?, two-souls-one-body, sentient parasites, non-human forces that wish to do good but do evil instead, human resistance, underground, monster v. human dilemma, self-sacrificial heroines that make you scratch your head in utter confusion and say 'wait, what?', kind-of sci-fi but not really (this is not sci-fi), love rectangle, alien logic

Kalinda’s Review

There are no huge spoilers in this review. Read on without fear (ok, there are minor spoilers depending on how strict you are about spoilers, but Kalinda does't give away any names just hints at things from afar).

At first Kalinda didn’t feel particularly interested in reading The Host due to her prejudice (ok, nobody’s perfect!) but then despite herself, she caved in. She is kind of happy that she did. For her surrender to The Host she blames her sisters-in–crime for continuously enticing her to read this Ms Meyer’s non-Twilight book because ‘it is better than Twilight’. Since when the Twilight became the book against which we measure literature, she asked, but then she realized the comparison was indeed fair when it came to Ms Meyer’s work.

Instead of summarizing The Host here, Kalinda would like to cite Dana from the Reasoning with Vampires, for it is a hard task for provide a better recap of this book.

As a (non-parasitic) alien from outer space herself, Kalinda was expecting a lot of alien wickedness from The Host. Namely, she was expecting many moral, social and cultural complexities that are just bound to occur when two worlds collide. She can’t really say none of that stuff happened because it did, to some degree. But was it sufficient? Kalinda doesn’t think so. She wanted more.

The central premise of The Host is one of the greatest sci-fi ideas of all times: the body snatchers. An alien invasion in The Host happens in silence and without struggle or (much) blood. By the time humans realize something’s happening, it is already too late, for they are invaded.

Aliens or ‘Souls’ are these tiny luminous creatures resembling glow-worms or transparent centipedes. Somehow, they infiltrate human societies, and hijack bodies by surgically inserting themselves into them. A Soul then takes full control of its human host’s brain, erases its original personality while retaining their memories. Or something like that.

As Kalinda mentioned earlier, the idea of body-invading aliens is not original, and neither is the one suggesting a human mind can and will rebel from within against its invader (for rebellion against oppressive authority is what being human is all about). However, Meyer does a good-enough job building on these themes, adding layer after layer of complexity (though said complexity mostly having to do with unexpected romantic entanglements). Yes, in case you were wondering there is a love triangle in this book. Or more it is like a love rectangle (the human host is in love with this one guy while the host’s invading Soul slowly develops feelings for another… Very confusing moments and dialogues ensue).

Kalinda found Meyer’s descriptions of other planets, worlds, civilizations oversimplified; and the Souls’ virtuous views of things rather underdeveloped. Also, the themes of self-sacrificing heroines and domineering men that know better than the heroine what she wants (not at all uncommon things in Meyer’s work), in The Host are simply too much at times.

If Kalinda had to pick one thing she liked about this book it would have to be the way Meyer works in the monster versus human dilemma into the story. From the very beginning of this story you are confused: who is the baddy and who is the hero here? Are aliens truly evil in their twisted justification for the invasion of Earth (“Life on Earth is evil! We are actually doing humans a favor by invading them!” (not an actual quote from The Host))? Or is it the cave-dwelling humans who are wicked monsters for seeing the world strictly in black-and-white and having trouble recognizing sainthood-bordering goodness that is right before their eyes?

This continuous confusion/dilution of good and evil spills over into the narration of the book, as well. The Soul in question (aka Wanderer, aka Wanda) starts off as the narrator before passing the baton to Melanie, her resisting human host and then the narration kind of switches between the two. In the beginning, Wanda is the monster and Melanie is clearly the human, the victim, the one for a reader to cheer for. However, somewhere towards the middle of the book, the narration takes on the third dimension by referring to the host/invador duo as ‘we’, not-so-subtly hinting as the two opposing forces locked into one body finally finding a common ground and starting to like each other (yes, it is as weird as it sounds). By the end of the book, you may kind of end up feeling for Wanderer’s plight and not particularly liking Melanie, though Wanderer does go overboard more than once with her self-sacrificial tendencies, and it is hard to swallow the logic behind her decisions without a serious eye roll.

And of course, the ending… Let’s just say, the faux-ending that Meyer presents to us at first though a depressing one, is the one that really should have been, the only ending logically acceptable, as well as the ending that Wanderer actually wished and asked for herself.

The real ending, however is the total opposite of the faux-ending (duh!) and though sweet, it kind of obliterates the human v. monster problem all together. Though Kalinda does understand that nobody wants to pick a Stephenie Meyer’s book and cry their eyes out in the end, right? Right?    

Kalinda’s Verdict: if you are a hardcore sci-fi fan, this book will be an insult to your sensibilities. Do not read it. However, read this book if you want an Intro into alien-body-snatchers as The Host will most likely provoke many questions which is usually a good thing. Also, read this book if you enjoy reading stories featuring confusing love rectangles, for The Host definitely prides itself on having a seriously messed-up one. Read this book, because it is being made into a movie and it is usually a good idea (Kalinda believes) to read the book first and then see a movie, not vice versa. Kalinda gives this book 3.5 stars out of 5 because this book was better than she expected, despite its disturbing cover art.

'Clockwork Angel' by Cassandra Clare

The opening line: The demon exploded in a shower of ichor and guts.

Setting and time: Victorian London, England

Key Themes: an American teenager in London; assortment of demons, underworld dwellers and a part-angelic warrior race tasked with hunting/policing them all; love triangles; monster v. human dilemma  

Kalinda’s Review

Although Kalinda has read this first installment of the prequel series to Cassandra Clare’s bestselling Mortal Instruments years ago she was so busy writing her Young Adult literary masterpiece and plotting silent invasion of Earth that she is only publishing this review today.

Set in the same universe as the commercially successful Mortal Instruments (now, a movie – due for release in 2013) with its part-angel race of demon-crushing Shadowhunters, the first Infernal Devices novel adopts a different point of view – that of a Downworlder. 

Tessa Gray (16 year old) travels to England from New World in search of her brother, but instead finds herself thrown deep into the middle of a supernatural struggle between good and evil of rather large proportions. Clare paints dreary but at times enchanting landscapes of London: a windswept, rain-drizzled world of grey, dark blue and black which at times  spills over into the characters' moods, creating a brooding, dark atmosphere.

The Downworld denizens (namely, lycanthropes, vamps, evil/misunderstood fairies and warlocks, etc) are portrayed as creatures subjugated and controlled by the Shadowhunters – a race descendent of angels, and in possession of some metahuman strength normally acquired by burning a series of ancient runes onto their skin. Shadowhunters are sort of supernatural police, legitimised by their purpose of slaying demons which keep spilling into the human world and threatening the balance. 

In Clockwork Angel, Clare continues exploring complex relationships between Shadowhunters and Downworlders through her main protagonist’s story. Kalinda found Tessa Gray tough and open-minded in the face of manifold prejudice and unfairness she encounters as ‘the Other’ while at times suffering from general blandness as a character. 

Kalinda thought Clare’s exploration of such binaries as ‘Mundane’ v. ‘Sacred’, ‘Us’ v. ‘Them’, and the done-do-death ‘Good’ v. ‘Evil’ were intriguing but not always fully developed. Kalinda enjoyed the fact that the novel explored societal issues pertinent to the times of Victorian England, like gender and class politics (Tessa and other female characters have to operate in the world dominated by men, etc). And although it was clear from Clare’s world-building that the Shadowhunters had their own society and rules within the ‘profane’ human world, they still appeared to exhibit gender inequality and intolerance of the difference, just like their human counterparts.

Finally, a special word needs to be said on the use of poetry as an artistic tool in Clare’s writing arsenal. Era-appropriate poetry and prose are used in the beginning of each chapter to set an atmosphere and to foreshadow the story to come. The likes of William Ernest Henley, Lord Byron, Robert Browning, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, John Keats and Emily Brontë are enlisted by Clare in Clockwork Angel. 

Kalinda’s Verdict:  

Although desirable, it is not crucial to read the Mortal Instruments series first as Clockwork Angel is a prequel and there will be no spoilers of Clare’s books which are set up chronologically later on. Clockwork Angel is a decent book and an easy read, if not very memorable. The book cover is lovely. Beware of a nauseating love triangle. Kalinda gives Clockwork Angel 3 out of 5 stars.  

Coming up next on Kalinda Reviews Paranormal: The Host by Stephenie Meyer, The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, and Working Stiff by Rachel Caine

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