The Host
Last night, as I could not sleep due to a lingering jetlag (!), I finished The Host from Stephenie Meyer. Having “stolen” the book from my daughter, who received it as a (nice) birthday present, I was originally trying to check what were the reasons for the colossal success of the Twilight series (and the subsequent invasion of young adult bookshelves by vampire stories). This book being completely unrelated with the series, I was first intrigued by the Sci’-Fi’ theme of aliens using humans as hosts. While this is not highly innovative Science-Fiction, and while the style remains rather elementary, I ended up liking the book altogether (to my surprise!). The highly classical “love triangle” at the core of the book at the core of the book was made much more interesting by the non-schizophrenic cohabitation of the two minds in one single body and the progressive assimilation of the alien within the human surviving community is rather well-conducted, if very ethnocentric (in a planetary manner!). The “happy ending” is a bit rushed and predictable, and the plot is at times rather thin (like the closed universe of the cavern or the very human way of thinking of the alien turncoat), but I would nonetheless recommend The Host as a light and enjoyable read…
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