Last chapter, she woke up and we ended with the seeker saying her new name.

This one opens with the healer jumping in to contradict, saying that our protagonist won’t recognize that name. But she actually did, so he’s wrong? I can’t tell where the book is going with this conflict.

The main character smells some pleasant floral perfume from the seeker, which seems positive. Why would it be just the girls wearing perfume, though?

Anyway, despite this positive signifier:

“Have I been placed in a damaged host in order to gain the information you need, Seeker?”
There was a gasp–surprise and outrage mingled–and something warm touched my skin, covered my hand.
“Of course not, Wanderer,” the man said reassuringly. “Even a Seeker would stop at some things.”
The Seeker gasped again. Hissed, my memory corrected.

So maybe the perfume marks her as evil because it’s feminine, regardless of the fact it’s not negative in itself. The seeker defends herself saying the scans showed the body was perfectly fixed, and also, why isn’t healer guy getting any flack for this when he was the one in charge of this?

Once she explains she means memory troubles, the tension defuses.

I had a strange sensation that I was somehow receiving more than my five senses were giving me–almost a feeling that there was another sense, on the fringes, not quite harnessed. Intuition? That was almost the right word. As if any creature needed more than five senses.

Uh. What? It seems like smell already isn’t a standard sense, so it’s not clear why they’d think there were five senses, and there are actually a lot more than five possible senses (magnetic field! electrical impulses! heat!), some of which humans even possess. Furthermore, intuition is not a goddamn sense! The sense that’s functioning is SOUND because she is HEARING their reactions. Other fine senses humans possess is a sense of their body and a sense of gravity and motion. Many other species can sense magnetic fields.

Anyway, they tell her that memory problems are common.

“Am I correctly bound?” I asked, my voice distorted because it came through my teeth.
“Yes,” the Healer said. “All eight hundred twenty-seven points are latched securely in the optimum positions.”
This mind used more of my faculties than any host before, leaving me only one hundred eighty-one spare attachments. Perhaps the numerous bindings were the reason the emotions were so vivid.

I wonder if this species was a bioweapon? You know, sort of like in Alien, where there’s no way that thing naturally evolved. Anyway, the lack of good central control is probably us being special, but fits fine with my own theory about us just being too primitive to work properly.

Time for a new sense.

The ceiling tiles were white with darker speckles. The lights were rectangular and the same size as the tiles, replacing them at regular intervals. The walls were light green–a calming color, but also the color of sickness. A poor choice, in my quickly formed opinion.
The people facing me were more interesting than the room. The word doctor sounded in my mind as soon as my eyes fastened on the Healer. He wore loose-fitting blue green clothes that left his arms bare. Scrubs.

So hm. They seem to be very much aping humanity, which interests me so long as it’s an intentional choice and not laziness. I think it’s that they’re impacted by the hosts even when functioning properly.

Anyway, she tells us he’s got a kind face. He sure doesn’t seem that kind with his constant sniping at the seeker.

Meanwhile, that seeker is small and wearing black, in a suit that sounds like it’s a woman’s style one.

Her skin was darker than the Healer’s. Olive toned.

I believe that’s the first hint of anyone who’s not straight up white. She’d really better not be evil now.

The black brows, slanted down over the slightly bulging eyes

Not looking too good on that front, though.

The healer explains that the memory issues are only a problem with adults who knew about the brain slugs, which is usually not an issue because there’s few left. Also, apparently the human lifespan is much shorter than the average brainslug host.

The healer then tells her a story of another host, who came from “Blind World” and she’s all mildly offended at the name and “Yes, well, some who have lived there prefer to call it the Singing World.”
I nodded slowly. I liked that better. so I guess this is related to the issues they have communicating across languages, but it seems weird the harmony-filled souls, given two perfectly good names, would prefer the more offensive.

“And some who’ve never been there call it Planet of the Bats,” the Seeker muttered.

It is really not looking so good on the not evil front here.

Anyway, so, the soul started off with a name from his previous life there, which was apparently his first so that makes sense he’d have a name from it. Then he changes his name to his host’s. Then he decides instead of a musical profession, he’d like to do the host’s previous job.

“These signs were somewhat worrisome to his assigned Comforter, but they were well within normal bounds.

So apparently all that is a normal level of bleedthrough for the hosts, and also bleedthrough issues or something are such a problem there’s a whole job based around managing it. Sounds like hosts impact the souls quite a bit.

Anyway, then he starts blacking out and finally the host possesses him long enough to try to cut the brainslug out. He wasn’t strong enough to keep control, and so she goes off on a tangent about oh no does that mean I’m weak and as I roll my eyes at this I reflect that you really don’t see that sort of am-I-weak whining half so much with male characters.

Anyway, so, they remove the brainslug and get it a new host while discarding the damaged old host. Given mere knowledge of the brain slugs makes it possible to resist, wouldn’t knowledge of this make the hosts more likely to try it? Plus, it’d actually give them a reason to be trying to hide the information, a complaint about is her very next point.

“Actually,” the Seeker broke in, “it is very clearly stated in all recruitment propaganda

How can they even have a concept of propaganda?

Anyway seeker’s attitude is just that she was told adults were more difficult which counts as an adequate warning. I note the healer, willing to jump in all over the place when it’s belittling her job, stays out of this conversation, presumably because he feels the same and the author doesn’t want him to be tarred with the same evil brush by saying so.

“Not that I blame you. Childhood is extraordinarily tedious.

How does that work? I mean, just being smaller shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Do they still need to be educated? They do seem quite dependent on the host’s past knowledge. But it seems once you’d achieved takeover you could just raise the kids up thinking this was normal, teach them all the tedious stuff, then take them over when they’re bigger and smarter.

She also compliments the wanderer’s abilities in handling different hosts, but to no avail:

By this point in my observations of the Seeker, I was surprised that she’d had the patience to wait for any delay, even my personal acclimatization

Yuuuuup it’s looking like she’s the bad one.

Main character brain slug demands to know why the seeker didn’t pop into the body herself, which the seeker is offended by because she’s not someone who abandons her host before their life is up. This is called skipping, and the main character needs that definition explained to her.

I nodded in understanding. We’d had a name for it on my other worlds. On no world was it smiled upon.

I actually think this isn’t another evil notch. It’s so clumsily written I think it’s just the usual thing where an author writes out someone asking why X wasn’t done to explain that there is Y reason and like most of those, drops the ball by having the reason be something both parties should already be aware of.

A less clumsy thing would be to say that unlike most hosts, the brain slug can’t leave a body and then return to it because letting your host wake up causes the problems they were just talking about, so her current body would have to be abandoned completely and that’s what they object to. This whole chapter is about how humans are especially difficult to handle, so it’d fit.

Well, anyway, let’s hear what the history is of the world where the body snatchers won:

“Her name was Melanie Stryder. She was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was in Los Angeles when the occupation became known to her, and she hid in the wilderness for a few years

Hm. Isn’t Los Angeles in the middle of an increasingly worsening desert? I’m dubious of how easy survival in the wilderness is going to be. But then, I live in places less reminiscent of hell and she was born to the biome, so let’s assume she’s got a similar interest in the outdoors and knows enough to handle it.

And twenty years old! That’s good in case we get any romance later on. I was expecting another teen protagonist.

Anyway, beyond that it’s mostly empty spots as the host tries to block the memories. She gets the hang of it, though, relieving memories focused on various senses so that the associations keep one thing leading to the next. Another bit for my primitive theory! She finds her host was leaving a message in the building.

“The pattern is the fifth door along the fifth hall on the fifth floor.

Hm. So it seems like this was something worked out in advance. Maybe she and her cousin were together when learning about the brain slugs, or else one called the other, and they disagreed about how to hide but figured out a way of getting back in contact with each other?

“The building was supposed to be safe,” I continued. “They knew it was condemned. She doesn’t know how she was discovered. Did they find Sharon?”
A chill of horror raised goose bumps on my arms.
The question was not mine.
The question wasn’t mine, but it flowed naturally through my lips as if it were. The Seeker did not notice anything amiss.

I’d expect them to be more on the watch for this, since even just reading it the last part sounds like an odd interjection when she’s busy trying to list information.

The answer is no, her cousin’s still safe. They only found her by chance because someone noticed her entering the condemned building and brain slugs wouldn’t be doing that. This again seems like something where you don’t want the host knowing the details. The more she knows about the way they work, the less insurmountable they seem.

I mean, I guess it’s good that we’re avoiding the thing where no one tells the protagonist the truth, but we’re doing it the one time it’s justified. Also, if only they hadn’t made a direct tie between the hosts knowing stuff and the hosts being more difficult it wouldn’t be such a problem.

Anyway, she was supposed to meet up with whoever in a state park, which reminds me that I’d really, really like to know how the current society is functioning because they can’t have really imported everything from us, and this was on a strict timeline so whoever they are knew to run if she didn’t return soon.

“We let the host heal for nine days, just to be absolutely sure she was recovered,” the Healer told me. “Insertion was today, the tenth day.”

They must obviously have been aware that there’s going to be time sensitive information involved here, and yet there’s no sign the seeker lobbied to rush anything. The book’s gone on about the seeker being so impatient about wanting to know stuff now that the brain slug’s been inserted, but not a peep about complaining about the schedule.

“Too late,” I said. “For the rendezvous point… or even the note.”
…
“He won’t be there.”

I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. Okay, so he knew to run off if she didn’t show up soon enough, but where does the note fit in? It can’t be gone, since no one else has entered the building. It can’t be telling someone to find the rendezvous point, or there’d be no reason to separate them. And the way this is phrased makes it sound like both involved the guy, but obviously he had no involvement in the note and was staying clear.

My best guess is the latter part is just clumsy writing and the basic sequence of events is that she would go in and leave notes specifying a different meeting point at some point less than ten days, presumably to find her cousin, but had to return on some tighter schedule to meet up with her boyfriend or he’d know something was wrong. That’d make sense – with her cousin harder to contact, she’d need to give a longer window for the note to be found, but could be more cautious about the other meeting point.

Anyway, she goes on a short bit about The beautiful face with the golden tan skin and the light-flecked eyes her host had a huge crush on, who it turns out is named Jared. I wonder if the author’s trying to make a point by having her current protagonists be heavily tanned after the marble vampires.