Last time on The Host, the brainslug is finally going to fucking do something! Naturally, Melanie objects.


No, Wanda, no!
Don’t be stupid, Mel. You of all people should see the potential of this choice. Isn’t this what you want?

Don’t be stupid, brainslug. It’s obvious Melanie’s only allowed to want things for other people.

This was the secret I should die to protect. The information I’d been desperate to keep safe no matter what hideous torture I was put through.
This was not the kind of torture I’d expected: a personal crisis of conscience, confused and complicated by love for my human family. Very painful, nevertheless.
I could not claim to be an expatriate if I did this. No, I would be purely a traitor.

Unlike before when not telling meant they were killing your kind, and also when you were aiding people who killed your kind.

Not for her, Wanda! Not for her! Mel howled.
Should I wait? Wait until they catch another soul?

Well, honestly they promised not to do that and seem to be willing to stick with that, so…probably she’s the last one they’ll ever catch.

I could do it, Mel. I could justify letting her die if she was one of those innocent souls. I could let them kill her then. I could trust myself to make an objective decision.

So the day is saved by the fact the brainslug is batshit as well as hateful.

She runs off, saying she has another question to ask so don’t kill the seeker yet, and trips over Lily, who is apparently someone, and I guess she was Wes’ girlfriend. Being female, she’s just here to be sad and mourning now. Doesn’t even occur to her to hate the brainslug.

“Why?” she asked me.
I stared at her wordlessly.
“I said that life and love go on. But why do they? They shouldn’t. Not anymore. What’s the
point?”
“I don’t know, Lily. I’m not sure what the point is.”
“Why?” she asked again, not speaking to me anymore. Her glassy eyes looked right through me.
I stepped carefully past her and hurried to my room.

I wonder if the brainslug would feel guilt if it turns out Lily suicided after this uplifting conversation? Probably not, her morality is getting more incoherent by the minute.

No. Melanie tried to be firm through her panic.

Shut up, Melanie.

I’d told her that I wouldn’t erase her and that I was sorry that I couldn’t give her more than that.
It wasn’t so much a lie as it was an unfinished sentence. I couldn’t give her more than that–and stay alive myself.
The actual lie had been given to Jared. I’d told him, just seconds later, that I didn’t know how to make myself not exist. In the context of our discussion, it was true. I didn’t know how to fade away, here inside Melanie. But I was surprised I hadn’t heard the obvious lie right then, hadn’t seen in that moment what I was seeing now. Of course I knew how to make myself not exist.

Okay, this is stupid enough I can’t believe, however poor a writer the author may be, that this was intended all along. My guess is the basic story was written out and she hit this solution about now, then clumsily tried to work it back into the rest. The idea the brainslug just never thought that hey, getting the fuck out of the body is an option too, is just insane.

Don’t you want to be free?
A long pause.
I wouldn’t ask you for this, she finally said.

Well, you should.

It’d be one thing if the brainslug was timesharing the body, and Melanie having the ability to wrest control if she needs to would also help. As it is, not only is Melanie completely locked out from her own life, even her ghost is fading away. If the brainslug doesn’t leave soon, Melanie will die.

I think I might have volunteered… eventually.
Why do you think that? she demanded, her tone close to a sob. It touched me. I expected her to be elated.
In part because of them. Jared and Jamie. I can give them the whole world, everything they want. I can give them you.I probably would have realized that… someday. Who knows? Maybe Jared would have asked. You know I wouldn’t have said no.
Ian’s right. You’re too self-sacrificing. You don’t have any limits. You need limits, Wanda!

She’s refused to sacrifice herself out of a selfish desire to keep this body, even though her refusal to talk led to the deaths of other brainslugs. Even now she’s only really doing it because she feels bad Jared doesn’t love her and has this weird idea her hatred means she’s to blame if the seeker dies. The one who needs limits here is Melanie.

Instead, she protests more about how the brainslug should stay and adds that the brainslug is also more useful than she is for getting them stuff.

I wonder how I didn’t see it sooner. It seems so completely obvious.

Characters pointing out plotholes, always a great sign.

Can’t you see? This is the happy ending.

Except we’re still ten chapters from the end.

The brainslug then claims she cares about Melanie so much that she’d have done it just for her, which is bullshit because it’s been nothing but Jared this and Jamie that.

No wonder the success rate for resistant hosts was so low here on Earth. Once we learned to love our human host, what hope did we souls have? We could not exist at the expense of one we loved.

So instead they swap bodies and have the malfunctioning one killed.

I can’t really call this worse than what we’ve already sat through, but it’s definitely matching that in its own way.

She goes on about how great the body is for a bit.

The caves were full of sad, cast-down eyes. It was easy enough to slip unobtrusively past them all. No one cared what I was doing right now, except maybe Jeb, Brandt, and Aaron, and they weren’t here.

Even though now is absolutely the moment she’d betray them. They know killing is the one thing that she can’t stand from them. But the author’s finally bored with that subplot, so it’s gone.

I expected I would find Doc already there, but I’d wait if I had to. He would be alone. Poor Doc, that was usually the case now.
Doc had been sleeping alone in his hospital since the night we’d saved Jamie’s life. Sharon had taken her things from their room and moved them to her mother’s, and Doc wouldn’t sleep in the empty room.
Such a great hatred. Sharon would rather kill her own happiness, and Doc’s, too, than forgive him for helping me heal Jamie.
Sharon and Maggie were barely a presence in the caves anymore. They looked past everyone now, the way they used to look past only me. I wondered if that would change when I was gone, or if they were both so rigid in their grudge that it would be too late for them to change.
What an extraordinarily stupid way to waste time.

That’s how I’d describe this entire fucking sidetrack.

There isn’t even an attempt to justify it. That’s the worst part. With Kyle, his antagonism actually moved the plot. He was a real threat and a real concern. They’re just mentioned in the background sometimes.

Anyway, so she tells doctor guy she’ll show him how to remove souls, and in return he can’t kill them but has to put them back in a cryotank and send them to some other place to enslave a different species, because when she came to the realization that enslaving and murdering sentient species was wrong, she just meant humans. The see weeds that committed specieswide suicide rather than be taken can go fuck themselves.

In fact, humans are so special she wants him to just kill her because she doesn’t want another body. Given how weird they are about overidentifying with their current host, she’d probably be fine if you stuffed her into a flower or something and then asked how she felt about dying because only human hosts are any good.

“I’ll get Jared,” I said. “We’ll make a quick raid for cryotanks. Hold off the others. Tell them… tell them the truth. Tell them I’m going to help you get the Seeker out of that body.”

And presumably they’ll actually believe her even though that’s the most suspicious thing she’s done yet. Either she’s lying now or she was lying before about there being no way to get them out, after all.

So, she goes to get Jared to help her get the cryotanks.

“Empty cryotanks are stored outside Healing facilities until they’re needed. With more souls coming in than leaving, there will be a surplus. No one will guard them; no one will notice if some go missing.”

That’s convenient, but it does make sense.

I hoped they weren’t stupid enough to discuss it in front of the Seeker. Would she shred her human host’s brain if she guessed what I was doing? Would she assume I’d turned traitor entirely? That I would give the humans what they needed with no restrictions?
Wasn’t that what I was about to do, though?

Sure sounds like it.

I really, really think this is the author talking to herself and working it out on the spot. She’s considering if there should be more secrets, then she can’t think of anything good, so the character says that’s all there is.

She also spends a bit wondering if they’ll keep their word about not killing the brainslugs and really, why wouldn’t they? It’s not like she’s asking much. And she has actual things to be concerned about – like the fact they’re going out on another raid while the brainslugs are on alert from the seeker’s disappearance.

Focusing on this angle–viewing my choice not as a sacrifice but rather as arming the humans in exchange for the Seeker’s life–I knew that it was wrong. And if I was trying to save only the Seeker, this would be the moment when I would change my mind and turn around. She wasn’t worth selling out the others. Even she would agree with that.
Or would she? I suddenly wondered. The Seeker didn’t seem to be as… what was the word Jared had used? Altruistic. As altruistic as the rest of us. Maybe she would count her own life dearer than the lives of many.

God.

What about her wasn’t altruistic? Was it the time she risked her life to try to protect the rest of her species? How about her insistence in holding a protective job that’s generally risky even though the rest of the brainslugs sneer at her for it? Her repeated warnings that it wasn’t safe to be in the host? Her willingness to risk a resistant host herself to get the information? And she’s a baby, don’t forget, with this being her first life, yet despite that she’s still amazingly brave. But she’s got BULGING EYES, clearly she’s just an evil coward.

But it was too late to change my mind.

Because you assuming she isn’t as altruistic as you demand clearly makes it okay to kill her otherwise.

For one thing, this would happen again. The humans would kill any souls they came across unless I gave them another option. More than that, I was going to save Melanie, and that was worth the sacrifice. I was going to save Jared and Jamie, too. Might as well save the repugnant Seeker while I was at it.

Christ.

She goes on to explain that it’s wrong of the brainslugs to be taking over the world at all, unlike the other worlds where it’s fine.

Oh, also she’s been whining internally that they’re not as abusive to the seeker as they were to her wah wah why isn’t the bitch suffering and Jared explains it’s because she’s taught them to see brainslugs as people.

I didn’t realize that would… hurt your feelings. I would have thought you’d like it better that way.”
“I do.”

See, brainslugs have no problem with lying at all.

“It’s always better to be kind. I just…” I took a deep breath. “I’m glad I know why.” Their kindess was for me, not for her.

She’s just so horrible. I wish we were back in the brainslug section. They’re so much better than our heroes.

At the hospital, she learns the delivery crates of labeled medicine are completely unguarded, rendering that entire little adventure pointless. You know, if people are too stupid to even glance around to see if there’s stealable medicine before declaring it’s impossible, maybe the brainslugs should be in charge.

They see the cryotanks.

He snorted quietly.
“What?” I asked.
“Figures. See?”
He jerked his chin toward the sign on the building.
This was the maternity wing.

But…that’s the only part of the hospital they’d actually still need! Even with magic brainslug medicine, there’s still going to be complications with pregnancies that can need the mothers to hang out for continued treatment, and with sick babies after the births.

They have no need to store people while waiting for doctors to examine them and do tests, or house them after treatment. They don’t need anywhere to keep the old and dying, because anything that isn’t fixable is a damaged host and they’d just remove the brainslug and kill the human. They don’t need the storage space for all the equipment either.

Jared finally figures out something’s up, and she decides to tell the story of this time she and her friend on the Mists planet (They called me Lives in the Stars there. I already had a bit of a reputation. so apparently she never picks her own name.) were going to view one of the ice cities that was supposed to be particularly pretty, and for some reason were going by foot and not flying like they do here.

“An average adult Bear has about the mass of a buffalo. A full-grown claw beast is closer to the mass of a blue whale. This one was bigger than most.
“I couldn’t see the guide. The claw beast had sprung up between us, facing where Harness Light and I stood. Bears are faster than claw beasts, but this one had the advantage of the ambush. Its huge stone-like pincers swooped down and sheared Harness Light in half before I’d really processed what was happening.”

What I keep wondering about is why they don’t seem interested in removing obvious dangers. We do. Coyotes start attacking people, people slaughter them until they’re less of a problem. Sometimes we just do it because we think they’re a danger, like with sharks. Almost all surviving life on this planet is stuff that doesn’t mess with us too much. We do have dangers, like venomous snakes and the surviving sharks, but they’re generally stuff that’s off the beaten path and also generally stuff that doesn’t seek us out. Even Australia, of the hellfauna to end all hellfauna, does not have deadly snakes on its city sidewalks.

The brainslugs have far more to lose than we do and don’t seem to share any of our occasional fondness for violent animals. They have a casual disregard for life that doesn’t serve their purpose as illustrated by being willing to kill any damaged host of theirs. Yet they don’t attack coyotes launching unprovoked attacks on people and now we learn they’ve left a giant predator that seems to view them as a major food source alive. I can only assume this must have some connection to their belief that they’re fixing and improving the planets they’re on. Maybe the vultures destroyed most of the brainslug planet’s ecosystem, so they swore to never do the same. (That might also explain why they’re struggling so much with the fire planet to keep both species instead of just letting the flower-eaters die and using the fire flowers as their host there.)

(Also, a blue whale living off the occasional buffalo? In an intensely cold environment, no less? More evidence of some sort of super metabolism.)

The guide, whose name she can’t remember because presumably she just never really cared about anyone, manages to distract the claw beast for a second, saving her life. She uses the reprieve to remove her friend from the dying bear’s brain.

I shoved him into the egg pocket in the center of my body, between the two hottest hearts. This would keep him from dying of cold, but he would only last a few short minutes without a body.

Unless the brainslugs have an amazing temperature tolerance, what’s really interesting here is that it seems the one thing life across the universe does have in common is that it all requires roughly the same heat to survive.

Apparently, brainslugs can share a body but can only be stuck into the head. Not really sure why when it seems like the issue is just needing an internal environment to survive. But anyway, cutting open her neck will make her bleed to death without healer meds (which is why they should really carry those…) so she needs to do something else. She carves down through the claw beast until she hits brainstem and stuffs her friend in.

“The snow had settled enough that I was in plain sight, especially as I was painted with the beast’s blood. It’s a very bright color, a color you don’t have here.

I am pretty sure the spectrum of light is a universal thing. There are many colors humans can’t see, but that doesn’t mean the color doesn’t exist (or even that other things on our planet can’t see it).

Anyway, before it can kill her, her friend gets control.

He was confused and slow–he didn’t have much of a brain to work with, but it was enough that he knew I was his friend.

You know, as impressive as this is, I wish it was the reverse, because it’d be interesting to hear what that’s like. This is confirming just how much the brain limits them, so that’s why they go after sapient species, but also showing that they’re entirely capable of binding to nonsapients. So, is it actually unpleasant to go through, or just different? I mean, she was pretty in awe of the fact humans even had a sense of smell, popping over into a dog or something seems like it’d be fun. And why don’t they try to breed smarter versions of interesting species? It would take a while to get all the way to sapience, but she predates dinosaurs and they have super technology on top of that.

“I had to ride him to the crystal city–to hold the wound closed on his neck until we could reach a Healer.

Legitimately awesome.

For a while they called me Rides the Beast. I didn’t like it. I made them go back to my other name.”

Kind of pathetic. Seriously, does everyone just call her whatever they like? All other souls have referenced picking their own names. Apparently the most she does is indicate which name she prefers.

“They’re probably finished unloading, don’t you think?” I said quickly. “Let’s finish this and get back home.”
He stared at me for one more moment, and then shook his head slowly.
“Yes, let’s finish this, Wanderer, Lives in the Stars, Rides the Beast. Stealing a few unguarded crates won’t present much of a challenge for you, will it?”

Sorry, book, too little too late. Someone willing to throw herself into danger shouldn’t have spent half the book cowering and whispering. Also, she shouldn’t have kept panicking every time she had to interact with other friendly, unsuspicious brainslugs who wouldn’t hurt her even if they did figure out what was going on.