The Host! This is by the Twilight author. I was not expecting much from this book, but when I checked out the opening I was first surprised to discover I could actually read it, followed by being surprised what I was reading wasn’t awful.
It’s apparently about what happens after an Invasion of the Body-snatchers affair where the aliens have won, which is also way more original than I would’ve thought – although thinking about it, Twilight actually does a lot of twists on the supernatural, it’s just awful about them. So maybe she got all the unreadable boring out of her system with that one. (Plus, they’re brain aliens, so there almost certainly won’t be any disturbing race issues to stumble into.)
It opens with a poem:
QUESTION
Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen
Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt
Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
When Body my good
bright dog is dead
How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye
with cloud for a shift
how will I hide?
–May Swenson
I guess that’s about how the brain slugs of this ride around inside other people. I don’t know if it’s just my dislike for most poetry or if this is actually stupid to have sitting there in front of the rest of the book. It just seems pretentious and unnecessary to me.
Anyway, on to the prologue! It’s titled Insertion. Our first character is a capital-H Healer because capital letters make everything better and his name is Fords Deep Waters because poetic. Actually, it’s a pretty good name, because it’s a descriptive phrase that shortens to “Fords” which sounds more like regular name. Let’s just see if this stays consistent/makes sense for them to do.
Because he was a soul, by nature he was all things good: compassionate, patient, honest, virtuous, and full of love.
I was initially going to ignore this because Twilight is unreadable and I assumed the same, but this opening changed my mind. The brain slugs are souls? And not only that, but they’re actually all you’d expect with the general souls-good Christian bit on souls?
And indeed, it goes on to say that it’s rare for him to feel negative emotions.
However, because Fords Deep Waters lived inside a human body, irritation was sometimes inescapable.
And that the souls, innately good, are negatively impacted by the human body. I’m not sure how well this will shake out on the scifi front, but opening with the brain slugs getting set up as the good side of the soul/body dualism is really different.
So anyway, he’s irritated because a bunch of the students are there to observe the operation, and he thinks it’s dumb because he’s not doing anything important but just an “insertion”.
Any soul on the street could perform it in an emergency.
What sort of emergencies would those be?
Anyway, his assistant, who is Darren so we’re already lost naming consistency, explains the issue is that the procedure is about to be done on an adult human, and that’s what they’re there for gawking at.
“Are they blind to each other’s faces? Do they not have mirrors?”
“You know what I mean–a wild human. Still soulless. One of the insurgents.”
Which kind of raises an odd question – why would visual stuff matter to them? The “wild human” is unconscious, so it’s not doing anything on its own. It’s identical to one of them sleeping. I’d expect them to have some sort of mind-connection, either telepathy or something more low key, as their idea of identification, in which case they wouldn’t just be there to stare at the body.
Fords thinks about how upset he was when the human, a girl, was brought in by the capital-S Seekers, badly injured and how he’s healed her. So maybe they view this kind of like we might view catching wild pets and caging them, as something where they’re better off.
He then explains why he’s annoyed, he thinks the gawking is disrespectful to the soul who’ll get the body, and then midway through slips into saying he’s mad about the transplant itself and thinks that’s unfair. Apparently they’re doing it because the seeker people need info. So…if they didn’t, what would they do? They can’t have a human reservation for bodies they don’t want or else soulless wouldn’t be synonymous with wild to them.
At the word Seeker, Fords gave Darren a look that could only be described as a glare.
So he doesn’t like them? Maybe he’s mad about how beat up the body was.
But he’s a soul, so this is unusual behavior and he swiftly apologizes, explaining he’s just anxious about the soul he’s transplanting.
Darren says the soul can handle it.
“She is exceptional among our kind–braver than most.
This makes it sound like most of them aren’t particularly brave, but it seems a species that lives by invading other planets and possessing everyone would need to be pretty brave.
I think she would volunteer, if it were possible to ask her.”
Why isn’t it?
I mean, does this mean they can’t talk except when they’re already in a host? How the fuck could that evolve? Maybe they’re some sort of biological weapon. Also, why can’t they stick her in another temporary body that’s not such an ordeal and explain it to her there?
Healer-dude says that everyone would volunteer if it was something necessary, which also suggests they’re all pretty brave, but he’s not sure this is necessary in the first place. Stop dancing around and explain what’s so bad about it already, healer-dude.
Meanwhile, the students are also chattering about how awesome the soul is:
“She’s lived on six planets.”
“I heard seven.”
“I heard she’s never lived two terms as the same host species.”
“Is that possible?”
“She’s been almost everything. A Flower, a Bear, a Spider –”
“A See Weed, a Bat –”
“Even a Dragon!”
“I don’t believe it–not seven planets.”
“At least seven. She started on the Origin.”
“Really? The Origin?”
Wouldn’t this be something they’d have clear records of? Especially when not-healer-dude was explaining that she was picked for this job specifically because of how she’d conducted herself on all her past lives, so they’re either keeping close track of everyone or at least everyone who initially distinguishes themselves.
Also note the lamentable capitalization. It’s actually sort of justifiable from a reading ease standpoint, in that it makes it clear they don’t mean our flowers or bears. On the other hand, the fact it’s wrong is right there in the fact they’re calling humans humans. If they named us Apes it’d at least fit.
It’s odd that they find changing hosts to be not only unusual but question if it’s even possible. I’d expect a species that exists by possessing others to be pretty expansionist, and it’d be much smarter to send your experienced members onward while raising up the babies on already-conquered areas.
Since she’s been “almost everything” combined with “at least seven” we can guess they’ve got at least eight+ planets, presumably nine+ to fit with the fact they seem certain she definitely hasn’t been everything, just almost all. And from how surprised they are about her starting on what sounds like their original planet, it sounds like they must not live there any longer – otherwise, someone being from it wouldn’t be particularly notable, and it wouldn’t be coming right after the assertion that she must have been on “at least seven” planets.
Maybe they’re not only expansionist but end up wiping out the species of the planet, so they have to keep moving? But that wouldn’t go well with most of them having several of the same species as host.
Anyway, healer-dude yells at them for chattering because he’s really on edge, I guess.
Her sun-browned skin
So, because I’ll try to keep watch for those race issues somehow managing to sneak in despite alien brain slugs, this doesn’t explicitly mean she’s white but she’s got to be on the lighter end of the scale. You can’t be turned brown from the sun if you’re already brown. Funny how describing someone as brown can stealth mean they’re white, isn’t it?
(Interestingly, I think “sun-darkened” wouldn’t have this problem, since it doesn’t tell us how dark she’s ended up, so she could be anywhere from brownish to dark black – all we’d know was she wasn’t so super white that she’s limited to freckles). Both would convey the information that she must have spent a lot of time in the open, which is the most interesting part of this (wouldn’t you expect someone hiding out to be doing it underground or something?) but in fairness, this one does tell you more specifically what she currently looks like in a way the change wouldn’t.)
He cuts into the back of her neck carefully until he gets to the bone. Presumably he’s cutting with the grain so the muscle damage is minimal, since he claims he’s trying not to damage those.
He doesn’t delve into the column itself for some reason. Apparently he doesn’t need to expose the spinal cord and just goes to get the soul.
Fords never saw an exposed soul without being struck by the beauty of it.
The soul shone in the brilliant lights of the operating room, brighter than the reflective silver instrument in his hand. Like a living ribbon, she twisted and rippled, stretching, happy to be free of the cryotank. Her thin, feathery attachments, nearly a thousand of them, billowed softly like pale silver hair.
Personally, I think it’d be kind of cool for them to look really freaky but seem pretty to their own kind, but there’s definitely something to be said for the body stealing brain slugs to look pretty to us instead of monstrous. Either works, really.
Of course, it’s then followed by him going on about how this one is exceptionally pretty and everyone else is murmuring in awe of how extra special and beautiful and this really wasn’t necessary at all. Saying the body stealing brain slugs have attributes we usually associate with good things is an okay subversion. Saying that also, this particular character is the prettiest brain slug princess is not adding anything.
(Also, not even a thousand attachments? I think the author doesn’t realize quite how complex the nervous system is.)
The soul slid smoothly into the offered space, weaving herself into the alien anatomy. Fords admired the skill with which she possessed her new home. Her attachments wound tightly into place around the nerve centers, some elongating and reaching deeper to where he couldn’t see, under and up into the brain, the optic nerves, the ear canals.
Cool!
“Well done,” he whispered to her, knowing that she could not hear him. The human girl was the one with ears, and she still slept soundly.
But again, why don’t they seem to have any communication that isn’t reliant on their hosts? Talking to an unconscious person is a human thing because people usually can hear you. Creatures who normally can’t hear shouldn’t have the same kind of impulse. Maybe it’s meant to show how the hosts impact them, to the point of doing stuff like this.
Anyway, then he seals it all up, down to putting some stuff on to prevent any scarring.
across the line left on her neck.
The description is all “across” and while it doesn’t actually prove the line is horizontal, vertical would probably be “down”. I’m pretty sure that would mean cutting across the grain of the neck muscle and also not along the route of the spine. I can’t tell if that’s just not choosing words well or if it’s intended, though.
“Perfect, as usual,” said the assistant, who, for some reason unfathomable to Fords, had never made a change from his human host’s name, Darren.
Okay, so that explains the name, but it doesn’t explain what the hell this line is doing at the bottom of the chapter after his name has come up dozens of times. If there’s some need to delay this line I’m not getting, then they should be referencing names earlier somehow, like wondering if this soul will keep her host’s.
Also, why is it so unfathomable? We know the name must at least be changed enough to be pronouncable by the current host, and, if we assume they really are saying “Fords”, then perhaps they have one name that gets translated around, but then what happens when they’re dealing with a situation where, like humans, we end up with a separate lexicon for name meanings? Maybe “Darren” happened to be a decent translation of his previous name? Plus, Fords Deep Waters is something that only has meaning for a species that lives on a planet with plenty of water, doesn’t breathe that water, but is capable of crossing the water when necessary (and finds it difficult enough that the depth of the water has meaning). That likely covers plenty of species, but if he got stuck in a dolphin, I don’t think they’d have any clicks for the concept.
(And if they translate it using existing words even if the result produces a nonsense concept for the new species, there should be names like Paddles Fast Oxygen or Touches Surface Often or Perches Thin Branches or Beaches Self Rarely. Actually, that’d be awesome, let’s cross our fingers for it.)
But anyway, back to water-fording, who’s all emo even with the compliment.
“You’re only doing your duty as a Healer.”
“This is the rare occasion when Healing creates an injury.”
So maybe his real issue is just that he’s uncomfortable with insertions despite how easy they are. He was all upset about her being injured and made sure to fix her up perfectly before they even started, and he was very careful cutting into her neck. And that’d certainly be very different for body stealing brain slugs, to be so concerned about hurting anyone they feel disturbed doing the very transplants that let them be body stealing brain slugs.
Then again, it goes on to have him being all upset about the soul that’s going to wake up:
knowing that this peace would be shattered as soon as she awoke. All the horror of this young woman’s end would be borne by the innocent soul he’d just placed inside her.
So more likely that’s what he means by harm. Also, apparently she actually died and their super science just got the body functioning again.
“Good luck, little wanderer, good luck.
It seems weird to call her a diminutive. I mean, she’s small, but all souls are. I could sort of see this as being more of the body affecting the soul, but even assuming he’s thinking that way because he’s just seen how small she is from the perspective of his bigger host, it’s still pretty weird because it also requires the ingrained association of small=vulnerable. And for all he’s concerned, she’s supposed to be pretty impressive and super brave – probably tougher than he is.
So it seems to come down to the diminutive because she’s a she.
Which brings me to my next point!
So on the one hand, she’s going to be our main character, and she’s been talked up as pretty great. I approve of that. The book is clear she should be capable of great and daring things.
On the other, this prologue is spent with her completely mute and not even aware of her surroundings while two guys and ungendered students are the actual characters of it. I’m also sort of suspicious of any of them having any gender in the first place – it seems to match the host’s, but she’s apparently female before getting put in, so sounds like they have two genders and they also only use hosts of the same gender, which is a weird hangup. (Plus, if there was a planet full of those lesbian lizards, the brain slugs wouldn’t be able to reproduce, and a planet of a species that outright changes sex would be impossible to colonize at all, as would one where sex never evolved in the first place. Or what about one where there’s three sexes and none maps well onto male or female?)
Having healer-dude be a guy doesn’t give any clues where this’ll head on that respect – on the one hand, healing is a feminine thing, on the other hand, doctors are masculine.
Well. So far it doesn’t pass reverse bechdel, since the only conversation between the two guys was about a woman, so I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. There’s a slight tangent into him being touchy about seekers, but that’s really about her too. Let’s see which it passes first.
…so was it still ‘See Weed’ not ‘Sea Weed’ in the edition you’re reading? I remember reading that and chuckling. Also, double checking here, the lead is supposed to be half-Latina. I’m totally blanking on if that came up in the novel. I only know that from an interview with Meyer. Surprised I didn’t hear any controversy for the casting in the film version. I guess no one cared.
Half Latina? What, whole Latina was just too much? Maybe next she could work her way up to using a full one of the swarthy foreigner races that come from distant Europe.
I think it’s supposed to be See Weed with the pun because they’ve got a billion eyes for some reason.
Unfortunately, this was probably the publisher’s interference. Publishers like to be able to put white people on covers and other promo material.
edit: Don’t get me wrong, though, Meyer is racist. She just likes money more than she hates brown people.
I don’t think we can assume that. It’s certainly a possibility, but I’m not sure where you got the “probably” from. Besides, we’ve seen that publishers have no problem putting white people on the covers and promo materials even when the characters in the actual text aren’t white.
[but I’m not sure where you got the “probably” from.]]
Industry experience, mostly. They’d prefer to not have to switch races for the cover because it prevents a flap, but if the author refuses the change there’s nothing they can do. *shrug* It just reeks of publisher interference to me.
Yes, I understand that it’s something publishers do a lot, but being weird about race is also something SMeyer does a lot, so I’m not sure why you think the former is so much more likely than the latter.
*shrug* It just sounds really, really publisher-y to me. It reminds me of a cover design for an anthology someone I knew proposed that got torn to pieces because the people on the cover were black. The industry just really loves white people. I don’t see why it was any more likely to be Meyer, who is in love with her moneybags and got a lot of slack for her treatment of race in Twilight. That’s just the sense it gave me. Sorry.
edit: I also don’t see why my throwaway comment matters that much…
I’m not saying it’s more likely to be her, I just feel like that’s the more parsimonious explanation, so it seemed a little odd to say it was probably something else based on what, as far as I could tell, was only a hunch. Sorry if I’m coming off as confrontational. I don’t mean to be, I’m just a little confused.
I was going to say that I’m trying to give the author the benefit of the doubt, but now I’m remembering who it is, really, and that doesn’t seem to hold up anymore…
What’s interesting is that the interview where Meyer reveals she’s half-Latina is from this year. It makes me wonder why she didn’t mention it sooner. I don’t think it wasn’t a case of no one bringing it up either. I was sure there was an earlier (like within the first year it was published) fan interview where Meyer implied Stryder was white but I can’t find it so maybe not. Oh well. I don’t remember Stryder being super stereotypical so… baby steps I guess.
Her husband’s name is Pancho; at the very least her kids must be part-Hispanic.
Well that adds a weird layer to her perfect marble white husbando book.
Especially since she has explicitly said she would leave her husband for Edward! But then, she also said she would leave him for Jacob, who’s even darker than he is.
Yeah, the more you know about her the clearer it is that she’s a very bitter, unhappy woman. It’d be very pitiful if she wasn’t also kind of a terrible person.
Especially when they made the Seeker, who I think was Latina as well, blonde.
She’s described as olive-skinned isn’t she? How come olive-skinned always translates as ‘white as snow’ in movies?
Everything translates as white as snow in movie speak, except when it’s the black guy who dies first.
Or the evil empire!
(Oh, M. Night. I know the Fire Nation royal family are the best characters, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook the problems with making them Indian like you when you’ve just gone and made all the other major characters white.)
That was the best part. “There were no good nonwhite actors! Except for the entire fire nation, we had no problem there!”
(And they were the palest group in canon!)
>:/
“On the other, this prologue is spent with her completely mute and not
even aware of her surroundings while two guys and ungendered students
are the actual characters of it. I’m also sort of suspicious of any of
them having any gender in the first place – it seems to match the
host’s, but she’s apparently female before getting put in, so sounds
like they have two genders and they also only use hosts of the same
gender, which is a weird hangup. (Plus, if there was a planet full of
those lesbian lizards, the brain slugs wouldn’t be able to reproduce,
and a planet of a species that outright changes sex would be impossible
to colonize at all, as would one where sex never evolved in the first
place. Or what about one where there’s three sexes and none maps well
onto male or female?)”
You know, it takes astoundingly long to actually address this issue, and once it’s addressed, it makes you wonder why they bothered with the gender distinction at all.
I don’t know what your policy is on spoilers, though, so that’s all I’m gonna say for now.
Are we really going to pretend it is not because Meyer is against gays?
I’m not saying she ain’t, but I’m really struggling to see how that would have anything to do with this particular species.
[SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERS DON’T KEEP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS JEBUS WHY WON’T BLOGGER LET ME HIDE MY OWN TEXT WHY]
It’s more like their sexes are divided in a way where neither “male” or “female” really apply (you know, where the male produces the smaller gametes and the female the larger ones). It’s difficult to see how a straight OR gay orientation could result from it, since sex divisions and gender binaries are pretty much superfluous. It’s more like “reproduction-capable asexual” and “sterile asexual” than “male” or “female”. (Although I could have glossed over something and there could be a fertile male sex in addition to the fertile “female” one.)
It’s not even like the division of matriarchs and workers in eusocial insects. The fertile souls die when they reproduce.
[MORE SPOILER SPACE GONNA QUOTE SPOILERS BELOW HIDING THEM FROM THE SIDEBAR MOVE ALONG NOTHING TO SEE HERE]
“The fertile souls die when they reproduce.”
Huh. Evidence in favor of this being animorphs-influenced, perhaps?
Yeah. I wonder if that was a coincidence or just flat out copying.
Our protagonist is going to have a love interest. He is going to be male. The “Soul” has to be female. Or maybe I’m paranoid.
[SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS I’M JUST GOING TO MAKE THIS REALLY LONG SO THAT NO ONE CAN READ THIS IN THE SIDEBAR AND GET SPOILED ACCIDENTALLY AND OKAY I THINK THIS IS LONG ENOUGH NOW]
None of the other souls have sexes, though, and they take over human bodies and just assume whatever shit their humans had going. I mean, if you’re going to get super technical, the book is already flat out implying that souls are gay for each other in their hosts, since they take over people who are already in relationships and just pick up where they left off. They even have kids together in their new bodies. Asexual souls boning the shit out of each other sounds a heckova lot like a same sex relationship to me. And that doesn’t even include all the souls that took over gay people and are probably double gay for each other.
And still, I’m pretty sure SMeyer didn’t even realise this. lol
Yeerks had similar gender weirdness going on, but I can’t fully recall whether or not that was something that could be explained away by the human POV characters projecting onto them.
Nah, they totally did. They were hermaphroditic (heh, slugs), but required three parents to produce offspring. They merged bodies and then broke into thousands of grubs. Most yeerks just took on the gender identities of their current hosts, although this was nothing that was ever mentioned explicitly and was only evident through the use of pronouns when referring to different yeerks.
All of this just makes me want Animorphs to win the poll.VOTE, PEOPLE.
I’m pretty sure they were asexual and picking up pronouns with their hosts. I don’t recall any of them insisting on keeping the same sex and they seemed to get assigned on a first come basis. It’s not like Viswhatever Three was all “oh I super want an andalite host but only if it’s a boy one otherwise I could not care less” and even the human kids were pretty uninterested about the sexes of their morphs.
“I don’t recall any of them insisting on keeping the same sex and they seemed to get assigned on a first come basis.”
Nope! In fact there was that one yeerk Cassie befriended — Aldrid, I think? — who showed up first in a female host and then a male one. Cassie continued to think of her as female even after she switched host bodies, but I can’t recall whether there was any indication that Aldrid herself did too.
Oh yeah. That whole subplot had a lot of good stuff. The gendering thing made sense because people usually stick with the first one they learn, but Aldrid seemed happy with the second, not miserably settling for a mismatched body just so she wouldn’t die.
I’m waiting for the inevitable spiral downward into awfulness. I just remember thinking when I reread this book that it wasn’t as good as I had thought the first time around. Though I think it’s looooooads better than Twilight.
I read the opening of this and felt the same way. All of the other sporking comms just rant and rave about it, but I got a few chapters in and there was nothing remarkable about it. It was actually a very interesting premise, if shoddily written.
Curious to see how the book as a whole holds up.
Ah, yeah, I just googled for sporks and people are pretty frothy.
The aliens reminded me of the Goa’uld from Stargate SG-1. The Goa’uld were parasitic beings that take over hosts. Also the Goa’uld burrow into the body by piercing the skin in the neck, the parasite begins to wrap itself around the human spine.
Whereas yeerks enter through the ear and wrap around the brain. Hm…
I think it’s much older. I know I watched a movie with this plot that contained the exact bit about them going in through the back of the neck and leaving only a tiny mark that was easily covered with a bandaid, and they were doing the standard creepy passive takeover thing.
Does the name Fords send anyone else spiraling into Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy flashbacks?
Anyway, it kinda makes sense for a species that parasitizes other species in this manner to have lost their own communications apparatus from an evolutionary standpoint – if they’re always in another species when they need to communicate, that apparatus takes up mass and energy unnecessarily. Over time, it would become non-functional (like the eyes of the various species of blind cave fishes in South America), then vestigial (hip bones in snakes and whales), and eventually it would disappear entirely. Of course, evolution of this magnitude takes millions (if not billions) of years. Another possible explanation is that the host bodies lack the sensory equipment necessary to perceive the communicative attempts of the disembodied brainleech stage. This makes it more apparent that they’re parasites, because an organism that evolved in a symbiotic relationship would have adaptations that benefit the other.
[POTENTIAL SPOILERS HERE AND SHIT SO DON’T KEEP READING IF YOU’RE NOT INTO THAT SORT OF THING AND YADDA YADDA]
I figured that maybe they could only communicate soul to soul, like by touching synapses or whatever. Since it’s seriously taboo for souls to leave their hosts before they die, it would make communication practically impossible from un-hosted soul to hosted soul. I guess that doesn’t really make sense given that their medicine can literally make you heal in seconds if you spray it on a wound, though. You’d think they would have developed some sort of technology that they could use as an interface. Maybe a fifteen year old girl who is really a data entity or something.
But if so, they should be able to open up the back of their neck and plop a second one on top for a chat.
Yes, the name Fords gave me Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy flashbacks.
You make a great point and it makes perfect sense.
I’m pretty sure anyone with any background in SciFi is going to immediately think of Ford Prefect. But then, how many people with any background in SciFi are ever going to read The Host?
Specially when the movie was marketed as “Sci-Fi for people who do not like Sci-Fi”. (You know, women).
I don’t know, quite a few might. I did, after all.
Teenagers in particular can be very indiscriminating in what they read. I read Twilight right alongside Douglass Adams; both from my high school library.
They’re sparkleyeerks.
I really liked the species design for the aliens, and then I realised
oh
sparkleyeerks
and now I can’t take them seriously any more.
My god, you’re right.
And yet sparkling yeerks are awesome! There’s nothing to romanticize about this parasite. They are beautiful and also they eat your mind.
“There’s nothing to romanticize about this parasite.”
Our unpleasant experiences with Wither and Unwind, in combination with SMeyer’s extreme religious weirdness, make me wonder whether we might not be heading for a narrative that sides with their view of themselves as pristine souls and their victims as base, unclean bodies. Until that happens, though, I agree: sparkleyeerks are AWESOME.
SPOILER ALERT: Every other person I’ve seen talk about this book seems to agree that, yes, we’re supposed to root for the sparkleyeerks right up through the end.
Oh, I’m pretty sure we are going to get protagonist centered morality.
People who won’t like our main character will do so because they are horrible, evil people,
not because she is a mind-eating parasite. Remember who the author is.
See, my guess is that the main character will turn on her own kind, because they may be sparkly yeerks, but they aren’t hot guys. She’ll just know humans are special.
And they’re nice. So nice. So amazingly nice and considerate and nice. They’d be excellent perfect boyfriend material if they didn’t have to bodysnatch to do it.