The Host

The Host (2008) is Stephenie Meyer’s first work of science fiction. It tells the story of a parasitic form of alien that has invaded earth determined to put an end to the violence inherent in the human species, and the humans determined to resist occupation.

Earth is being invaded, and many of the humans here do not realize it. A species of parasitic alien, known as “Souls,” have arrived and decided that humans are far too violent to continue to occupy the planet.

When a “Soul” is placed in a human host, the human’s consciousness dies, leaving behind its knowledge and memories for the Soul to use in living day to day. A Soul named Wanderer is placed in the human Melanie Stryder, but something goes wrong, and Melanie’s consciousness remains behind.

This causes conflict with Wanderer. She is in control of Melanie’s body, but Melanie’s thoughts plague her, demanding that she leave. Wanderer’s advisor suggests a surgery to rid her of Melanie for good, but for some reason, Wanderer does not want to do this. Instead, she escapes and goes looking for Melanie’s younger brother, Jamie, and her boyfriend, Jared, both of whom she believes are still alive and on the run.

Melanie helps her to follow a series of landmarks in the Arizona desert to find where they are hiding on her Uncle Jeb’s farm. Jeb finds her dying of dehydration in the desert and almost kills her when he sees the trademark silver in her eyes telling him that she has been infected with the parasite. At the last minute, he decides against it and locks her up in the underground compound below his former farm.

The humans there want to kill her, but Jeb and Jamie fight them, as does Jared eventually. The three of them protect her, and soon another person, Ian, falls for Wanderer herself. As time passes, she is given more freedom as the humans learn to trust her, and Wanderer finds herself at odds with what she thought humans were like.

She is given the name Wanda and begins to move about freely among the humans. One night while tending to a cancer patient, she is attacked by Ian’s brother, who still believes she should be killed. She saves both of them from drowning but wakes up in the hospital wing. She is surrounded by mutilated bodies and pieces of the parasites. She is so frightened that she hides by herself for three days.

She discovers that the humans are trying to find a way to remove the parasite, but have been unsuccessful. Jamie suffers a leg injury and contracts a fever from the infection nearly killing him. Wanda goes on a mission to retrieve more advanced medicine from the alien hospital. Her success causes the humans to trust her entirely.

The bunker is attacked, and they capture Wanda’s seeker. They discuss killing her, but instead, Wanda shows them how to remove a parasite from the host, and they place the parasite in a special container to be returned to the mother ship. Wanda decides to die so that Melanie can return, and gets herself to the doctor before Ian can stop her.

However, she wakes up instead. She has been placed in another body whose human consciousness had not returned. She is free to pursue a relationship with Ian and swears to help the humans in their cause for liberation.

At the end of the story, they meet another group of people with their own alien human, Burns. They realize that there must be more aliens out there who have joined the human resistance, and Wanda is pleased.

Meyer has said that one of the major themes of the novel is body image. Meyer struggled with her body image, and part of the story is simply what a gift it is to have a body and to love it. Wanda learns to love being in a human body, finding it a mysterious and wondrous thing.

It is also an examination of what it is like not to fit in. Wanderer has her name because she has traveled across the universe in search of a home, and in each place, she has encountered beings that never fully accept the presence of the Souls. She does not understand why because she believes the presence of the Souls improves the lives of the beings they occupy, but through her experiences with Melanie, she learns the truth.

It is also a testament to the power of love. Jared’s love for Melanie is part of the reason the humans are not able to kill her when she returns with a parasite. He continues to believe that she is still in the body and works to protect her.

Ian falls in love with Wanderer without ever having seen her. The force of her personality is what does it, and this proves that love needs no physical body to become real. He does not even help Melanie choose a new body for her as he loves her for who she is and not what she could look like. Wanda learns from this experience that although humans can be violent, the force and genuine strength of their love makes their species worth saving.

The story is science fiction with a dose of romance, and each character challenges our beliefs about the nature of love and what causes us to fall in love. It also firmly believes that despite humanity’s shortcomings, we are tenaciously good and worth saving.