Book review time!

[reipan]

Okay, so, I've finally figured out what bothers me about Stephenie Meyer. I didn't want to deal with this on the basis of the Twilight saga, because the sheer number of problems I had with her vampires might have clouded my judgment. So when Amazon sent me an email telling me she'd released a new book of a different genre, as it was just after my exams finished and I hadn't spent any money in about two months, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Now, let's be quite clear about this - I actually rather like Stephenie Meyer. She's probably not up for Greatest Authors of All Time yet, but her style flows nicely and her stories are interesting. Her books are good fun; I'll keep buying them and reading them.

In spite of that...

Every time I finish one of Meyer's books, I get the sense that she's missed a bit. And I don't mean just something that I, personally, would have lent a bit more focus to - every writer's different. (Or...maybe I do mean that. It's hard to tell; I don't know if anybody else has noticed this.) I mean that I'll read one of her books, beginning to end, and find the complete and total absence of something that's easy to spot, easy to put in, and would have made the entire book seem much more real to me.

"The Host" is a sci-fi novel, about little silver wormy-feathery things that are surgically implanted into human bodies and take over all their physical and mental functions. It's told from the point of view of the main character, Wanderer, who's implanted into the body of a lady named Melanie Stryder and finds that Melanie doesn't really like having a wormy-feathery thing control her that much, and isn't willing to fade away the way some humans have. Oh, and memories and emotions are, to an extent, shared between the two.

So far, so good. 

Eventually they form an alliance, run away, and find Melanie's family, who are living in hiding. They all assume that Melanie's gone and all they've got is her body being controlled by an alien. Wanderer does not correct them.

Okay. Fine.

Wanderer is allowed to continue living among the settlers. She befriends Melanie's family, makes friends with some strangers, and generally becomes part of life in the community - having told about two people that Melanie even still exists. They begin to accept her and like her as an entity in her own right. She is happy about this. All we are told about Melanie, however, is that she is "increasingly somnolent".

Hold up.

Imagine that somebody has taken over your brain and is living your life, and all you can do is sit there and watch them do it. Not a nice image, is it? Right, now imagine that all your friends and family know it isn't you in control, know (in some cases) that it's still you in there, and nevertheless interact with the thing controlling you, befriend it, and care openly about it without much more than the occasional nod in your direction.

No matter how much you might, by now, like the thing controlling you, wouldn't that be painful at all? Yet we're given no sense of how any of this makes Melanie feel, and none of her family members seem to think it odd that they're petting and complimenting something that's reduced someone they're supposed to care about to nothing more than a shadow. When Wanderer decides to relinquish her hold on Melanie's body, there's nothing mixed about the reaction - they all either want her to stay or want her to hurry up and leave.

Am I the only one who finds that just a little odd?

I could go on - I've examples from the Twilight saga as well - but I have a train to catch, so I should probably cut this entry short. Further updates later.

Comments

[insteadofdeath.livejournal.com]

I've only read Twilight, but that kind of "wait a minute...." reaction was something I had then, too. I wasn't really impressed with the way she handled the characters in general, either, especially their relationships/interactions. Which is pretty bad since her books seem heavily character-driven, or try to be.

That wormy-feathery thing seems kinda intriguing though. Hm.

[reipan.livejournal.com]

Mm. Most of what I disliked about Twilight was how utterly centered it was around the romance part, if that makes sense. Even for a romance novel - the only thing in the book was romantic relationships. And that doesn't make for a touching read to me; it makes the characters involved rather pathetic and vaguely creepy. The Host handles that kind of thing rather better, but there's still something missing.