Author: Stephenie Meyer               
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Year: 2005
Price: About $24.95

Stephenie Meyer has described herself as being "anti-human" in response to critics accusing her Twilight stories of being anti-feminist, just short of misogynistic, behind a glittery group of vampires that seems to take up everyone's attention. After writing The Host, Meyer might want to change her tune.   If you’re not into Sci-Fi or into Stephnie Meyer’s previous works, “The Host” might not be the best choice for you.

The main premise is this: earth has been invaded, its human occupants no more than host bodies for tiny aliens. Melanie Stryder is one such human, forced into cohabitation with an alien called Wanderer. Only, that's not how it's supposed to go. Melanie was supposed to disappear, and Wanderer, struck by memories of Melanie's past and a seemingly impossible future with Melanie still inside her head, begins to change. She flees her alien society, striking out for the Arizona deserts on the memory that Melanie's humans -- in particular, a brother and a lover -- are there. She is blindly chased by one of a feared group of Seekers, the aliens' version of law enforcement, a woman with secrets and an agenda of her own.

This book is overly long and quite slow. It meanders through the first three hundred pages as surely as the main character does, getting lost in several places along the way. The plot has been done before: Body Snatchers and Animorphs come to mind. There's nothing new about alien invasions, and when Meyer tries to explain the history of the "feathery ribbons" that took over the world with smiles on their hosts' faces it seems hokey and overdone, almost a waste of time. Meyer makes such worlds seem like Disney World rides rather than functioning systems there for the taking.

But that's the first three hundred pages. It's a marathon of a slow start, but the story builds to a satisfactory climax. What Wanderer finds in the desert challenge her notions of what it means to be human, what it feels like to fall into love, into friendship and family. That is the strength of the story, above the science fiction and the two men she must negotiate between -- one in love with Melanie, the other with Wanderer (four people, three bodies, a problem if ever there was one) -- pushing Wanderer to finally make a choice as to her place and meaning in this world.