You may recall that I, uh, kind of ragged on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. Just a little bit. I said that her work for juveniles was, um, juvenile. Go figure. But mostly, I complained that there was not enough plot for the length of the book. (Just thinking of it makes me go, "Ugggh.")
Well, not so with Meyer's first book for adults, The Host.
I felt like the book bogged down a little in the second third as it sets up the fairly predictable love story (no spoiler there, really--you can see it coming a mile away), but Meyer's style flows so well and is so easy to read that this isn't too much of a drawback. There are several descriptions of the main character's feelings toward another character, ala Twilight, but unlike in Twilight where these make up 90% of the book, here it's only something like 15%. However, like Twilight, the book is still totally clean.
I won't tell you what the book is about, because half the fun is discovering it as you read (unless you read the blurb, which probably gives everything away anyway), but I will tell you not to be scared by the designation of "science fiction." There are aliens and spaceships and references to deep space and other planets. But this is not hard-core science fiction at all. In fact, you could easily forget it's science fiction at all and just become involved in the (cliche ahead) human-ness of it all.
In short, this book is so much better than Twilight that I hope Ms. Meyer writes more for adults in the future!
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Omigosh! There's plot!!
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3 comments:
I loved this book, too.... apparently she has two sequels planned, so that's cool!
Everyone's been telling me that I just have to read those vampire books but I've always felt a little wary. I'm not at all surprised to hear that they're not all they're cracked up to be. BTW, I love your blog. I miss you!
I think this is the book Meyer wrote first, and wanted to publish, but because publishers want stuff that will fly off the shelves and make them boatloads of money they prefer stuff that is already sequel-oriented and public-grabbing. Hence the vampire books. Even then, her editor probably had her pad the first one and break it into two parts. At least she can tell a story.
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