Second Bookses

I was intrigued enough by Stephenie Meyers' Twilight series to give her sole adult-audience novel a try, and was pleasantly surprised.If I have one (giant) complaint about the Twilight series, its that her heroine, Bella, is a whiny, obsessive girl in what looks suspiciously like an abusive relationship. Melanie, the heroine of The Host, is a very different person. Living in a world in which alien beings have taken over, surviving by attaching themselves to the central nervous system of their human hosts. Melanie, however, resists, forcing her interloper enough out of balance to get her to change course and try to find a way to Melanie's human family, who may still be alive and free of the alien parasites.Meyers manages to take a dystopian, sci-fi universe and explore the concepts of intelligent life, morality in invading, and ethical warfare. While the writing is often frustratingly amateurish, the theme is enough to keep you going, even if the shoehorned-in romance might leave you gagging. The Host will leave you questioning how to find black and white in varying shades of gray.