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Stepehnie Meyer re-invents the love triangle her new sci-fi drama, The Host.

Find a group of fifteen year old girls in any bookstore, and ask them who is better – Edward or Jacob. Chances are you’ll find yourself in the middle of an epic debate that won’t have any clear winner until August, which is when the fourth and last book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga is released.

Though unreleased, the book is already a bestseller on Amazon.com, and that is just one of Stephenie Meyer’s long list of accolades. Time Magazine has declared her one of the 100 most important people of 2008, and her third book, Eclipse muscled Harry Potter off the New York Times Bestseller list. Frequently hailed as the next J.K. Rowling (MTV News has gone so far as to ponder who would win in a fight – the wizards of Hogwarts or the Cullens, Meyer’s vampire clan), every literary move Meyer makes brings her closer and closer to being the publishing industry’s next holy grail.

With her new book, The Host, Meyer steps away from the world of vampires and werewolves, though she doesn’t stray far. The world of The Host is the world of a conquered human race. Creatures who refer to themselves simply as souls have infiltrated human kind, being implanted into the spinal column at the base of the brain, taking control ala Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

There’s a problem, though; unlike the other conquered planets, human beings do not go quietly into that night. Pockets of human resistance pop up everywhere, and even those forcibly taken over still struggle from within. The Host tells the story of one such human, Melanie Stryder (the resemblance to Meyer’s own name a coincidence?) and her soul counterpart, Wanderer. Melanie and Wanderer are pared together by a group among the souls, Seekers, who look to wipe out the last of the human resistance. The hope is that Wanderer will be able to access Melanie’s memories and lead them to human camp. What happens next is unexpected – while attempting to perform her duties, Wanderer relives Melanie’s memories of falling in love with a man named Jared, a human rebel, and she too falls in love. Together they form a truce and go trekking though the desert to find the man they both love.

Meyer said that the aspect of the love triangle is what drew her to the story, and it makes perfect sense – a triangle in two bodies? It’s like reinventing the wheel. But this messy tale is made even more complicated by a fourth wheel, another human holdout named Ian.

While utterly compelling, the love story is just one aspect of the novel – the one that would draw in Meyer’s established readership – but it’s hardly the selling point. Told mainly from Wanderer’s point of view, the book shows us a look at a desperate post apocalyptic humankind, fighting what appears to be a futile battle against extinction. The invasion works as a beautiful backdrop, every bit as fascinating as the plight of the four main characters. We see humanity through an alien’s eyes, and it is not a pretty sight. Mankind’s struggle for meaning is seen as brutality; we are a rabid dog that must be forced into submission for our own good. But as the plot unfolds, Wanderer begins to understand that we are more than mindless brutes, and our pains the price we pay for our pleasures. This revelation comes slowly, gracefully, and though the beginning of the book acts as an argument for wiping us out, the reader will walk away with a feeling that we are worthwhile, beautiful even.

The novel’s tension never lets up. The first pages dive immediately into the plot, condensing what would otherwise be a lengthy bit of exposition into a skillful scene that sets up a complicated world, and even more complicated characters. In a recent speech in Dallas, Meyer stated that her plots are drawn from the characters, and in reading The Host, it is easy to see. Every one of their moves feels right, every conflict understandable within the confines of the plot. There are no gaps in logic, no places where total belief in the world she has created would slip. It is a masterful move, and though this fourth book acts as a sophomore effort, there is no slump – just the opposite.

As I finished the last page, having wept through the end (in both happiness and sadness), I was struck with the knowledge that this book was better, more solid than the Twilight saga. Will I feel the same once Breaking Dawn, the fourth Twilight book is released? Who knows. What I do know is this: The Host has easily become one of my favorite books, and I turned the last page determined to read it time and time again. Twilight may be where here bread and butter are, but The Host is destined to have its own legion of loyal followers showing up at book signings with homemade t-shirts declaring their loyalty to certain characters.

Twilight’s amazing crossover potential has become as much a part of the phenomenon as the book itself. Published and marketed as a teen book, adults everywhere have succumbed to the story. The Host is marketed for adults, though there is nothing to keep young adult audiences from reading it. The main difference in the two books is where the evil lies; in the Twilight saga, the villains are all monsters of some kind. The Host, though it features aliens, shows a good deal of evil coming from people who will do anything to survive. It is a mark of maturity that pushes the book over the teen audience line. 

Although she claims not to pander to demographics, Stephenie Meyer’s vast imaginative world does work on the human heart. She is a master storyteller, and whether you’re a fan of Twilight or not, The Host is a must read for anyone.

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