Stephenie Meyer
Eeep! Just finished it; the ending is like being hurled from a giant catapult, a crazily spinning carousel with the colors brightening each moment. Awesome. Basically, this book is a display of Stephenie Meyer’s love of the Arizona desert. Within this overarching love, the meat of the book is full of the character interactions that readers loved from the Twilight series.
My only, tiny, inconsequential, and petty qualms from the story: First, I liked Melanie’s body better. Sorry, I can’t help it. I don’t think Meyer was totally enthused about it either; she pointed out quite a bit of difficulties. But it wasn’t what I imagined in my head for the wonderful Wanderer. Still, I find that character description intriguing. A small, very small 17-year-old with a silver-ish pallor to her skin, golden specks or freckles, and long golden hair? and I quote Meyer (should be doing this more often) page 603: “The skin on the face had the same silver undertone — silver like moonlight — as the hand did, with another handful of the golden freckles across the bridge of the nose. Wide gray eyes, the silver of the soul shimmering faintly behind the soft color, framed by tangled golden lashes. Pale behind them. A dimple in the chin. And everywhere, everywhere, golden, waving hair that stood away from my face in a bright halo and fell below where the mirror showed.” also page 603, “this half-child with her moonlight face and sunlight hair.”
Some good reviews and other info can be seen on Stephenie’s site:
http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/thehost.html
Discussion of a sequel:
http://albanypubliclibrary.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/a-sequel-to-the-host/
Literary Livewire 