The Host Chapters 53-60

I’m sick of this book. So sick that I’m going to attempt to recap an epic nine chapters.

Chapter 53- Condemned

The Seeker’s host is named Lacey. How convenient that the hosts’ consciousness comes back right away with no ill effects.

Lacey is also a complainer and Wanderer is bitching about it. Well she doesn’t know what it’s like to be locked in your body without being allowed to have any control at all. Also, Lacey was ALSO sentient inside her body, just like Melanie.

She was jealous of you; isn't that pathetic? She wanted to be strong like you. Wanderer was strong? News to me. Lacey is mad that Wanderer and Melanie are friends.

Lacey snorted. “Got her brainwashed, huh?”
Wow, she's worse than the first one.
Yes,I agreed.I can see why the Seeker was so obnoxious. Can you imagine having that in your head all the time?

I object to this. I totally get where Lacey’s coming from. She’s been locked in her body for who knows how long and the Seeker is a huge bitch AND all Lacey would have seen was the brutality of the Yeerks. So she’s right in being mad at the Yeerks.

And then she destroys my goodwill by whining about the living conditions. Smeyer REALLY has a knack for creating unsympathetic characters. I hate Lacey even more than I hate Amir from The Kite Runner and that is saying a lot.

WHY DIDN’T I SEE THIS BEFORE? The Yeerks are like Goa’ould! They aren’t malicious, but they take host bodies. And Wanderer and Melanie are kind of like the Tok’ra, but less awesome. HERE’S SOMETHING ELSE SHE STOLE.

Jamie and Ian still don’t know that Wanderer is going to die.

WTF? We segue into something completely unrelated. Everyone’s mad at Kyle for some reason but I don’t know why. Apparently Kyle went after someone named Jodi, who is…his wife? Ian and Wanderer are going on another raid but I don’t know what for. Bored now. I think they’re taking the cryotank to the ships or whatever.

Ian reached over to take my hand. “You're the good-luck charm.”

Gag me.

Now they kidnapped some Healers for a reason which isn’t immediately apparent.

He squeezed my fingers. “But that went well, at least. You make an excellent charm.”
Too well. Both missions had gone too perfectly, too fast. Fate was rushing me.

This is a Smeyer novel. Everything goes well.

“Nothing. I'm getting a kick out of watching you do something for yourself. This has to be a first.” That’s…kind of a mean joke. But I’m not complaining! At least someone sees what a dependent little bitch she is.

We made it home without incident. Of course you did.

Wanderer is jealous of Lacey.

Now Doc’s going to kill her but not really because there are like eight chapters left. How are they planning on killing her? They can’t shoot her. Are they going to stomp her? Let her die like a fish out of water? Starve her?

Also, if they never kill any of the Yeerks, won’t they just come back?

Uh oh. One of the Healers woke up and I think his Yeerk killed him.

Chapter 54- Forgotten

She’s trying to figure out if the other Healer is dead. She keeps talking. It’s boring. The Healer wakes up. She’s afraid of humans because her Yeerk was afraid of humans and she can’t remember her name.

The caves are empty. These recaps are very sporadic. Anyway, everyone’s outside because Kyle came back with Jodie, maybe. Everyone’s mad for some reason and Kyle asks Wanderer for help.

Chapter 55- Attached

“Kyle's got a guest, and you're scarin' the snot out of her, people.” Oh Jeb. I missed you. Also, he didn’t bring Jodi back, he brought Sunny. Never mind, Sunny is the Yeerk’s name and it actually is Jodie. I now imagine the Asian girl who went to school with me for a few years named Sunny. Also, funny-ish story about Sunny. We were doing driver training together and she was turning toward to the highway, and she was turning the wrong way, into oncoming traffic. Wendy kept going “Other lane, other lane,” and Sunny didn’t hear or understand and then Wendy grabbed the wheel and cranked it the other way. THEN when we were doing three point turns, she was supposed to reverse slowly but she like, floored it and we shot backwards almost into the ditch. It was the best driving session I ever had, because then I didn’t look like such a bad driver.

Sunny is all terrified. Wanderer is holding hands with Ian and Pedobear. Ian has lost his personality completely, and Pedobear has changed into Ian. Weird. Also, for some reason Sunny is like super duper attached to Kyle. I don’t know why. Why does every woman have to be so WEAK I ask you?

So I guess Kyle just walked into her house, threw Sunny over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and booked ‘er. Sunny was happy to see him because remember nobody in a Smeyer book can decide who they love.

Good news. Melanie is now 21 so say goodbye to statutory rape!

Uh oh. Wanderer told Sunny she has to leave and now Ian’s going to have a shitfit.

Chapter 56- Welded

Weird words
Swine

I remember welding. Welding is fun.

Ian’s all furious apparently. Now he has to show his little woman who’s boss!

Ian hauled his knee back and smashed his foot hard into Kyle's face. Holy SHIT he’s turning into the Hulk! Also, he just like grabbed her roughly and dragged her out of the room. Shit, when did he turn into Pedobear?

“I'mgoing to hurt her?” Ian roared back over his shoulder, not breaking pace. “Iam?You
hypocritical swine! ” The way these people speak will never cease to amuse me.

His arms caught me up abruptly, yanking my feet out from under me and then catching my shoulders before I could fall. He started running forward again, carrying me now. His hands were not rough and angry like before; he cradled me against his chest. He definitely just picked her up and started running away, like King Kong. And she doesn't object at all. Seriously, get that visual. It's HILARIOUS. I burst out laughing. What the hell would you do if someone picked you up and just ran away?

He took her to his room and dropped on the bed. Is he going to rape her? Seriously.

“You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me.” His eyes blazed–burning brighter than I had ever seen them, blue flames. He scares me.

He’s holding her and crying like a little bitch.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I was mean.” No shit.

His eyes flashed open. “Is it so unbearable to have me love you? Is that it? I can keep my mouth shut, Wanda. I won't say it again. You can be with Jared, if that's what you want. Just stay.” Edward much?

He curled his arms around me, pulling me tighter against his chest. Our lips moved together, fusing as if they would never divide, as if separation was not the inevitable thing it was, and I could taste the salt of our tears. His and mine.
Something began to change.
When Melanie's body touched Jared's body, it was like a wildfire–a fast burn that raced across the surface of the desert and consumed everything in its path.
With Ian it was different, so very different, because Melanie didn't love him the way I did. So when he touched me, it was deeper and slower than the wildfire, like the flow of molten rock far beneath the surface of the earth. Too deep to feel the heat of it, but it moved inexorably, changing the very foundations of the world with its advance.

SO Harlequin! Seriously, she should think about writing a romance novel. I think she’d be good at it.

Also, new prediction. Melanie is going to willingly sacrifice herself so that Wanderer can stay.

They’re making out again. GET A ROOM, GUYS.

“Why?” His words sounded crazy to me. Did he want to play a game? To ease the tension again?' “Oh it’ll be a carnival all right!”

It is not a game. They’re having a tribunal to decide whether Wanderer will leave or not.

Chapter 57- Completed

The tribunal consists of Ian, Jeb, Doc (who STILL doesn’t have a fucking name, like Cooky from Deep Blue Sea), and Pedobear.

Now there’s a big debate between Ian and Wanderer as to what she should do.

The rest of me yearned toward Jared with the same desperate, half-crazed
hunger I'd felt since the first time I'd seen him here. This body barely belonged to me or to Melanie–it belonged to him. GRRRR.

So Wanderer basically says that Melanie deserves her body and Ian basically says that Wanderer has helped the community so much that she has to stay. But it takes like a thousand words to say this. Pedobear says it should be Melanie’s decision.

Jeb says that Wanderer is right about Melanie needing her body back but Ian is right about the rest. This compromise doesn’t solve anything, Jeb.

Pedobear says they should get Wanderer another body, and it’s amazing this didn’t occur to anyone before. Jeb says it’s a good idea but Wanderer doesn’t want that.

“Hold on, Wanda,” Jeb said, his shrewd eyes suddenly sharper. “How does going to one of those other planets help you? You'll still be a parasite, kid.” Great logic, Jeb. You’d think someone would have thought of this earlier. Wanderer doesn’t mind stealing someone else’s body because they basically don’t really have emotions.

“Yeah, Doc told me that,” Kyle said, his gaze never leaving Jodi's face. A dark, matched set of bruises was forming under his eyes. Was his nose broken again?" He has bags under his eyes so she wonders if his nose is broken?

The Healer’s name is Mandy. Just thought that might come in handy. I definitely just unintentionally rhymed there. I'm a poet and I didn't even know it!

Anyway, Kyle, Ian, and Wanderer are talking to Sunny, trying to bring Jodi’s consciousness back to the forefront.

Kyle apologizes for trying to kill Wanderer.

He nuzzled his face against mine until he found my lips, then he kissed me, slow and gentle, the flow of molten rock swelling languidly in the dark at the center of the earth, until my shaking slowed. I’m not a huge fan of her imagery. And it sounds kinda dirty.

It takes Ian approximately one minute to fall asleep and then Wanderer steals away to die. Like how dogs go away and hide in the bushes to die.

And someone catchers her.

Chapter 58- Finished

It’s Pedobear. Wow, that cliffhanger had no suspense at all.

“Take care of my family. Don't let the others kill them.”
“Of course I'll take care of them.” He dismissed my request brusquely. “I meantyou. What can I give you?” I thought you still hated her…

There’s so much manhandling in this book. I should have been keeping count. Anyway, Wanderer tells Jared to lie and tell her he wants her to stay and he grabs and her and does that, and this book gets more Harlequin than it already is.

Our faces were only inches apart. He closed the distance, and even here, on the edge of my last breath on this planet, I couldn't help responding. Gasoline and an open flame–we exploded again. I read this and immediately thought of Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series where Pegasus was talking about how his wife exploded twice.

Holy fuck. We FINALLY find out Doc’s real name, and it’s Eustace. One, that’s a dumb name. Two, NO THE SILVER CHAIR IS MY FAVOURITE NARNIA BOOK! All my favourite things are being killed dead by Smeyer.

I should be studying right now.

Doc puts her under, but we still have two chapters left. Maybe she really does die! HOLY SHIT.
Chapter 59- Remembered

She’s talking about something that may or may not be heaven. She meets Melanie, who apparently is lost. I am confused.

She's a new neighbor–how nice. I love new friends. So…cloying and Sesame Street-ish. Wanderer’s name is now Pet, for some reason. And Pedobear and Jamie are there but not really? I don’t know. And Pedobear’s going to rape her. And she comes back to life. She might be in another body, and it kind of looks like she’s in the body of a child, which makes things with Ian way more awkward and pedophilish than they have been already. She describes herself, which is this beautiful angelic person and then she gets mad because Doc went back on his word.

“Even an honest man sometimes caves to duress, Wanda.”
“Duress,” another terribly familiar voice scoffed.
“I'd say a knife to the throat counts as duress, Jared.” That’s actually kind of funny.

Melanie’s there, so whose body is she in? Please say Lily PLEASE.

Okay, so Wanderer is eighteen. There will be no statutory rape in this book! And it’s not Lily, dammit. They picked another random host, basically killing someone so Wanderer could live. This book is morally questionable.

“We tried not to scare her,” Jamie said. “She's so… kind of fragile-looking, you know? And nice, too. We picked her out together, but I got to decide!” It’s just like picking out a puppy, and not at all like basically murdering a human!

“You're not a parasite,” Melanie said firmly, touching my hair, pulling up a strand and letting the gold slide between her fingers. “This body didn't belong to Pet, but there's nobody else to claim it. We waited to make sure, Wanda. We tried to wake her up almost as long as we tried with Jodi.” How convenient that the very person they pick out to be Wanderer’s new body is the first human whose consciousness didn’t come back. I like how everything works out. This isn’t at all like a deus ex machina.

“Jodi? What happened to Jodi?” I chirped, my little voice going higher, like a bird's, with anxiety. This totally reminds of when Kerri was like, “So can Bob get out of the church and escape from the ghosts and get back to town and can everyone get out alive…” and on and on but her voice kept getting higher and higher and it was THE BEST THING EVER.

Also, Jodi is gone, but Sunny gets to stay. And I guess Kyle loves her, or something.

And everything is wonderful and candy canes and puppies and everyone is together and happy and this reminds me of Holden Caulfield’s description of a sappy movie that he saw:

"I'd tell you the rest of the story but I might puke if I did. It isn't that I'd spoil it for you or anything. There isn't anything to spoil for Chrissake. Anyway, it ends up with Alec and the homey babe getting married, and the brother that's a drunkard gets his nerves back and operates on Alec's mother so she can see again, and then the drunken brother and old Marcia go for each other. It ends up with everybody at this long dinner table laughing their asses off because the great Dane comes in with a bunch of puppies. Everybody thought it was a male, or some goddamn thing. All I can say is, don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself."

Thank you, Holden Caulfield, for putting my feelings into words so much more eloquent than my own.

Jamie squeezed my hand. Melanie put hers on top of his, then smiled when Jared added his to the pile. For fuck’s sake.

Ian brushed the cloud of golden hair back from my face and laid his hand on my cheek. His hand was so big just the palm covered from my jaw to my forehead. That is one big motherfucking hand. My palm covers…from my jawbone to just below my cheekbone. His covers her WHOLE FACE.

“I suppose I could do that,” I whispered. “If it makes you happy.” ARGH.

He kissed me, right in front of everyone, but I forgot the audience quickly. This was easy and right, no division, no confusion, no objection, just Ian and me, the molten rock moving through this new body, melding it into the pact. STFU about the goddamn molten lava!

And my tenth life began.

Epilogue

Gentle readers, we are near the end! And Smeyer effing LOVES her epilogues and prologues.

So she’s talking about her body. It’s physically weak and ALSO mentally weak, kind of like how Wanderer’s been this whole time. The body is grieving for somebody and it’s also physically weak and really shy.

People touched my cheeks often, or put their fingers under my chin, holding my face up to see it better. I was frequently patted on my head (which was in easy reach, since I was shorter than everyone but the children), and my hair was stroked so regularly that I stopped noticing when it happened.

Are they sure they got a human? It sounds like a dog. And also, she’s eighteen, but child-like. It’s been beaten into the ground that Wanderer is like a hundred years old but is really a baby because she hasn’t been on the planet for a long time. Does Smeyer have a May-December fetish, seriously. Her hand is like the same size as a five year old’s. And I cannot stop myself from imagining Wanderer as Pegasus’ wife from Yu-Gi-Oh. Maybe she’ll explode.

Also, Petals Open to the Moon had lived in Seattle all her life, and the unbroken streak of blue skies and blistering heat was as bewildering–almost numbing –to my system as the dark press of heavy overcast skies would have been to any of these desert dwellers. Whenever Smeyer mentions place names, it’s either Arizona or Washington. Are those the only two places she’s been?

When the rains ended, Jamie would move into a free corner in Brandt and Aaron's cave.
Melanie and Jared had kicked Jamie out of their room and into Ian's before I'd been reborn in Pet's body; Jamie wasn't so young that they'd needed to give him any excuse. They’re going to finally sex it up now that’s she’s legal.

At night in the game room, Sunny slept curled into a ball against Kyle's chest, like a kitten who was friends with a big dog–a rottweiler whom she trusted implicitly. Sunny wasalways with Kyle. I couldn't remember ever seeing them unattached since I'd opened these silver gray eyes for the first time. Isn’t that sweet? So sweet I want to hork. Also, there’s so much spooning in this book it’s insane.

“You don't really want that cot, do you, Wanda? I'll bet we could all fit okay on the mattresses if we shoved them together.”

That’s gonna turn out awkward when Ian and Wanderer get it on. Also, are epilogues supposed to be so long? Why doesn’t she just change it to chapter 61? Or does she have a hard on for even numbers?

“Well, I'm beat. Night, guys.” Well, we’re back into the fifties time warp.

ARE WE GOING TO HAVE A SEX SCENE WITHOUT A FADE TO BLACK? [Note: No]

And then he kissed me in the most unplatonic way possible under the crowded circumstances, and I was thrilled to remember that I'd been smart enough to lie about my age. So it is statutory rape!

Wow. I’m just skimming now, so I missed a hilarious part from before:

“Hey, Wanda! This is cool, isn't it? You're smaller than me now!” He grinned, triumphant.
“But still older. I'm almost –” And then I stopped, changing my sentence abruptly. “My
birthday is in two weeks.”
I might have been disoriented and confused, but I wasn't stupid. Melanie's experiences had not gone to waste; I had learned from them. Ian was every bit as honorable as Jared, and I was not going to go through the frustration Melanie had.
So I lied, giving myself an extra year. “I'll be eighteen.” I love how she’s planning ahead for sex. You know who lies about their age to get sex? Prostitutes. And sluts.

I saw them eyeing Sunny, but she was still unproven, not trusted. On top of that, Sunny had absolutely no intention of setting one foot outside. The very wordraid had her cowering in terror. Kyle would not go out with us; Sunny had gone hysterical the one time he'd mentioned it. ARGH.

And they went on a raid and found another rebel group who were stalking them. Again…this is an extremely long epilogue. And I think the purpose of an epilogue is to tie up loose ends, not to introduce NEW action.

“I'm Jared.” He shook Nate's hand, then started to smile. “This is Melanie, Aaron, Brandt, Ian, and Wanda. There are thirty-seven of us altogether.” Really? That means there’s like 20 people who haven’t even been mentioned, ever! There’s also three other rebel cells. This other rebel cell has a Yeerk too, yay.

YAY IT’S DONE.

I want to write an eloquent conclusion, but I’m just too sick and too many of my brain cells have died over the course of this book. I honestly can’t believe I read 575 pages of a Smeyer novel. I’m planning on going back to my roots as a Twilight hater, and recapping New Moon and then Eclipse. But this will probably be after finals, around the middle of December. Right now I have to concentrate on more important things than Smeyer, such as school, Nanowrimo, and work.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go bleach my brain. And then read good science fiction, like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Sphere, or The Taking. I might also watch Stargate SG-1 and The X-Files to remember what good sci fi is.