The Host--Chapter 3

So I've been reading for fun on the side, and I have found the best book ever. Warm Bodies. It is a zombie love story, and the zombie is one of the two lovers in question. The writing is fucking. awesome. The story itself has a point and a heart, and it's something that everybody everywhere should be reading.

Right. Back to The Host.

I kind of sort of like Twilight, in that trainwrecks don't happen every day and we have to take what we can get. But the one scene I hated more than anything else wasn't the scene where Edward eats the baby out of Bella's stomach, or the watching-her-while-she-sleeps-thing, or the abuse of native cultures, or the misogyny, or the massvie amount of Mormon propaganda in the book.

It was the fucking tent scene in Eclipse. To explain, S. Meyer decided that there wasn't enough tension, so she decided to have Edward, Bella and Jacob all sleep in the same tent, and had Bella overhear a conversation between Ed and Jake about who gets to keep Bella. Folks, I have pretended to be asleep before, and I have been actually asleep before, and the only time I really overhear a conversation is when I'm playacting.

But it's time to repeat the preformance of the Stupidest Scene Ever by having our STILL unnamed main character overhear a conversation between her doctor and the Seeker. Let me give you the bullet points:

-humans are violent nasties and humanity is an infection
-Souls have "callings" that determine their jobs.

Time out. If you're not raised borderline fundie, you probably don't get the overtones of that terminology. You do not decide to go into religious jobs. You are called. As I understand it, Mormons take it one step further. Your husband or wife is determined by angels up in heaven, if you are successful it is because you are obeying the hand of God, ect. ect. I'm not criticizing the belief system, but I DO want to point out that it leaves people open to massive amounts of exploitation. Back to book:

-Seekers are horrible people.
-Souls own the entire United States, and consider everything they overtake "civilized". Free humans are uncivilized.
-The Seeker and the Healer hate the everloving fuck out of each other
-Our STILL unnamed main character soul is about as active as Bella fucking Swan, and I already don't like her. This will change a little bit, but not that much.

And then, finally, FINALLY, our main character gets a name: Wanderer. Because she's been to so many worlds and refuses to settle down.

Wanderer uses her time lying frozen on this medical bed to think about the other planets she has been on. Apparently it was in the drip trap of HP Lovecraft's fridge. Telepathic, thousand-eyed plants. Wow.

Wanderer also decides that only the uncivilized soul would become a Seeker. Violence is just so far beneath the true soul.

However, because "Good citizenship was quintessential to every soul"  (oh Applebloom, I am so very, very sorry) Wanderer remembers every aspect of her body's last life that she thinks the Seeker might want. The body came to Chicago to find her cousin. But when Wanderer tries to remember more, she finds the information blocked out. The person is still in this body and she is fighting as hard as she can to spare her loved ones from becoming prisoners in their own body.

Finally, Wanderer sits up, the Seeker welcomes her to Earth...and the chapter ends.

...yeah. LKH and S. Meyer get their advice from the same damn chapter-breaking book.