The Host

After authoring a bestselling series, authors often branch out. Due to their prior fame, they often have a great deal of freedom in their efforts - with millions of fans, they have a built in audience. Some authors use these freedom to take on bold literary challenges. Others put a bunch of junk on a page and collect their check. The Host, alas, falls in to the latter.

In the Twilight series, each book seemed longer, and less edited than the previous book. This book beats them all. It screams out for an abridgment. The first half of the book could easily be reduced to a few pages without negatively impacting the novel.

In spite of this verbosity, the characters seem to suddenly make out-of-character decisions solely for the purpose of advancing the plot. (For instance, the narrator suddenly becomes strongly intent on suicide.)

The story is told from the point of view of a sentient "bug" that is living in a human "host". These peace loving bugs have taken over most of earth, aside from a few rebellious humans. However, the body that our narrator takes over does not give in easily. The host still retains her mind. A lot of the book consists of the two minds conversing with each other. (Having a book about a schizophrenic would not be nearly so interesting.) And of course, the two minds both fall for and passionately kiss two different guys. (It's a chick-book after all.) In the end, the parasite gets a new body and her man, and everybody lives happily ever after.

After this bloated book, a Twilight novella will be a great career move for Meyer.