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Tahlia Newland

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The Host, my favourite Stephanie Meyer

March 26, 2013 by Tahlia Newland

When Twilight came out, I read and enjoyed it like many others, but it was the first Vampire book I’d read since Dracula. I’ve read many vampire books since then, but the Twilight series, even though I’m totally over it, ( I didn’t think much of the movies) still has a kind of magic about it that other books don’t. It has nothing to do with whether it’s well written or not, it has to do with the flavour of the series, the feeling it left me with. There’s a lot you can say about the story, both good and bad, but the warm aftertaste for me comes from the character’s struggle to live a compassionate life. That’s a rare theme in a YA book, or in any popular fiction actually, but compassion is a powerful thing and has the ability to move people deeply.

Ms Meyer deals with the same theme but in a different way in her book, The Host. If you haven’t read it, then do, even – or perhaps especially – if you didn’t like the Twilight Series. In The Host, we have another being dedicated to living a compassionate life and I found this one, the alien, Wanderer, very inspiring. It’s a more complex and mature story than Twilight, and the better book. It’s still one of my all-time favourites and I’m keen to see the movie.

I mentioned that I didn’t think much of the Twilight movies; firstly because I thought the casting was all wrong. Robert Patterson, sorry to all those who think he’s swoon-worthy, just isn’t gorgeous enough to compare to the Edward of my imagination, and Kirsten Stewart, sorry, but she has only one expression and it’s with her mouth open. The only casting they got right was Alice, Jasper and the Indians, except that the older guys should have been beefier.  There are hundreds of beautiful actors and actresses around and Meyer’s vampires were supposed to be stunning, but their movie versions were plain.

Apart from that, they did an okay job with the first movie, the way it was shot gave some of the dreamy feel of the book, but the second two movies suffered badly from trying to fit a very long book into one movie, so we had 10 second scenes that came over as shallow,

Back to The Host; it looks to me as if they got the casting right. The characters match the descriptions in the book, so they’re off to a good start.

I’ll get back to you after I’ve seen it.

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Filed Under: Book talk Tagged With: aliens, Kirsten Stewart, Movies, Robert Patterson, Stephanie Meyer, The Host, Twilight, Vampires, Wanderer

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Comments

  1. TimGreaton says

    March 29, 2013 at 10:20 pm

    Hi, Tahlia. Okay, I know female teen angst is not supposed to be my genre–and it’s not–but I really did not care for the Twilight book at all. “Clunky” is the adjective that comes to mind. That said, I do think she played out the romance tension extremely effectively. I never did see any of the movies.

    I’m glad to see her writing has matured since book one. At some point, I may actually dare to try the new one 🙂

  2. Tahlia Newland says

    March 30, 2013 at 10:48 am

    I doubt I would enjoy it as much now simply because I’ve read a lot more YA since then. The angst in book two was defintely overdone.

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