new stephanie meyer book

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

a lot of you guys have probably heard of the twilight books, the insanely popular unbelievably shamelessly crappy vampire novels. anyway the author has come out with a new book and i was reading the summary and parts of it have some glaring resemblances to our favorite parasite species.

NOTE: i'm not trying to say she copied animorphs or even that she had it in mind while writing this! i just wanted to post it because it reminded me of animorphs and i'm sure you all can see the reason why.



The Host

A gripping story of love and betrayal in a future with the fate of humanity at stake. Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed.Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves-Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she's never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.

Comments

[convents.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a generic form of Animorphs encased into a romance novel with cheesy idealistic romance that's meant to make you cry but is inevitably weak and disturbing.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

essentially

[tomecatti.livejournal.com]

Because that couldn't also be a rip-off of Stargate: SG-1, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or the Buffy formulation of vampires tweaked, or...

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

very well could be (i'm not familiar with the first two -- i just instantly made the animorphs connection because, well, you know) but as for buffy, i wasn't saying that twilight itself was a rip off of anything. but while we're on the subject, i don't think buffy can be compared to twilight because the pretty much the only thing the vampires in buffy and twilight have in common are that they're vampires and they have super strength. other than that they are very different, at least the ones that are actual characters. but i didn't post this to start a debate so i'm going to stop. :)

[shishi.livejournal.com]

yeah, wow.

i work at an indie bookstore and stephanie meyer came in once for a reading. she was nice, but i still can't... really deal with vampire chick-lit, in any incarnation, let alone this.

upstairs at the time was like PRETEEN MANIAAA.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

as a commenter above said, the whole parasite/host thing has been done before so i doubt she actually had animorphs in mind while writing this. i wasn't insinuating that she actually copied the idea, just that there's a similary ;)

and god, i couldn't deal with that either. i read one of the books was just so put off by the whole thing.

[convents.livejournal.com]

Well I don't think she copped the idea directly from Animorphs but she could've gotten a similar idea from it. It's just like how some people get certain ideas from other people mentioning something, etc. Except sometimes it just leads to sounding exactly as the original and mixed in with other ideas to make it sound more appealing.

But that's just my opinion :)

[cimplybe.livejournal.com]

Uhg, I've done that so many times! Either that, or I'll run with an 'original' idea for a while before realizing it poped into my head because I've seen it before, not because I came up with it. It's annoying to look back at an hour of brainstorming and realize there's not really anything new there.

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean lol...I work at a library and although I like some vampire fiction, the vampire chick lit craze just does nothing for me. I'm thinking I'll just go back to reading The Vampire Files, which was interrupted by my new Animorphs obsession thank you lol

Anyway we're always getting interlibrary loan requests for the Meyers books and I think a couple of our copies are replacements since the originals were stolen.

[stretch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am a member of the Twilight fandom, though I must agree the books sucked for the most part. But every time some fangirl starts talking about the originality of The Host, or how cool it sounds, I can't help but think that it's going to be a watered down version of what the Animorphs has been if Aftran loved Jake.

[dramaturgy.livejournal.com]

Agreed on the quality of the books. But they are shamless brain candy and sometimes a little shamless brain candy is good for you. XD

[stretch.livejournal.com]

That's it exactly - they're a quick read on the beach. They require little thought provide mild entertainment.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

i'm glad you're not offended -- i didn't mean anything against the fans :) and LOL someone needs to write a fic about that.

[odette-river.livejournal.com]

I second this motion.

[stretch.livejournal.com]

Please, are you kidding? The books are weak sauce and most of the fans are crazy. The scary thing are the fans that don't realize they're crazy ;) And seriously, despite the YA labels they share, Animorphs totally has Twilight beat on both the plot and maturity levels.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

yeah the only fans i have a problem with are the ones that like to claim that twilight is the best piece of literature to grace god's green earth. the people who acknowledge that it's just fun useless reading are okay with me. and i totally agree with you about animorphs!

[stretch.livejournal.com]

They're probably the same 13 year old girls running around going "OMG, Edward is so hotsexyperfectwowmakemeavampiretoo and I will hate you 4EVA if you disagree!" God, I loathe them too, they're the problem with fandom.

But seriously, Animorphs actually ruined a lot of book for my just because it was so well written (at least early on) that it raised the bar kind of high. Not that it wasn't without flaws, but it was pretty high quality for the day and demographic.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

you know i recently heard about "twilight moms" -- as in middle aged mothers who are DIE HARD fans of the books and actually are so obsessed with the series that they don't feed their kids sometimes. i'm not even lying, there's a message board and everything. as insane as it is, it's just so hilarious that i'm almost glad they're in existence LOL

i know what you mean! it's too bad a lot of kids wrote the books off because the covers were "weird" because honestly i think animorphs is the reason i never fell for the fluffy books/movies when i was younger and gravitated towards things with more substance.

[stretch.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't get me started on TwiMoms - they're off the handle and I'm fairly sure I've managed to piss off most of them too. They're the same 13 year old girls, only trapped in over weight, middle aged bodies, who go to sleep at night pleading with their husbands to roleplay Edward so they can have sex with him. They also like to sneak onto the movie set and hide in the bushes stalker-style, then post the videos on YouTube. It's gotten creepy.

And I totally agree about the covers. When Animorphs was in its hay-day I was the only girl in class who read them - my other friends would walk right past them, claiming they were too "weird." But my guy friends and I got totally hooked, and when I was 9 years old I decided that Rachel was my hero ;)

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

me too! (about rachel) it's too bad people looked it over cause of its cover -- they didn't have a problem reading goosebumps! (although i read it too hehe) and those covers were insanely scary sometimes. i don't think i need to mention the one with the dummy on the cover.

[rayerai.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh I'm so, so glad that never came to be. *shudder* Hello, creepy.

[odette-river.livejournal.com]

It sounds kind of like Visser, actually. In that it deals with the host influencing the parasitic alien. And people falling in love with each other.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

interesting! i have to admit, i never got around to reading that one :\ perhaps when i have a bit more time after finals!

[senri.livejournal.com]

Visser Chronicles is a fab book, you should definitely make time for it. :)

[odette-river.livejournal.com]

Visser is amazing. It's definitely one of my top five Animorphs books.

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

*nods* yeah Visser was pretty good. Loved the cover. I felt bad for Eva though...was glad they finally rescued her for good a few books later.

[rayerai.livejournal.com]

Loved Visser. Just chiming in. :)

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

I already posted about this a few weeks ago...did you miss it? I keep meaning to read Twilight but haven't yet, now I have mixed feelings about it from what I've heard in various places. I'm going to read Host though. Partly due to the Animorphs factor and partly because I just like dystopian and post apocalypse novels and stuff like that.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

ooh i must have -- sorry! it's been hard for me to keep up with LJ lately with the end-of-school-year hubbub. twilight.. i mean i've read it, and i truly hated it. a lot of people LOVE LOVE LOVE it, some people find it to be a guilty pleasure but personally i don't even think it's good enough for that. if you want to read it, by all means, i would say to do so if you're curious but just don't expect anything mindblowing. it's a quick, easy read.

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

*nods* I know what you mean, work gets in my way a lot. And understood, will keep that in mind.

[spiletta42.livejournal.com]

I have no particular desire to defend this author, because sparkly vampires? However, The Host isn't a ripoff of anything so much as it's just one more in a long line of fics that fit the mindcontrolling-alien-parasite subgenre. People have been writing this plot ever since Hal Clement did it first in 1949.

The yeerks, the goa'uld, the trill, that creepy thing in Wrath of Khan, Spider-Man's black suit . . . all the same basic theme.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

yeah i responded to a similar comment above -- i didn't really think she sat down with animorphs and decided to copy it, but i did make the connection between it and her book and decided to post about it here since it's relevant :) but you are absolutely right.

[spiletta42.livejournal.com]

It's close enough to relevant. :) I'm hoping someone leaves a review of it in this comm eventually, although I have too much to read as it is.

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

*nods* very true. Tracker also did it except the human host was dead when the alien took over. Buffy kinda did it with the demon taking over the human body to become a vampire. I read the first Clement book already and am on the second one now. Pretty good books.

[spiletta42.livejournal.com]

Yep, I love Clement, and I'm glad you're enjoying him too.

[beachbeagle.livejournal.com]

I refuse to be biased about a book I've never read. I've learned too many times you can't judge a book by it's cover or by what everyone else says about it, not always anyways. I haven't read Twilight, but I've heard both good and bad comments on it. Please know that if you do respond to this with statements supporting or against the book that they will merely get thrown in with the rest of the opinions and likely noticed very little. It's not that I don't care, just that I prefer to form my own opinion.

I do agree that those invading "souls" are somewhat reminiscent of Yeerks. It might not be an intentional similarity, and I'm sure similar ideas have been used before. Besides that, from what I've found looking around Animorphs didn't exactly seem to have one of the largest fan followings. The idea could have been influenced by any number of sources.

[vanouria.livejournal.com]

oh of course. i wasn't trying to sway people into not reading the books, i just really can't hide how much i don't like this author or the series. but a lot of people do like the series, and that's fine by me. i'm not one to try to change opinions or form someone's opinions for them.

and yes, i wasn't trying to say that she directly copied animorphs. i just merely made the connection and thought some other people here would find the similarity interesting, even if the concept isn't quite unique to animorphs exclusively.

[beachbeagle.livejournal.com]

I understand. I agree, it bares an amusing resemblance.

[sleepall-day.livejournal.com]

Ahahahah, okay, admittedly, I'm a Twilight fan. BUT, trust me, I know most of the fans are crazy, hahha. And those books really are just entertainment without having to think too much, and honestly, they're not written well, I have no idea where this huge fan base comes from.

When I first heard about the Host I thought of Animorphs too! Specifically, Visser. And I was just insanely annoyed for some reason. I know it's not going to be the same at all but still... Like I was telling some other people "I have issues with the body-snatcher theme." It's mostly a bias. I'm pretty no matter what I read that involves that sort of thing, I'm just going to think that it's not as good as Animorphs.

You know what I thought was so amazing about Visser? It was about aliens, and yet, it was one of the most compelling books I've ever read about the human mind and human capacity for love. It's seriously one of my favorite books of the series.

[vbabe-moon.livejournal.com]

i hate her. after i read the second book i was so pissed hat she did absolutely NOTHING the whole book and it was stupid and melodramatic.

[seeyouupside.livejournal.com]

I read Twilight as well as Ani. But I heavily agree that they are crappy vampire novels!!

And yes when I read the synopsis of the Host I was like WTF ANIMORPHS.