The Host by Stephenie Meyer

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The Host by Stephenie Meyer is touted as a science fiction/romance novel, though I have to say it was simply science fiction. Yes, there is a bit of romance, but all human relationships are highlighted in the novel and love features in a ton of traditional sci-fi stories. To be honest, I enjoyed it, so I don't want to call it a romance novel, okay?

There are bits of The Host by Stephenie Meyer that are reminiscent of more famous science fiction novels. There is an invasion of the body snatchers thing going on in The Host that brings to mind Stephen King, not to mention a host of moviemakers (no pun intended). However, Stephenie Meyer makes her body-snatching aliens very kind with few exceptions (kind of like the sparkly, vegetarian bloodsuckers of Twilight). The personalities that she gives her aliens and their motive for invading Earth is what makes The Host stand out from other body snatching science fiction.

Without giving away too much, The Host is essentially about one of these body snatchers who cannot drive the human from the body she has snatched. Therefore, she is forced to share that body. Over time, she becomes sympathetic to the human's plight and sees the error of her species' well-meant ways. What follows from there is an adventure that takes the alien (Wanderer) and her host (Melanie) from being hated by the humans to finding their place among the few who have survived the alien invasion. Stephenie Meyer has done a great job of seeing human emotion through the eyes of a gentle soul from outer space.

Of course, there are a few things about Stephenie Meyer's The Host that could use a little more detail. Given that this is her first science fiction novel, I think that we can forgive her for not giving us more information about the alien invasion on Earth and more. What makes science fiction novels like Dune, Fahrenheit 451 and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (to name a few) so popular is that background of the novels, in my opinion. Sci-fi readers want rich history and detail. I still enjoyed The Host by Stephenie Meyer, but I would be lying if I said it would ever be on par with those great classics.

If you have read The Host by Stephenie Meyer, let me know what you think about in the comments section. I would love to hear how others are receiving this book. Mind you, it is not new. It has just been horribly overshadowed by the Twilight series.

Shelly Barclay

Plot Synopsis: Matchless by Gregory Maguire

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We've been doing a lot of Gregory Maguire in the short time since this site got up, but there is a good reason for it. If you haven't read his stuff, stop taking my word for it and find one of his books. Start with Matchless. I just finished it and I loved it.

Gregory Maguire is an author who is becoming known for his ability to take old stories and fairy tales and give them new dimension and relevance for the 21st century. His novel Wicked is a compassionate look at the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. It has been made into a Broadway musical that is immensely popular. With Matchless, Gregory Maguire presents a much shorter but no less compassionate story. Matchless is a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's much-overlooked tale–The Matchgirl.

The Matchgirl is the story of a girl who is trying to sell matches on the street on New Year's Eve. She meets with no success and is soon freezing to death with only her matches to keep her company. In the end, she sees visions of her grandmother in heaven. The poor little girl has passed on to the next life. Gregory Maguire takes this sad and beautiful tale and gives the titular Matchgirl a kindred spirit, if you will.

Matchless starts with the story of a young boy (the Matchgirl's age) who lives with his mother in a simple set of rooms. He and his mother are very poor and so he must steal fish from seagulls to put food on the table. A very sad tale indeed, but Gregory Maguire gives it magic. The boy has dreams beyond his misfortune. Every night, he hides in his attic room and adds to a humble town he has made out of miscellaneous items he finds–other people's trash. He lives his life vicariously through this little world he has created. In this way, Maguire adds a ray of hope to an otherwise dismal tale. A taste of the unbreakable spirit of children, if you will.

To say much more would be to give away the story, as it is so short. Let us just say that the boy does not meet with the same fate as the Matchgirl, though their lives become irrevocably intertwined in a lovely way. Maguire has really made a peach of a Christmas story with Matchless. Yes, it is sad, but it is also uplifting. Anderson's Matchgirl had the same slightly uplifting quality, but it is not enough for the people of today. We do not easily take heart at the idea that the little girl was going to heaven to see her grandmother. We want to see her rescued at the last moment. Maguire provides that quality without taking away from Anderson's tale. There is a Dickensian quality to Matchless and we love Dickens here at Cracked Spines . If you've read the book or get a chance to read it after seeing this, please comment below. I would love to hear what other people think of this story.

Shelly Barclay 

Plot Synopsis: "Mirror, Mirror" by Gregory Maguire

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Gregory Maguire is the author of several books where he take old stories and fairy tales and develops them into full-fledged novels. Mirror, Mirror is one of these stories. It is the tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with a depth that has never been seen before. The characters and plot are quite different from those of the children’s story, but readers will recognize the similarities all the same.

Bianca de Nevada is our Snow White in this tale. She lives with her father on a farm called Montefiore at the start of the novel. In a river near the farm her father finds the mirror for which the novel is named. No one can explain how or why the mirror has come to be in the river, but we soon find that it is the property of the dwarfs, of which there are eight. The dwarves are described as creatures that appear to be made of stone and are hardly what you would expect of Snow White’s dwarfs.

Bianca de Nevada is seven years old when her father is forced to go on a long quest to steal three apples from the Tree of Knowledge for Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. The Borgias are evil and powerful siblings that quickly take control of everything in Bianca’s life and at Montefiore. Young Bianca is left in the care of the evil Lucrezia with only a cook and a priest to give her solace while her father is on his journey

As Bianca grows older, she becomes quite beautiful. Lucrezia begins to despise the young woman and plots to have her murdered by an assassin named Ranuccio. The plan fails when the assassin does not have the heart to kill the young woman and so Bianca finds herself among the seven dwarfs of the forest. She then falls into a deep sleep for four or five years. When she awakens, the dwarfs tell her vaguely of how the eighth of their kind is searching for the mirror that her father found in the river.

From here the story takes various twists and turns toward the inevitable happy ending. Good triumphs over evil and justice is served as one might expect from a fairy tale. In the end, the reader is left with the feeling that they have read a story that they have never heard and in many ways this is true. Mirror, Mirror is a far cry from the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that we know and love. Gregory Maguire did a magnificent job of blending history with fiction and fairy tale with gritty reality in Mirror, Mirror.


Shelly Barclay

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

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Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins is the follow-up novel to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Like The Hunger Games, Catching Fire centers on an impending rebellion against an apparent oligarchy or dictatorship. It has action, death, trickery, loyalty, love, abuse of power and much more. In some ways, it is as good as The Hunger Games. In other ways, it falls short or exceeds the first novel.

Spoilers.

Catching Fire begins in District 12 where Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are preparing to tour the 13 districts and Capitol City to celebrate their victory at the Hunger Games. There is an element of wariness and disdain about the whole process. Katniss is being pressured by President Snow, who sees her past actions in the arena as subtle rebelliousness. Katniss wants to protect her family by doing as Snow says. However, from the beginning, the reader gets the sense that Snow is not to be trusted and that things will not go according to plan.

In a great twist, Suzanne Collins places Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark back in the arena. This time, they are fighting in the annual Quarter Quell. This is an amped up version of the Hunger Games that is played every 25 years. The theme is the same. It is a message to the districts that rebellion is futile. The Capitol is too strong. However, something has changed–something Katniss and Peeta did during the Hunger Games has brought rebellion to the districts. Uprisings are occurring while Katniss and Peeta are preparing to battle for their lives. . . again.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins brought a semi-fresh idea to the table. It was easy to become engrossed in the novel because the concept of a televised fight to the death was not new, but it was being done in an entirely new way. Once you find out what the Hunger Games really are, you cannot help but read on to see what happens. In Catching Fire, the horror Hunger Games is not fresh, so it was time to see if Suzanne's storytelling could draw out this brilliant idea into a series. She delivered.

The one area in which Catching Fire exceeds its predecessor is the ending. A surprise twist followed by a cliffhanger was the perfect way to keep readers rabid for more. By the end of this book, it is easy to be curious about what Katniss' fate will be. Will Peeta get what he so deserves or will Gale, who is also worthy, be the one to live happily ever after? Will any of them live at all? Will the Districts rebel? Why does Snow's breath smell like blood? Yes, that's a thing.

In short, Catching Fire was a page-turning follow-up to an extraordinary novel. So much more could be said, but you will just have to read the books.

Shelly Barclay

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the heartbreaking story of a father and his son who are struggling to survive in a bitter post apocalyptic landscape.  This book takes the reader into a world where people eat people and steal food from the starving without any qualms. Everyone is homeless, everyone is hungry. This man and his son are simply trying to keep each other safe while struggling to maintain a higher moral standard than the crazed survivors who are all around them.

The first nuances that any enthusiastic reader will notice about this book is the grammatical structure and the way Cormac presents his characters. The book is not broken up into chapters the way one might expect. It simply marches on unforgivingly. Also, the father and son are referred to as the man and the boy. Their given names are not mentioned once throughout the novel. Another interesting device that McCarthy used was the lack of “he said” and “she said” in his dialogue. Conversations are carried out without the reader being told which character is speaking, but it is easy to sort it out, nonetheless. This device is reminiscent of that used by Hubert Selby Jr.

A mystery looming over The Road is what happened. Cormac McCarthy never explains what brought about the apocalypse, but one gets the sense that a volcanic eruption of some sort may have been the cause of these people’s woes. Survivors wear masks covering their mouths to protect their lungs from the ash that covers everything and floats through the air. The sun has been blotted out of the sky and it seems like winter is nearly perpetual. All of these things would make sense in the event of a volcanic eruption. However, McCarthy never clarifies and it makes the book more interesting for it. Also, the past of the man and the boy are delved into very little, but you get the sense that they have been at their struggle for at least a few years. Again, McCarthy never truly clarifies and that is one of the greatest things about this book.

The Road is a fantastic novel. There are scenes that will make you cringe, make you want to scream, make you wish you were there to help this man and his young son and moments that will make you want to cry. This book is not only for people who enjoy a good survival story. It is a book for anyone who has ever loved someone and wondered what extent they would go to to keep that person alive. It is a book for anyone who is willing to face the duality of humanity in the pages of a novel. Cormac McCarthy did an excellent job. His insight into the struggle to survive should be applauded.

Shelly Barclay