Apparently Wanderer Loves Ian Now?: The Host Chapters 55 & 56

I think something happened during the last chapters of The Host…We met Lacey or The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-the-Seeker. She’s super annoying. Kyle went off to go find his lady love, and the last chapter ended with him returning and being all like, “Why hello, Wanderer, come over and help me even though I’ve been a huge piece of turdy shit to you during the whole book.”

Matthew says: Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Chapter 55: Attached 

Everyone in the cave is really pissed that Kyle went off and risked himself and all of their lives. However, Jeb realizes that there are more important things going on.

Now, all of you clear out and get to work on something useful. My cantaloupes are dying. Somebody do something about that, hear?”

Yes. The cave has cantaloupes. And damn it, guys, they’re dying, ya hear!

Kyle introduces Wanda and the gang to Sunny, and it turns out Sunny and Wanda used to be on the Bear planet together. Sunny’s even heard about Wanda’s badass story. Small universe!

The gang goes to Doc to get ready to extract Sunny from her body, and Kyle reveals his really bizarre and creepy kidnapping story.

Well, I thought she might be in Las Vegas. I went there first, before I went on to Portland . See, Jodi was really close to her mother, and that’s where Doris lived. I thought, seeing how you were about Jared and the kid, that maybe she would go there…I watched them all day, until it was nighttime. Sunny was in Jodi’s old room, alone. I snuck in after they’d all been asleep for hours. I yanked Sunny up, threw her over my shoulder, and jumped out the window . I thought she was going to start screaming, so I was really booking it back to the jeep. Then I was afraid because she didn’t start screaming. She was just so quiet…I carried her back to the jeep. I’d been planning to tie her up, but… she didn’t look that upset. She wasn’t trying to get away, at least. So I just buckled her in and started driving.

Turns out, Sunny was just happy to see Kyle (whaaaa? Ew) because she dreamed about him for years. Maybe if the souls were allowed to watch shows like Law and Order: SVU they would be prepared for this creepy kind of behavior! Kyle is actually unable to be a total dick to Sunny, though, and tries to help Wanderer figure out a nice place to send her.

Matthew says: There’s also this contradictory gem when Wanderer tries to explain Sunny’s reaction to everything going on.

It was easy to imagine the frayed state her nerves must be in. Souls were not designed to handle violence and terror.

See, in the hands of a more competent author, I’d wonder about the implications of this detail, like, maybe a parasitic species that achieved sentience would have to not be able to process violence or terror to live with themselves, as a species, as some sort of interesting evolutionary crossover between biology and philosophy. In Meyer’s hands, though? Hilaaaaaarious.

Sunny is distraught and whines about how Wanderer gets to stay and it’s not fair!

But then Wanderer is like, “Actually I also have to leave and return this body.”

Ian is like WUT.

I’m assuming he’s also like this.

Chapter 56: Welded

Clearly Meyer was really running out of chapter titles at this point. Welded? The fuck?

Matthew says: I made of note of this too! What the hell does “welded” refer to in this chapter?

So I’ve been paying like 95% attention this entire book, and I don’t remember Wanderer ever talking about whether not Ian is attractive. But all of a sudden he’s like mister hot stuff.

Ian glared down at the three of us with such fury that Sunny shivered in terror. It was an odd thing— as if Kyle and Ian had switched faces. Except Ian’s face was still perfect, unbroken. Beautiful, even though it was enraged.

I’m glad we’re aware of how beautiful Ian looks while he’s mad. Just in case we weren’t sure being angry made men sexier by the standards of pretty much every fucking book BBGT has done. Yes, I’m looking at you Fifty Shades, Bared to You, and even Hush, Hush. Not Goosebumps, though, I don’t think (which OMG we’re doing again soon!). 

Kyle is bewildered by Ian’s reaction…so Ian kicks him in the face?

Ian hauled his knee back and smashed his foot hard into Kyle’s face.

I bet he sure looked beautiful doing that, too. So sexy!

Ian then asks Jared if he knew about the plan, and when Jared doesn’t answer, Ian continues to display his sexy, manliness in the only way that could possibly prove his sexiness and the fact that his penis is probably massive.

Ian’s fist struck Jared so fast that I missed the blow— I just felt the lurch in his body and saw Jared reel back into the dark hall.

Oooh! Who is he gonna punch next?!

Sadly, Ian doesn’t punch anyone else, but he violently pulls Wanderer into his arms and barrels across the cave until he reaches his and Kyle’s room. So then he throws Wanderer down onto his bed and has his way with her. Just kidding! This is Meyer’s we’re talking about here, not Day or James! He does yell at her that she can’t leave him, though.

Matthew says: Ian has some pretty great Christian Grey/Gideon Cross-esque dialogue during his fit of rage:

“You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me.” His eyes blazed – burning brighter than I had ever seen them, blue flames.

Oh, right, and Wanderer is suddenly super attracted to Ian as of this chapter. That too.

Then they both cry like total assholes for ages. And then suddenly Wanderer fucking confesses her love for Ian. The last time we saw any of their “love story,” Wanderer was confused about kissing Ian. Now she’s all,

“No, Ian!” I took his face between my hands—his skin felt hard, strained tight over the bones. “No. I— I love you, too. Me, the little silver worm in the back of her head. But my body doesn’t love you. It can’t love you. I can never love you in this body, Ian. It pulls me in two. It’s unbearable.”

Let me get this straight. We have to hear every fucking thought about THE FUCKING CAVE OF MAGICAL WONDERS but we don’t hear any of how loving Ian pulls her in two? Like that wasn’t important enough to get mentioned but we get like twenty page descriptions on like a person’s hair color.

They make out, and Meyer provides the most confusing description of a make out scene that I could ever imagine. I don’t really understand a single bit of it.

With Ian it was different, so very different, because Melanie didn’t love him the way I did. So when he touched me, it was deeper and slower than the wildfire, like the flow of molten rock far beneath the surface of the earth. Too deep to feel the heat of it, but it moved inexorably, changing the very foundations of the world with its advance.

My unwilling body was a fog between us —a thick curtain, but gauzy enough that I could see through it, could see what was happening.

It changed me, not her. It was almost a metallurgical process deep inside the core of who I was, something that had already begun, was already nearly forged. But this long, unbroken kiss finished it, searing and sharp edged— it shoved this new creation, all hissing, into the cold water that made it hard and final. Unbreakable.

Matthew says: If this is a description of kissing, I don’t think I kiss people correctly.

Please. Translate this for me. And don’t just say to me, “Oh Ian’s kiss is changing her!” Because yes I can fucking read that. Explain the rest of it to me. Don’t be a dick and act like the meaning is so clear because of context, fucking translate it for me like Google translate would do if it had a Meyer to English option.

Matthew says: Thinking about the “flow of molten rock … too deep to feel the heat” thing, uh, I think this is Wanderer saying, “The first time we kissed didn’t do anything for me, but eventually I settled”. This is like arranged marriage, “we fell in love eventually” stuff here. HOT.

And then even weirder, Wanderer starts going on about how in eight full lives she’s never met anyone she wanted to stay on a planet for. And I’m like really? Him?

I’m sorry, but there was no build up to this. There was no in between from confused Wanderer and really pissed off Melanie to this.

Matthew says: Maybe we’re so confused because neither of us has ever had a kiss we could describe as “metallurgical”.

Then Ian decides that they’re calling a tribunal to figure out what’s going to happen to Melerer. Because if nothing else, society teaches us that women shouldn’t be given the right to choose what happens over their bodies.

Tagged: books, Humor, Ian O'Shea, Jared Howe, Melanie Stryder, science fiction, Stephenie Meyer, The Host, wanderer, young adult fiction

Posted in: The Host