Photo Friday: The Host, Video Edition

I came across the below fan video for Stephenie Meyer's 'The Host' yesterday. I know that it's going to be adapted to a movie, imdb shows the release date as 2011. If you are rolling your eyes and groaning about sparkly vampires, you can cut it out this instant. Meyer's website calls The Host 'science fiction for people who don't like science fiction'. Well, I do like science fiction, and The Host is still pretty damned good.

What makes this story different is that as soon as you open it, you see that we've already lost. Earth has been successfully invaded. Sound familiar? Like...Twelve Colonies familiar? Though the Host invaders are actually aliens and not robots, the premise works for the exact same reason Battlestar Galactica worked. The human race is reduced to almost nothing, hiding and scavenging while trying to keep a Resistance going. And while the invaders (who call themselves 'Souls') don't have a great agenda like the Cylons did, other than bringing 'peace' to our world, we are nevertheless used as pods for their peas.

The story is about Melanie Stryder, a human woman who is part of the resistance gets captured and implanted with Wanderer, who is sort of the Steve Irwin of Souls, but female. Wanderer has access to Melanie's memories, and is tasked with trying to use those memories to root out the human resistance. But instead of turning them over, Wanderer seeks them out. Melanie is still partially at the wheel, and what follows is one of the most unexpected and surprisingly intelligent stories I've ever read. I can't really do it justice here, and besides this isn't 'Windbag Friday', it's 'Photo Friday', so Here is a great review of the book. Read it, it's good, that's all.

I've been looking around, and apparently a lot (a LOT) of people are loving Jensen Ackles as Melanie's lover Jared. I have to confess, he'd never even entered my mind (I'd always thought more along the lines of Charlie Hunam) but as soon as I saw this video, it clicked for me. I can't really picture anyone else as him now. It looks as though Ian Somerhalder is being rumored to play Ian O'Shea, the human man who begins to fall for Wanderer (not Melanie, it's a regular love quadrangle and very well done). I don't have a problem with that, but I do like the idea of Jared Padalecki better. Ian and Kyle (twins) are suppossed to be big guys, and Jared's definitely got the range it would take to play both parts. Here's hoping!