I have to keep reminding myself there isn’t going to be any awful sex scenes to talk about with this book. I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about this.
Prologue
Wow, thank god after we posted our intro post yesterday I went and actually read the description or I’d have no idea how to explain this first page.
Based on the description we read yesterday, it seems we’ve opened on the point of view of one of the “souls” the description mentioned. Ya know, the souls that are aliens that possess humans. Ya know, as souls/aliens do.
This soul? His name is Fords Deep Waters and he is a healer. Not only is he a healer but he is apparently a combination of a car, a sex joke, and one of those horrendous fake Indian names.
He’s not in a good mood, but that’s just because he’s stuck in a human body!
Because he was a soul, by nature he was all things good: compassionate, patient, honest, virtuous, and full of love. Anxiety was an unusual emotion for Fords Deep Waters.
So the bad guys are good guys? Until they possess us and they become dicks like the majority of humans? This sounds like they’re getting a pretty shit end of some sort of deal, you guys.
A lot Healing students have gathered to see a human! Fords’ assistant Darren explains that they’ve never seen a “wild” human before, one who is still “soulless.” We’re then told that the girl on the operating table was broken when they found her, but they’ve managed to heal her completely now.
The exposition is so vague and “mysterious” that I’m having trouble conveying what’s going on. Basically, they’re inserting a Very Special/Chosen soul to undertake a Very Important Mission that Meyer Will Reveal Later. For some reason, I guess they can’t ask this soul permission to do this job for them, but Darren and Fords are like, “Of course she’ll want this honor!” Man, this could create some tension in the future!
Fords says,
“Who among us would not volunteer if asked to do something for the greater good? But is that really the case here? Is the greater good served by this? The question is not her willingness, but what it is right to ask any soul to bear.”
It’s always a good storytelling trick to ask the perfect study-guide questions straight away! That way high school teachers can ask students really simple, yet complex and overly-broad, essay questions! I bet this book will be taught for centuries in our public school system.
Meyer shows this is a science fiction novel because lots of stupid words and places are capitalized and sound mysterious. It’s not like, “She is from New York,” it’s like, “She is from the Origin.”
For instance, Fords overhears the Healing students (see a mundane word capitalized to show it’s something special in this world! And mysterious! Who are these Healing students?!??!) talking about the mysterious soul of mysteries that is about to be put into the body. Ps. I feel like I’m writing about a JJ Abrams show.
“She’s lived on six planets.”
“I heard seven.”
“I heard she’s never lived two terms as the same host species.”
“Is that possible?”
“She’s been almost everything. A Flower, a Bear, a Spider—”
“A See Weed, a Bat—”
“Even a Dragon!”
“I don’t believe it— not seven planets.”
“At least seven. She started on the Origin.”
“Really? The Origin?”
Hey, Healing Student in Disbelief, why are you surprised she’s been to seven planets and not the fact someone is claiming she’s been a dragon? Can someone please address whether there is a planet of dragons in these fucking books? Oh mer gerd, and she’s from the Origin?!?!
So before we can get any useful information out of the Healing students, Fords tells them all to shut the fuck up and be professional.
They cut an incision into the person’s neck, and then provide us with a description of a “soul”.
Like a living ribbon, she twisted and rippled, stretching, happy to be free of the cryotank. Her thin, feathery attachments, nearly a thousand of them, billowed softly like pale silver hair.
This sounds like a silver creepy crawly. This is disgusting! And then it slithers into the incision in the neck! And Fords is like, “Aw, I’m so glad she’s adapting to her new home so well. Yay!”
Her attachments wound tightly into place around the nerve centers, some elongating and reaching deeper to where he couldn’t see, under and up into the brain, the optic nerves, the ear canals.
Science?
Also apparently these healers can just magically heal wounds. I bet that will come in handy and be super convenient later!
Fords’ is worried because when the soul wakes up in the human body, she’s going to remember all the horrors that apparently led to the girl’s body being so messed up in the first place.
I’m just happy I didn’t have to read a terrible sex scene for the first time in ages!
How…odd? I’m pretty confused. First of all, if all of these souls are the epitome of all things good then what is this about going all yeerk on humans (I’m sorry, but it will be impossible for me to think of this in terms of anything but Animorphs)? Was that a real “Meyer” description, or is it just supposed to show us how souls think about themselves? And why do they want to be humans anyway? I hope this is explained, and well, later.
I love the random capitalization of “Healing students”. Because “Healing” is extra special, unlike that mundane “healing” done by silly little normal humans with band-aids and CPR, amirite?
I think it was just supposed to be how the Souls view themselves. That said, I do get the impression that the author thinks more highly of these creatures than she probably ought to.
Yeah I definitely got the impression it was Meyer telling us this! The soul wasn’t thinking it at the time, she seemed to be giving a pretty general description of how souls just are. Confusing!
Guysssss, it’s because they’re SOULS. Get it? SOULLLLLLLS. It’s a METAPHOR.
What I never understood is how on earth they managed to take over in the first place. They are nearly all terrible liars, leave obvious symptoms of infestation on their hosts and can’t even break human skin without outside help.
Worst. Bodysnatchers. Ever.
oh, my post tomorrow goes into this, don’t you worry
Yeerks were more believable and creepy scary going in through the ear in the Yeerk pool. I will be comparing this with Animorphs throughout the reading. 🙂 The names are so funny….Fords Deep Water and Darren…… hahaha. Dragons, well then we are also are into fantasy territory, this book has everything!
It was a struggle to not write an entire post of Animorphs jokes.
I’m so confused…. Can we just go back to pages and pages of the same sex scene just written differently with the help of a thesaurus?
I hope it gets easier or that Matt’s post will further help us. Explaining this “mysterious” crap was so much harder! I miss when things were harder in a different way.
The only person who can get away with naming a character Ford is Douglas Adams.
Can’t wait to hear what you have to say on the next few chapters. You guys should do a comparison post on the movie when it comes out; I want to know how they portray this silvery-feathery-creepy soul thing.
I’d love to do that! I think the movie was already in theaters, so it’s just a matter of seeing how quickly we get through the book, I suppose. But that would be so much fun 🙂