The Names in This Book Keep Getting Dumber Somehow: The Host Chapters 43 & 44

By the time you guys read this, I will be preparing to head to London for grad school. WOOO! Yay for getting things done in advance so you guys don’t have to miss out on the greatest book in the history of forever.

Previously, Wanderer made out with Ian and Jared in the name of saving Melanie…who had disappeared to some other part of the brain or something. It’s unclear! Also Jamie’s leg wound is more serious than everyone originally thought. It’s all infected.

Matthew says: I feel like a bit of a jerk for barely mentioning this happened in my last post and/or saying “I honestly just don’t care”, but come on, I had all that love triangle drama to talk about! Priorities!

Chapter 43: Frenzied 

According to Wanderer, Jamie is near death. I just don’t believe this at all because Meyer doesn’t have the balls to kill poor, sweet Jamie. Also, conveniently, no one can find any antibiotics on their raids anymore. I wonder how many pages it’ll be till this gets resolved and another issue is raised like who will Melerer make out with next.

The solution is presented in a page! Wanderer is a soul…and so she can go infiltrate the souls by being a soul and get their medicine to heal Jamie!

“They aren’t suspicious. Not at all. Even if I’m a horrible liar, they would never suspect me of anything. They wouldn’t be listening for lies. Of course not. I’m one of them. They would do anything to help me. I’d say I got hurt hiking or something… and then I’d find a way to be alone and I’d take as much as I could hide. Think of it! I could get enough to heal everyone here. To last for years. And Jamie would be fine! Why didn’t I think of this before? Maybe it wouldn’t have been too late even for Walter.”

I guess even cancer could have had a simple solution in this book!

Matthew says: But seriously, the simplicity and obviousness of this plan is hilariously awful.

Even if they did find your old antibiotics, what are the chances they would still be any good? […] He doesn’t need your medicine. He needs something more than that. Something that really works…
My breathing sped up, deepened as I saw it.
He needs mine, I realized.
Mel and I were both awestruck by the obviousness of this idea. The simplicity of it.

Oh my gosh! If we had the stuff that solves every health problem that I’ve talked about hundreds of times, then we could solve every health problem! HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND. WE SOLVED THE PROBLEM.

Surprisingly, though, everyone is completely suspicious of this plan. Okay, maybe it’s not that surprising, but I did think at this point everyone trusted Wanderer enough not to think this was her way of escaping. That would be brilliant, (and given her horrific discovery a couple chapters ago believable) but that is soooo not Wanderer.

Melerer just says Jamie’s name for like twenty pages, and everyone just leaves her to it including Jared who wouldn’t help a girl out.

But then, twist, Jared comes back and uses chloroform on Doc, and he’s like, “Let’s go.”

Yay! Someone finally did something in this book that wasn’t totally annoying or idiotic! Also, Wanderer’s description of Doc being chloroformed is pretty hilarious.

My eyes couldn’t make sense of the shapes in the darkness at first. Doc was jerking strangely. And he seemed too big— like he had too many arms.

What does that even mean? What does this have to do with the chloroform? Is he spasming so manically that it causes him to look like a giant with a million arms?

Jared blindfolds Melerer, leads her out of the cave, and then they run in the desert for awhile until they get to Jared’s jeep. Yes. His jeep.

Matthew says: The Jeep is kept with a secret stash of clean clothes that they use when they go on raids to be less conspicuous, and we can probably assume this isn’t too far away from the cave. But didn’t it take Wanderer three or four days of hiking through the desert to get there? Is that not the case anymore, or are we just assuming that the entire desert is just really flat and driveable for some reason?

So Jared decides to take her to a hospital in Tucson, which is where Fords Deep Waters is I think (remember him and his hilarious name, you guys?). Wanderer is rightfully worried about things like the appearance of her face (souls don’t have scars or get beaten up by people regularly) or how exactly she’s going to get the medicine out of there. Jared gives her some poison to take if she does get captured.

Wanderer’s solution for the whole face problem is to have Jared hit her really hard with a rock. I like it, I like it a lot.

Matthew says: This book just got much better.

Chapter 44: Healed 

Jared scrapes enough skin off her face to hide the scar (he says he took about half her face off, ewww!), and despite the pain Melerer is satisfied.

Matthew says: For our more sadistic readers, here’s the passage where Jared hits Melanie in the face with a rock:

It made a squishing sound and a thud – that was the first thing I noticed – and then the shock of the blow wore off, and I felt it, too.

Melerer drives to the healing facility while Jared hides in the back of the car and gives her directions. A literal backseat driver! Chuckles. So then Melerer has to stab herself in the leg to mimic Jamie’s wound so she can see how they heal it.

Inside, Wanderer tells the receptionist she fell while hiking and happened to have a knife in her hand. Oops. Wanderer is forced to give a code name and she chooses “Glass Spires.” What does that even mean? I love the names in this book. Apparently this is a “generic name of a herd member from [Wanderer’s] time with the Bears.

Matthew says: I guess Glass Spires is like the Soul version of John Smith.

Melerer’s Healer comes along, and her name is even better!

Ha! It’s Healer Knits Fire. So she…knits fire? WHAT THE FUCK! I LOVE IT! 

Matthew says: As badass a name as this is, if my doctor’s name was “Knits Fire”, I’d get the fuck out of that doctor’s office.

Fire gives Melerer some medicine that is literally just called “no pain,” which even Melerer seems to think lacks creativity. “Two short words. No Pain? Was that what it said?”

Then things get even more super convenient!

Almost as if she were trying to help me fulfill my mission, she listed the names as she reached for them.
“Clean— inside and out… Heal… Seal… And where is… ah, Smooth…”

And more straightforward!

“What are you doing now?”
She smiled. I guessed that I was not the first curious soul. “This is Clean. It will make sure nothing foreign stays in the wound.

Matthew says: Throughout the entire book, Wanderer is ragging on human medicine because “they don’t work” whereas soul medicine “heals”. Apparently. Earlier in this chapter she was ragging on antibiotics, so what’s the first bit of soul medicine we find? Something that “will make sure nothing foreign stays in the wound”. JUST LIKE FUCKING ANTIBIOTICS. IT’S THE SAME PRINCIPLE.

I hear this product is endorsed by Mr. Clean! After the souls took over the planet and his brain, he was more than willing to put his face on Clean.

And he also endorses this one:

“And the Inside Clean, just in case anything has snuck into your system. Inhale this, please.”

Meyer isn’t even trying now. C’monnnnn!

After applying some “Heal” onto Melerer’s wound, Fire casually asks some questions about what kind of life Glass Spires leads. Just in case you thought this fake identity couldn’t get any more thrilling, her fake job is serving Mexican food because she likes spicy food.

Fire leaves and Melerer steals a bunch of shit from the cabinets, which just happen to be located in the same room! Yay!

The chapter ends with footsteps coming towards the room as the doctor returns…bum bum bum?

Matthew says: TWO sets of footsteps! Clearly something interesting is going to happen- oh, who am I kidding? We’re only 68% through the novel. We’re not close to anything actually advancing the plot yet.