Host Chapter Thirty Five

On a decidedly semi-related note to Host, the new ‘movie’ opens this weekend. You know, the movie which shall not be named here. Between that and the further Otis novels and Host movie I feel like I am staring down a dark corridor of endless terrible media. No matter where I go, I can’t get away from this stuff. The ads on TV, the trailers and movie posters at the theater, and the occasional fan around whom I have to bite my tongue and ignore the resulting brain hemorrhages. Even the radio is constantly reminding me that bands I like are once again being featured on the soundtrack, leaving me extremely conflicted whenever I hear those particular songs.

I just have to ask, why has the majority settled for something well below mediocre? I could see it if Otis was one of those hacks that cranked out a book every year to nine months because then they’d be short. I could understand the appeal of bite sized, around three hundred pages or so, novels. They’d still be bad but their brevity would be a virtue in its own right. Instead, it’s like someone simply took a potentially interesting idea and added it to their own life without having it affect their day to day routine.

‘I got up to go to work, showering and shaving before I left. I decided not to drive using my telekinesis today because that might draw attention to me. Instead I savored the feel of controlling the car with my own hands. When I got to work I hung around the water cooler chatting with Bill, strenuously avoiding using my mind powers to dump his coffee down his pants for gypping me out of five dollars last week at lunch.’

I’m sorry but I expect most of us get plenty of dull from our own everyday lives. The only people I can think that this dose of boredom appeals to would be a superhero who just wishes that their significant other would stop getting killed off whenever a new author comes along and decides to rewrite the whole universe. I could see them saying to themselves ‘Gee, how nice it would be to be able to sit around kickin’ it rather than constantly patrolling the city and nearly getting killed whenever my arch nemesis decides to steal some near useless bit of jewelry to sell for nefarious purposes. And maybe I could have a relationship more stable than a plutonium rod left in a ditch full of enriched uranium.’

This chapter bills itself as ‘tried’. At this point I’m picturing Otis’s publisher standing atop a building, holding her agent hostage and arguing with a negotiator. ‘You don’t understand. I tried to make her write something that wasn’t just Twilight dressed up with antennas, I really did. But she wouldn’t do it.’ ‘Ma’am, just let the agent go and put down the gun. No one needs to get hurt.’ ‘To hell with that! I’m not taking the blame for this!’ Blam! Blam!

Can you guess how this chapter starts off? If you said, ‘Eve wakes up’ congratulate yourself. You are far smarter than any fan of Otis’s work and possess the pattern recognition required to survive in the real world. If you said ‘Oh I don’t know but the suspense is killing me’ I have unique investment opportunity available to you. I am president representative of the National Bank of Nigeria the first…

Well Eve wakes up in a room that Ian says now belongs to her. Kyle is going to face a ‘tribunal’ where Eve will try and lie, everyone will tell her it’s okay and then Kyle will very nearly get punished. That’s okay though because he’ll get his comeuppance later from some other source that will avoid requiring Jeb, or any of the characters we’re supposed to like, to do anything mean to anybody. Maybe they’ll take away his snacking privileges and put him in time out for a couple of weeks.

Ian brings Eve food, Ian helps her sit up, Ian awkwardly flirts with the alien. Oh and apparently the bad reaction she’s having to the morphine, a touch of nausea, is Jackie Otis’s fault not Eve’s. I see, so the aliens aren’t affected by our medicine but we’re affected by theirs. That makes so much sense.

Ian pulls out a surprise for Jackie. It’s a brand new, over under Remminton twelve gauge complete with two slugs, both for Eve. Ah, you shouldn’t have you big softie. Or it’s a bag of Cheetos.

Why is it that only food get’s mentioned by brand names regularly? Last time it was Pop Tarts this time it’s Cheetos. Otherwise Otis is perfectly comfortable with referring to a ‘sedan’ or a ‘rifle’ or a ‘shirt’ and letting us fill in the gaps. Was she worried that we wouldn’t have anything in mind if she said a bag of chips or something? ‘Oh my god, she’s eating a bag of chips but I don’t know what kind! Aarrggh, this book os ruined for me!’ Or is she angling for a product tie in when the movie comes out? Either way it irks me.

Jeeve finally starts figuring out that Ian is set to be her new love interest. I maintain that parts like these are there to make the fans feel rather clever for figuring it out in spite of the brain damage they received from eating the stick paste all the way through junior high school.

They go the ‘trubunal’ together. Jeb announces that he’ll overrule the majority vote if he doesn’t like it because he like the dog an pony show he’s instituted as government. It’s almost like Jeb is channeling Nicholas the second. I can only hope that the Bolsheviks will do something about him as well.

Ian volunteers to speak against his brother with no qualms, just like a real brother…who hates his sibling because they have a longstanding feud over a girl from their college days. Jared defends Jeeve in a, gasp!, shocking turn of events that would barely startle a box turtle.

They finally drag the farce of a ‘trial’ to a vote on whether Kyle can stay or he has to go. Eve tries to vote for him but Ian prevents it by clamping his arm around her. That’s right ladies, if a man doesn’t want you to vote because it goes against his principles, don’t fight it.

Giant surprise, Kyle can stay. Jeb warns them all that anyone else who tries to hurt Jeeve will be shot. Yeah, yeah and Eve will do something interesting, cows will sprout sixteen foot wings and this garbage will get somewhere rather that just circling the plot roundabout while feigning a right turn.

<<Chapter Thirty Four

Chapter Thirty Six>>