Wanderer is part of a symbiotic alien race that is conquering the Earth. She and her race are implanted inside human subjects, bonding with them and taking over their bodies.

Melanie was one of the last few members of the human resistance, trying to fight back against the alien invaders and cling to their fragile humanity before the human race as we know it is wiped out. She has a brother and family in the resistance. She was on the way to join a larger resistance cell with her lover, Jared, when she is captured and bonded with Wanderer.

Wanderer’s consciousness takes over, but buried deep inside of the two is Melanie. Melanie is supposed to be gone, but she slowly begins to exert control and influence over Wanderer, much to the alarm of the female Seeker charged with Wanderer’s transition to life on Earth. During a trip for California to a new home, Wanderer decides to go off the path, find Jared and reconnect with Melanie’s life.

If you think I’m giving away too much of Stephenie Meyer’s new novel, “The Host,” I can tell you that all of what I’ve told you here happens in the first hundred or so pages. What follows is a character-driven sci-fi novel that offers up an exploration of what it means to be human, the nature of love and the questions of identity. If you’re looking for a hard and fast explanation of just how the bonding process works or the exact nature of the alien plan, you will be disappointed. But if you’re looking for a character driven, love story that uses elements of the invasion story and sci-fi to tell an interesting and compelling story about the human condition, this is definitely one to put on your “to be read” list.

Meyer’s central concept of having two personalities that talk to each other is one that could easily crumble under its own weight or become confusing for readers. But it never does. The story is told from Wanderer’s (later she takes the name Wanda) point of view with Melanie comig into things from time to time. The journey Wanda takes from being an alien outsider (even an outsider to her own culture) to becoming a part of our community is fascinating and compelling. At first, Wanda seems a bit cold, but as her journey unfolds, she becomes a fast-friend, even to the point that you can forget this is someone who is genuine alien narrating the events of the story.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not a huge fan of the Twilight series. I find the first book good, but the next two lost my interest. Part of it was the immaturity of the first-person narrator Bella.

So, I admit I approached “The Host” with equal parts anticipation and reservation. But by having a more mature first-person narrator, Meyer avoids the traps of the Twilight novels, giving readers a richer, more meaningful story. By half-way through the novel, it became difficult to decide which side of the personality I wanted to win out and have the ultimate decision making authority and control. That is a true testiment to Meyer’s character creation.

At its essence, “The Host” is a love-story that uses sci-fi elements to tell the story. A love quadrangle develops in the course of the story. Meyer never simplifies things or makes them easy for her characters. Each character has to make some truly hard decisions and live with their consequences. In this universe, all is not fair in love and war. And as you read the book, you wouldn’t want it any other way.

That’s not to say “The Host” is perfect. It does drag a bit in the middle chapters. But they are necessary to the character-building Meyer is doing.

After straying away from his typical “Christian guys confused by relationships” pattern with A Pagan’s Nightmare Ray Blackston returns to that fertile ground with his latest novel. Centering on Chris Hackett, the owner and golf pro at Hack’s Driving Range, the novel gets back to what Blackston does best–put guys in situations where they have no clues.

In this case, it’s Chris’ blindly enlisting for a seminar on communication between men and women and meeting Molly, a political reporter who throws him for a proverbial loop. Following Molly’s advice, Chris opens up nights for political parties to come out and take out thier frustration on their political opposites at his driving range. They prove wildly successful and soon gain Chris local and national prominence.

Unlike most contemporary Christian novels, the strength of Blackston’s stories is that he has authentic characters who he puts on authentic journeys. Nothing feels forced or contrived about Chris’ story and even when Chris gets on the peaks and valleys that come with any journey through life, his reaction to it still feels authentic. And while Chris does learn from both extremes, the writing never feels forced or preachy, unlike a great many other writers in the contemporary Christian genre.

The novel is also peppered with the usual eccentrics that Blackston relishes.

This is a fun, charming and entertaining novel that firmly puts Blackston in the upper echelions of contemporary Christian writers. Par for the Course is Blackston’s best book since his initial offering Flabbergasted.

And if you’re a fan of his novels, you’ll see a few cameos of characters from other books sprinkled in here, adding to the enjoyment and delight of long-time readers.

If your only exposure to Starship Troopers is the movie of the same name, you really owe it to yourself to pick up and read the original. While the movie and book share some similarities, know that the script for the movie was written and then the rights to the book were optioned. Which means the producers took the familar name, some elements and added them to an existing script, all the while discarding much of what makes the novel so respected among sci-fi fans.

The cover advertises this one as a “controversial” classic, though having read it twice, I disagree with that. Heinlein give us his views on military service, child reearing and what it takes to win a war, but there’s not much in here that I found overly controversial—at least not in the same way as Stranger in a Strange Land or Friday. Instead, you get a few scenes of military combat woven between long lectures on Heinlein’s philosophy.

If anything, this is a melding of the two Heinlein writing styles—the philosophical debate tomes of his later years and his early young adult books.

The two longer entries in this series of true-crime story are compelling, fascinating and interesting. The first one of a woman trying to escape her controlling, manipulative husband is chilling and fascinating. It’s also wonderful to watch the arrogance of the man catch up to him and end up undoing him in the end. The last entry has a local (to me) angle, exploring the Mary Winkler case. Winkler was found guilty of killing her preacher husband. Rule delves into the background, offering her own analysis and reporting on what could have led to the events of Matthew Winkler’s death.

In between are some stories that are more unsolved mysteries and snippets of what could have been more.

It’s hard to know exactly what to make of season fifteen’s “The Invasion of Time.” On the one hand, it was definite ammo for John Nathan-Turner’s crusade to do away with six-part stories, calling them little more than a two-parter tacked onto a four-parter. On the other hand, you’ve got a story that is like the younger, less talented step-son of the previous year’s superior in every, Robert Holmes written “The Deadly Assassin.”

And then if you examine the story within the entire context of Tom Baker’s run as Doctor, you’ve got one of the last gasps of the show actually stretching Baker as an actor and not having him totally out of control until “The Leisure Hive” to begin season eighteen.

But none of that answers the essential question of whether or not the story is an entertaining one, which is really what all of “Doctor Who” can and should be about.

The answer to that is—yes and no.

The story starts off fairly well with two episodes of the Doctor acting strangely—almost completely out of his mind. In the day and age when we’ve all seen these stories fifteen million times, it’s hard to recall the feeling of disorinetation and confusion that went with the first viewing of this story. I recall seeing it for the first time, wondering through the first two episodes just what was up with the Doctor. Had he finally lost his mind? Was he betraying his people? Why was he acting mad and alienating those around him? Why would he banish Leela from him?

The first two episodes are driven by this tension, this wondering and a strong performance as Tom Baker. Baker seems to relish the chance to truly mess with viewers head, making them wonder if the Doctor has finally gone over the edge and betrayed Gallifrey. Or is it some mad plot to get back at them for the exile, for the years of errands and a myriad of other perceived sins.

By the time we get to the lead-lined office and scene with Borusa, the tension has mounted to a piont that it’d be eas to think the show is going back to the early days of Hartnell with the Doctor clearly the anti-hero. And then, the Doctor reveals he’s setting up the Vardans, trying to figure out their planet of origin and suddenly a lot of that tension is gone. Many of the main characters don’t yet know of the Doctor’s ruse, so there is still some tension (and a cliffhanger) from the misunderstanding created by the Doctor’s own actions. But just as the questions about the Doctor’s motivations are answered, a lot more come up—many of which the script never answers. The biggest is just who exactly are the Vardans and why are they a such a percevied threat? Because the story progresses, they don’t seem quite as powerful or threatening as the Daleks might have been or as the Sontarans are later in the script. Indeed, when the villains of the first three-quarters of the story become a running joke in a later New Adventure you know something has gone horrible wrong.

Of course, it’s at this point the script has kind of gone of the rails a bit. Once we know the Doctor is really betraying the Vardans, the script becomes little more than a whole lot of running about corridors from various alien monsters—first the Vardans, then the Sontarans. But in that running about , there are a few isolated moments that work well. The Doctor’s resignation that he has to use the demat gun as the only way to defeat the Sontarans in nice, though it lacks the sheer power of the “Do I have the right” scene in “Genesis of the Daleks.” Also, the Sontarans themselves are a bit of non-starter. They show up as one of the more surprising cliffhangers in the show’s history, only to do little more than stomp about Gallifrey and the TARDIS shouting platitudes and threatening people. Oh, and dying a lot. Again, the budgetary limits of the show at the time betray the potential epic feel the story wants becuase it’s hard to believe that both the Vardans and Sontarans would send an invasion force of three people.

But that’s the budget limiations of old-school “Doctor Who.” I’m sure if this were made today, we’d have legions of digitally created Sontarans skulking about. Whether or not that’s better, I’m not sure. I suppose with them returning for the upcoming season of “Doctor Who” we may get our chance to find out.

Yet somehow, for a six-part story, the ending of “Invasion of Time” seems rushed. Leela’s departure seems hastily tacked on and is a disservice to the character. Why she’d wish to remain on Gallifrey doesn’t make much sense and there’s just no real sense of attraction between she and Andred. The script tries to insert a few scenes to foreshadow this—or maybe it’s the actors trying to make the best of a bad situation, but it doesn’t exactly come to much.

All in all, what you end up with is a clunky end to an uneven season. And the beginning of a very different era for the show…one from which it would take the show years to fully recover.

When the only compelling character is the asteroid, you know something’s wrong.

I was rooting for the asteroid to just hit the Earth already and kill all of these characters. Alas, some survived and we had to endure another 200 plus pages of bad character developing and poor writing.

Not worth the paper it’s printed on….

In any other season, “Face of Evil” would be in the running for the best story of the season.

But placed in the heart of season fourteen, surrounded on two sides by classic stories, “Face of Evil” can and does get easily overlooked by fans (this one included) when it comes to naming off the classics of Hinchcliffe/Holmes era.

Watching it again, for the first time in years, I found myself thinking about what a huge shame that is.

Becuase “Face of Evil” is one of those big-idea, high-concept Doctor Who stories that works on just about every level. OK, so it’s quite the same level of Who-fan nirvana that “Deadly Assassin” or “Robots of Death” is. But I’d argue in a lot of ways, this story has a lot more big-ideas per episode than those two do.

The central conflict of the story is a religious war between the Tesh and the Sevateem. The two sides are kept seprarate by a barrier, but they agree on one thing—their “god” Xoannon. Each side is absolutely convinced they are right in their way of interacting or worshipping Xoannon, to the point that they’re prepared to wipe out the other side in what they see as their divine right and duty.

What makes this that much more interesting is that Xoannon turns out not to be a god, but a computer gone amok. And that the Doctor has created this problem by trying to help the situation. Sometime earlier, the fourth Doctor landed on the planet and imprinted his personality on the computer system. He thought he’d wiped his mental patterns from the machine, but they somehow stayed and have now run amok. The computer has taken over and has delusions of gradeur, setting itself up as a god and not wanting to be shut down.

It’s even willing to allow the two sides of human beings on the planet to go to war in order to stop the Doctor.

It’s a fascinating story and watching the series explore it is nicely done. And while it is easy to clearly demark the story’s shift (it spends two episodes with the Tesh, two with the Sevateem), it still doesn’t make it any less compelling or interesting. The series doesn’t go so far as to debunk religious beliefs. Instead, the Doctor challenges the mindless following of any one system or set of beliefs to an extreme. The Doctor meets and bonds with Leela, who he challenges to think outside her paradigm and she does. Of course, it’s not hard to buy that she would since the first scene sets up that Leela has challenged the status quo and is being exiled because of it. She may be a “savage” but she’s willing to think for herself, something which the Doctor picks up on early in the story. Of course, she’s still a product of her upbringing, as we see with her falling back upon the kill first, ask questions later theory time and again with her character. We see the Doctor’s moral outrage at the use of the Janus Thorn and his rebuking Leela that she need not kill every perceived enemy.

Like I said, this is “big idea” storytelling by Doctor Who. (The original title of the story was “The Day God Went Mad” if that tells you anything).

It’s also a story that is told in a time when the production team is in full confidence. The script is smart, well done and holds the attention for four episodes. Louise Jamison’s work as Leela is top-notch and her character provides a great counterpoint to Tom Baker’s fourth Doctor. And Baker himself is clearly comfortable and excelling in the role of the Doctor. Again, the Tom Baker of later seasons has yet to crop up and we see that Baker can act when he wants to. He turns in a great performance here and while there are a few moments of fun and silliness, they’re no where near as out of control and exceessive as later seasons (see season 17 for examples).

So all of that said, why doesn’t “Face of Evil” rank higher among fans. I still say it has a lot to do with where the story falls in the series run than anything. Were it not sandwiched between two classics, it might be a lot better regarded. And another thing to give this story credit for—it’s hard to follow an instant classic by Robert Holmes. For a greater appreciation of how good this one turned out to be, just skip ahead to what followed “The Caves of Androzani.”

Most of us who grew up on Who watched in the post-Deadly Assassin era, so it’s hard to imagine the impact this must have had on Who fans back in the mid-70s when Robert Holmes’ classic story first aired. Up until this point, the Time Lords had been presented as a powerful, almost omnipotent society that seemed to always be in control of things. There were never hints of any types of class struggle or a hierarchy of houses or even a hint that any of the people within the system could be corrupted (obviously seeing the Doctor and the Master, we knew there were those who were discontent with the system, but until now we’d always seem a unified and powerful front both in War Games and Three Doctors).

Deadly Assassin changes all of that in four short episodes.

The Doctor is summoned home to Gallifrey by powerful visions of the assignation of the Lord President of the High Council. The Doctor’s return is not treated as a good thing by his fellow Time Lords, many of whom see him still as a rebel and possibly the person there to assignate the Lord President. The Doctor quickly becomes embroiled in the plot and tries to stop the assignation, only to fail and be accused of the crime himself. The rest of the story follows the Doctor as he attempts to solve the mystery, even to the point of entering the Matrix to find the real traitor and the real mind behind the plot. On paper, it sound like a fairly standard Who story — Doctor arrives in a place, Doctor gets accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Doctor solves the crime and finds the real culprit. But along the way, we get so much more than that.

Robert Holmes gives Who fans the first real look at Gallifrey. Before this, we were superficially exposed to the Time Lords home world — seeing a trial room in The War Games and a command center in The Three Doctors. Here we see the internal workings of Time Lord society. It’s a system very much based on class and which house you belong to. We find out the Doctor belonged to a rather esteemed house and that his departure caused a lot of ripples. We even find out that not all the Time Lords are aware of the Doctor’s departure and his meddling in time and space, as we see in the conversation with Runcibal at the Panoptican. We also find out that the Time Lords can be just as corrupt as the Master himself and some of them are even power-hungry enough to cast their fortune in with our favorite villain from the Pertwee years.

It’s a bit shocking, really. The Time Lords are no longer pillars of morality and justice. They have become more complex — and, thus, some of the mystery surrounding them has been taken away. Robert Holmes knocks the Time Lords down a few notches and forever changes who stories about Gallifrey are told.

In many ways, the changes in The Deadly Assassin are as radical as the changes that FOX TV movie would attempt years later.

But yet, these changes are more accepted by Who fans and not as radically debated or decried among the Who community.

Why is that?

I think a large part of it is that Holmes took seeds that were sown and while he did run with them in a new way, there were hints this was coming. Deadly Assassin is one of those stories that makes you re-examine all the stories that came before and all those that come after it. Holmes does come from out of left field with the story, but not so far as to strain viewer credulity.

And while all of this is important to Dr. Who, Holmes never loses sight of the fact that in order to get these points out there as part of the Who canon, you’ve got to tell a great story to go along with it. Deadly Assassin is a great story. It’s full of politician intrigue, well done dialogue, suspense and drama. And it must have hit some nerves with Who fans since it’s infamous for the violent outcry by one Mary Whitehouse over the apparent violent content — especially in the Doctor’s struggle in the Matrix. The story is four episodes of great storytelling with the usual dark flourishes by Robert Holmes and a darn good story along the way. In many ways, Deadly Assassin is the best 4th Doctor story that Robert Holmes delivered, though it can be argued that Ark in Space is as good in its own way.

But along with the intrigue, there are ties to the past — with the Master coming back to seek his revenge upon the Doctor. This plotline feels like a plot the Master would come up with — one that is layers within layers and designed to trap the Doctor. You get the feeling like you did during the Delgado era that the Master’s plots were complex and complicated in an attempt to trap the Doctor — but yet, the Master would sometimes miss the blindingly obvious details that would allow his plan to succeed. We also see the beginning of the Master’s half-baked ideas that become so prevalent in the JN-T years with Ainley. The Master has a gratutious scheme and is willing to do whatever it takes to carry it out and bring himself the things he wants — power and the destruction of the Doctor, but only by first humiliating his long-standing enemy.

The Deadly Assassin is many things. It’s a violent story of good vs. evil. It’s an examination of the Time Lord society in a new way. It’s a four-part adventure that seizes you by the throat and never lets go. And most of all, it’s a darn fine story. Outside of Caves of Androzani, this may be Robert Holmes’ masterpiece of Doctor Who. And saying that about a writer of Robert Holmes’ caliber is a high compliment indeed.

The self-proclaimed “two sexiest fat men alive” return with their second book.

If you’ve read the first book, you have a good idea of what Rick and Bubba are all about—two regular guys who have a radio show, where each morning they sit there and dispense with anecdotes about family, friends, politics, religion and just about anything else that comes to mind. They have guests, who they enjoy interviewing and they’ve got a delightful sense of humor. It’s hard to go more than five minutes without laughing at something Rick, Bubba or one of the crew has done or said.

The book is pretty much a compilation of some of their greater insights from the show. The guys attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe, shedding light on some things that, quite frankly, need some light shed on them.

But it’s not the humor alone that makes Rick and Bubba who they are. These are two Christian guys who are walking daily and it shows in their witness. They are unapologetic for who they are and what they believe, wearing thier faith on their sleeves and being open about their successes and failures in their daily walk. It’s this witness that is the most powerful thing about these two guys and what keeps me coming back day after day to hear the show and eagerly picking up their books when they come out.

Of course, reading the book is great. It’s an easy read with short, easy to digest chapters. Included with the book is a “best of” CD that if you haven’t heard the duo in their native environment, you can get a sample of what it’s like.

Seeds of Doom" is an interesting little six-part “Doctor Who” story in that while it has a lot of elements that make for a good “Doctor Who” story, there are parts of that feel distinctly not-“Doctor Who”-like.

The biggest of these is the Doctor himself, who morphs into an action hero whenever the script calls for it. I am specifically thinking of the opening to part four, where the Doctor crashed through a skylight to save Sarah by punching out the villains’ main henchman and threatening everyone with a gun. The script tries to cover the Doctor holding a gun on someone with a quick line later that they didn’t know he wouldn’t use it, but the moment still feels odd in the overall context of the character and the show.

And that doesn’t even begin to cover the sequences in which the Doctor is even more strangely aloof than usual. He constantly warns about the danger poses to Earth by the Krynoid, but yet is the first one out to find the second pod buried in the snow. This seems a bit odd since the pod is no threat and it’s not like anyone is going to know it’s there unless he sends them out looking for it. Of course, it’s easy to see that this is a necessity of the script, becuase if we don’t have the second Krynoid, the story is only two episodes long or we have to find a way to get the growing and maturing Krynoid back to England and chase.

Of course, you could say I’m over-analyzing and thinking too much about “Doctor Who” here and I should just simply sit back, turn the brain off and enjoy the story.

Because there really is a lot to enjoy to this story. It’s one of the creepier stories on an era that excelled at creepy stories. The Krynoid is nicely realized, even if it is just the Axon suit painted green. And the supporting cast is nicely realized—esp. Harrison Chase and Scorby. Here we have two villians who don’t see themselves as the bad guys. Chase simply loves plants and would love to become one (interesting that he doesn’t allow the Krynoid to convert him to a plant, instead saving that fate for Sarah Jane or Keeler). His love of plants is quickly taken over by the Krynoid and used to drive the later stages of the story as Chase slowly starts killing and grinding up any humans he can find to feed his precious plants.

As for Scorby, he could easily have been little more than a hired thug. When we first meet him, we don’t like him, but as the story evolves, you start to feel a bit more for him than just out and out hatred. By the time Scorby has jumped ship to the Doctor’s side and is whipping up Molotov cocktails to distrat the Krynoid, you can almost root for him. And when he dies in a futile attempt to escape the estate, it’s easy to feel a bit saddened and not like this is just a bad-guy getting his due. It’s a nicely done performance and some good character work by both the actor and the script.

That said, “Seeds of Doom” does have its flaws. Its the same story told twice over—the Krynoid infects someone and starts growing. The first two parts in Antartica are really a preview of what’s to come, though why the Krynoid flees into the snow and cold I’m not quite sure. Being a plant, I’d think it’d want to stay somewhere warm and humid, but I’m not an alien plant, so what do I know? Then the scene shifts to England with Chase running amok and releasing a second Krynoid. One that must be stopped before it conquers the planet and spreads its pods across all of the world. Again, it’s intersting that the Axon suit is used for the Krynoid since this is the same dilemma that drives much of the later stages of “Claws of Axos.”

And while I could point out that it’s obvious the production team isn’t anywhere near a cold climate when the Antarctic scenes are filmed, what would be the point? It’s old-school “Doctor Who” and honestly if you nitpick it too much, it loses some of the fun.

“Seeds of Doom” is better than the sum of its parts, quite frankly. It’s a good six-part story that has little or no padding (a rare thing for six-part stories) and it features some memorable performances by the regular and guest casts. It’s definitely meant to be watched one episode at a time because it helps over up some things. If you watch this one all at once, the holes will become that much more obvious. It’s not a classic Tom Baker story, but it could have been. It’s an entertaining, fun and atmospheric story that shows a production staff on the cusp of producing one of the best seasons in the show’s long run.