Levels: The Host

A book review.

Levels: The Host

by Peter Emshwiller

published: 1991.04.01

ISBN: 0990607313

genre: Sci-Fi

reviewed:2010.06.06

When I found this book on the shelf, still new, I was twenty years old and at university, losing my sense of direction in third year and tired of being lonely. But I was finding new music and new fiction.

This is a "Man in a Hole" story that I seem to be drawn to - I've reviewed any number of books with that theme on this site. The main character is a young man who rents out his body for someone else to inhabit - a reverse sort of prostitute. He observes what his "guest" from the upper echelons of society (both figuratively and literally) takes his body for a spin around the street level.

While I enjoyed the thematic setting - always a fan of sex and violence - there were some issues with this piece. It has just a ridiculous stack of problems for the hero (if you could call him that) to deal with. And somewhere along the way it begins to drag, getting bogged down when it should pick up the pace. In the end I wasn't moved to keep an eye out for Emshwiller as I was some of the other others that I was discovering at that time.