Paperback, 307 pages
Published
March 4th 2008
by St. Martin's Griffin
(first published 2008)
ISBN
0312360304
(ISBN13: 9780312360306)
edition language
English
original title
Chosen
series
characters
setting
Tulsa, Oklahoma
(United States)
Oklahoma (United States)
Dark forces are at work at the House of Night and fledgling vampyre Zoey Redbird’s adventures at the school take a mysterious turn. Those who appear to be friends are turning out to be enemies. And oddly enough, sworn enemies are also turning into friends. So begins the gripping third installment of this “highly addictive series” (Romantic Times), in which Zoey’s mettle will be tested like never before. Her best friend, Stevie Rae, is undead and struggling to maintain a grip on her humanity. Zoey doesn’t have a clue how to help her, but she does know that anything she and Stevie Rae discover must be kept secret from everyone else at the House of Night, where trust has become a rare commodity. Speaking of rare: Zoey finds herself in the very unexpected and rare position of having three boyfriends. Mix a little bloodlust into the equation and the situation has the potential to spell social disaster. Just when it seems things couldn’t get any tougher, vampyres start turning up dead. Really dead. It looks like the People of Faith, and Zoey’s horrid step-father in particular, are tired of living side-by-side with vampyres. But, as Zoey and her friends so often find out, how things appear rarely reflects the truth…
My Review
Well what to say with this one, book three of the house of night novels and we find that the drama is starting to pick up. Truths are becoming visible and betrayal is in the limelight for this one. There are certainly things happening within these pages that you would not have expected ever, not when you thought you had really got to know a character. Stevie Rae, as we know her, is not quite dead, but she is not quite alive as in vampyre terms. This of course is a little confusing because there is no name for what she is, whether she is a vampyre or a zombie or just some sort of new creature formed on the off chance. The novel really asks the reader to just hold on and to be patient with what is about to happen because you will understand at some point or another. Zoey however is challenged the whole way throughout this novel, not just be the aspect of needing to deal with Stevie Rae and helping her to heal and gain back her humanity so that she can be part of the team again, but normal complications that many teenagers go through, boy troubles! Of course this did seem to be the main focus in this book but the authors cleverly managed to twist it in with the other two plots of the story meaning it was not too overly cliche that you became bored or annoyed with it. In fact it was written very well and planned just well enough.
Neferet, we was already aware of her being evil, seems to show it more so in this. In fact her radiance and essence of jealousy shines throughout the whole novel and you can see the eagerness to get rid of the student who could very well take her place without her ever being missed or needed again. However, in this one she is very much more a vindictive bitch. She messes with Zoeys heart in this book, leaving her more alone than she has perhaps ever been. She is left to feel isolated from her friends who she can not share all her secrets with and from her boyfriend who she hugely betrays by sleeping with the amazing and somewhat sexy lorean blake, poet laurette. Your heart sort of tugs out for zoey here but at the same time I was sort of screaming, well you are the goddesses special chosen one, surely you should have been more aware of the evil doings that could happen. Then again, I realize just how well the authors have played of the teenager essence within the novel. They have neither forced it or made it seem unrealistic, in fact that have written it in the terms that all teenagers will be able to relate to. Afterall, who can resist the hot looking teacher. I challenge any and all of you to defy the fact that you have never had a crush on a school teacher?
Of course, I was angry with Zoey for her stupidity but the way that the authors displayed it meant that you could see the importance of her mistakes and that you could merely identify more with the fact that she was and is just a teenager and we all make huge and silly mistakes at that age no matter what. Stevie Rae though is still my favorite character, regardless of the fact that she plays a gross sort of zombie here within the novel, but also Aphrodite, because despite the fact that she appears as a bitch, you get the sense that deep down she just wanted to be accepted and to fit in and was merely pushed by her parents to be the best and the top dog when all she wanted to do was have a social life where she was accepted for who she was. I think throughout the whole series these were the two characters that I probably admired and related to the most, because they just seemed to have this sort of lifelike and realistic essence to them that meant you could understand them and identify with them.
Although there is a lot of positives here within this novel, there were things that I didn't particularly like. I felt that the ending of this novel was so overly rushed and it just felt like it was meant and needed to end within a page limit and they realized a little to late that they didn't have many pages left in order to do so. This was really annoying because you never got the real feel of what was happening and it actually left me going huh at the end of it because you just needed that little bit more information to fully understand the whole concept. A rushed ending always annoys me because for me it seems to downtrend the quality of the book in that it seems to loose all the power and depth that has been there throughout it. It just seems to exaggerate that no matter what its a novel and as a result you end up losing that life like feel that you got throughout the other parts of the book.
Apart from the ending being rushed though it was a good novel. yes there were things that I perhaps would have changed had it been my novel, but at the same time I appreciated it for what it was and enjoyed the tale that I was being told. Of course I will continue to read on throughout the series, afterall it is still one of my favorites and that is not likely to change.
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