Review: Chosen Ones

Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, my loyal Pinecones, the time has come for me to review another Veronica Roth book, one which I was lucky to read as an ARC this time. And unlike her last series, Carve the Mark and The Fates Divide, I am very happy to say that I was not at all disappointed. Though it's not quite at the high-water mark the Divergent series left for me, the platinum standard that made Roth one of my all-time faves, it's a damn sight better than that half-baked duology she tried to come back with a few years ago. And watch how that blew up in her face when Justina Ireland said the book was racist, others said it was ableist, etc. etc. etc.


This time, though, I think Roth's given us a book that really reflects on her experiences as a YA writer, and goes into more adult territory - certainly marked by the fact that our main characters are in their early thirties, years past their teenage "Chosen One" days, and of course prone to mental health issues and frequent cussing. Roth also pokes fun at the whole "Chosen One" narrative vs. the "Dark One," prefacing the entire book with a snippet of an in-universe stand-up routine that mocks the unimaginative nomenclature of the Dark One and the Chosen Ones (whose apocalyptic fights, the result of "Drains" causing powerful storms to wreck entire neighborhoods and leave them uninhabitable for years afterward, help lead to an alternate history splitting off from the real world circa 2005, while the book takes place in the now-alternate 2020.) One thing's for sure, though, the band of five Chosen Ones who help defeat the Dark One would likely not have been in any story written in our 2005, not when authors and readers alike are actively pushing for greater diversity - the Chosen Ones are very diverse racially, majority girls (one of them, Ines, also being gay), and the one who gets the most publicity, Matt, is black. But then there's also a few in-universe news articles - some of which come off as disingenuous at best and concern trolling at worst - trying to paint the book's true main character, Sloane, as if she should be the real leader because she's a woman, to which Sloane responds that you're probably racist for putting the white woman on a pedestal above a black man.

Yeah, I get the feeling that Roth might've been hit pretty hard by the accusations of racism against Carve the Mark, inspiring her to fight harder against all the forms of all the bigotry in this particular narrative to ensure it's harder to make any such accusations stick this time. And it might've also influenced her to write this one as an adult and not a YA novel, because let's face it, nobody in YA gives Roth her due respect anymore. (Though I did find it strange that Daniel José Older, one of the biggest call-out kind of peeps, still appeared in conversation with her to promote The Fates Divide back in 2018...but I digress.)

What really makes this book shine, though, is the unexpected twists and turns of its second half, when Roth finally gets back to some seriously genius-level world building. I won't spoil it, not a word, but let's just say now I know exactly why Blake Crouch and Charlie Jane Anders blurbed this book. It's the stuff of legend, and more than ever reminds me of why Roth is a lifetime fave of mine - and I'll for sure be using this book as a comp title for future queries once I finish my current manuscript.

Best of all, while Roth is promising a series, this one doesn't end on a nasty cliffhanger. Though it does end most promisingly, with a tantalizing suggestion of even more Fringe-grade wildness going forward. All I hope for is that I get to read an ARC of that one too, in a year or two or however long it takes to get to us!

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