Book Review

Guest Review: Chosen by Kiersten White

This guest review was written by Crystal Anne With An E. Crystal reads a lot, cross-stitches, and is an autism consultant by day and goes to library school by night. She is a Hufflepuff, because honey badgers don’t give a shit. Crystal Anne also reviewed Slayer, the first book in this duology.

Well, folks, guess who’s back, back again.

It seemed unfair to review the first in Kiersten White’s Slayer series and not hit the second one when it came out. The completist part of my brain could not let that one stand.

Chosen picks up an undetermined amount of time after the events of Slayer, with Nina turning the castle that housed what remained of the Watcher’s Council into a sanctuary for non-lethal, mostly non-evil demons. Her sister has gone into the wind with her girlfriend, and Nina is trying to build a relationship with her distant mother. This book likely does not work unless you have read Slayer, as most of the characters were introduced therein, and much of the action and character development hinges on events that took place in it.

To me, this book is very much in conversation with one particular scene in BtVS. You know the one. It involved a sword and a deep desire to not be interrupted.

This book is all about power. It is about who has the power, what it can mean for them, where it comes from, and what it can do to the people that have it. Nina spends much of the book holding back her power, because she feels like it is changing who she is at a fundamental level. Artemis goes seeking power at any cost, and falls into the darkness as a result.

Nina identifies as a Hufflepuff (represent), and says at one point that she’s probably the first one of those in the Watcher’s Council, which was likely chock-full of Ravenclaws and Slytherins (and let’s face it, most of those Slayers were likely Gryffindors). She comes from a place of loyalty and compassion. She has to come to terms with the realization that just because you’re a Hufflepuff doesn’t mean you don’t fight, especially for those you love and would protect. Nina would have benefited from reading Shelly Laurenston’s books, honestly. Honey badgers will mess you all the way up and the ones in those books are all about their family.

Nina feels rage and has a lot of trouble holding back when it’s time to get to punching, but hold back she does, and people get hurt as a result. When she accepts that fighting to protect those who need help does not mean she cannot afterward help to heal those who were hurt, she becomes the most effective Slayer she can be. She can fight, and she can help people heal.

Nina has an interesting realization of why the Slayer was one girl in all the world when she confronts a man who believes that his money and resources give him the right to subjugate those he perceives as below him:

The Slayer is a girl. The Slayer isn’t some rich dude, insulated from life and pain and struggle, sitting in his Mr. Darcy house deciding who gets to live and die.

I cannot lie, reading about that dude getting his ass kicked was thoroughly satisfying.

Click for more of the thoroughly satisfying

Buffy throws a football and knocks a guy flat on his back

Artemis, her twin, in contrast, is unable to accept the role reversal of not being the Chosen One. Prior to Nina’s ascension to Slayer, she was the competent twin who often protected her nerd sister. She is still focused on wanting to be able to protect her sister and the rest of her family, but she goes to violent lengths to achieve this goal, continuously telling herself that the ends will justify her means, and that when she has enough power, everything will be fine:

She just wants enough actual power to change things. Maybe if she had been the Slayer, it would be different. But it’s not. Not yet. Not until she makes it different.

We all know the answer to that one, folks. There is never enough power, and power can destroy the person trying to hold it.

The callbacks to the larger Buffy universe remain, although this time, points are made about the Slayer line and the treatment of many of those Slayers over time. In this book, readers learn that Nina’s father was lobbying for the Watcher’s Council to provide the Slayers a living stipend, instead of letting them grow up in abject poverty (like Faith Lehane) or work in dead-end jobs since Slaying tends to interfere in job-hunting and job-keeping (like one Buffy Summers). I mean, how much sense would that have made?

Show Spoiler

buffy flipping burgers in a fast food restaurant

The references to characters from the Buffyverse were always enjoyable, with cameos made by Faith, Chao-Ahn, and Clem. I’m not listing the appearance that I enjoyed most, but I’ll give you this much: he’s still kind of weird, still funny, and still pocket-sized (and as one character says of him, “Trust me, don’t ever think about anything he says, or you’ll lose your mind.”).

I was also entertained by Honora Wyndam-Pryce’s hubristic idea about how she and Artemis should move to California, stake the vampire that her cousin works for, and take over their PI agency, since they would obviously be able to take him. Anyone who knows about the character arc of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce knows that her attempt would not have gone as she thinks it would have. But it would have been HILARIOUS.

...such a weirdo

Wesley is such a weirdo.

I really responded to some of the ways that White addressed the idea of how demons would work in the modern world as well. On the show, the demons were always skulking about in the dark, which makes sense for them, but in this book, we get to see how demons navigate the daylight and live in the world. One of the action pieces is set against a demon convention that masquerades as a special-effects makeup convention. How clever is that? Of course they would be able to hang out in a hotel lobby with that as their cover. Now, every time I go to a sci-fi/fantasy convention, I will have to eye the cosplayers with a sense of suspicion.

Much suspicion.

Willow in a knight costume with Seth Green on Halloween

There were a few things that I wish I had seen more of. While I did enjoy the amount of Doug the happiness-drug demon, I would have liked to see more of Rhys and Cillian. If you’re going to give me a Scooby Gang that has a baby Giles, I want to spend some time with them. I also feel like the heel turn taken by one of the characters should have taken place earlier in the book, because after some light monologuing, the villain was dispatched and the book was over. It felt abrupt. If the other characters had, throughout the narrative, become aware that something was not right with this person and were becoming suspicious of certain actions and events that were taking place, that ending would have felt more earned to me. While the character in question was pulling some strings, I do not feel like it happened slowly enough to really show how everything fit together. I always have problems with a lack of villainous development in a narrative; ask me what I think of Daenerys’s arc on Game of Thrones.

That said, I think this book left the Slayer mythos in a good place. A place where the Slayers and Watchers are able to reconfigure what their role has always been, and where a Slayer like Nina can find her place as a leader in this world:

We don’t live with one foot in the darkness. We live with our shoulders against the door, holding it shut so it doesn’t flood the world.

I would like more stories in this world, just because I have been a Buffy fan for 23 years and counting, but all signs indicate that this is a complete duology. So, if this is where this story ends, I can live with that, too. Long live the Slayer.

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Chosen by Kiersten White

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  1. Susan says:

    I just checked my library and saw that I already own book 1. How have I not already read it?!? I’m the person who wouldn’t let any of my family talk one Thanksgiving because there was a Buffy marathon playing! LOL

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