Book Review: "Chosen" by Ted Dekker

It has been 13 years since Black, and the Forest Guard is slowly being defeated by the Horde. Thomas Hunter is forced to lower the recruiting age from 18 to 16 in order to find enough troops to train for his armies. Of those new recruits, four are chosen to become squad leaders--two boys and two girls--but first they must pass one of Thomas's tests and bring four cacti back to the group.

Nothing goes as expected on their quest, though. They are pursued by the Horde and Johnis, the youngest of the four, sees both Roush and Shatiki--both of which vanished 13 years ago. The Roush give Johnis a new mission: he, along with the other three recruits, must recover the six missing Books of History. Silvie is the only one willing to follow John's lead, though, and rescuing the other two from the trouble they bring upon themselves only delays the quest for the books. The books have the power to bring about unspeakable evil if they fall into the wrong hands.

I always get a bit wary when an author has a very popular adult series and then writes a Young Adult series that is related to that adult series. I say this because what usually ends up happening is that the author tends to dumb down his story in order to appeal to a younger audience. They then will rewrite the entire series in the perspective of younger characters to see the whole story from a different point of view. I don't really like this because they seem to think that the two audiences won't cross over and read all the books. Luckily for this case, Ted Dekker did not do this and gave his fans a whole other set of stories to enjoy.

There's a lot of action in this book that makes the story feel fast paced. The characters are intriguing and well developed. Even though they are teens, they aren't juvenile in their thinking, probably due the circumstances they are in. I think that teens who like fantasy will enjoy this series because the story is written well and features characters that are of that targeted age group. I don't read a lot of YA fantasy so I don't have any books to compare it to but as a Dekker fan I think it will appeal to YA audiences. I've always felt that any of Dekker's books are good recommendations for YA readers but this one is specifically for them. For those that don't normally read this genre, I will admit that this book (and the rest of the series) is best for those who have already read the rest of the books in the Books of History Chronicles, particularly the Circle series. I have to say that if I hadn't read those books, I probably would not have picked up this series at all. For me as a non fantasy fan, it's very hard for me to get into books about other worlds so familiarity is always a good thing. Overall, I did enjoy the story and I'm looking forward to continuing my adventures of learning more about the Lost Books and furthering my knowledge about the Books of History.

Chosen by Ted Dekker is published by Thomas Nelson (2008)

This review copy was provided by the publisher