Chosen Ones

Author Veronica Roth is probably best known for her Divergent series of YA books, which were all made into movies. This book also does a great job of world building but started out so slowly that it wasn't until Part II that I really got engaged. I would agree with Publishers Weekly that the frequent and distracting "inclusion of news reports and government documents initially slow the pace." In Part I, we meet five adults, who, based upon a prophecy, were chosen in their teens to defeat The Dark One. All are still friends and are periodically called in by the governmental powers that be to consult on magical anomalies in the world. But that same government entity wants to control magic and therefore seeks to create some as well, which results in the death of one of the Chosen Ones, Albert. On the 10th anniversary of the defeat of The Dark One, three of the Chosen Ones are pulled into a parallel universe where dark forces are still wreaking havoc and told they must find a way to defeat them or risk their own world, Earth, also being destroyed. Part II is set in this version of Chicago and the United States where magic has been such a pervasive part of everyone's life that fashion accessories are worn to help the general populace work everyday magical events like opening doors by whistling. There are some, like the official who summoned the Chosen Ones, who are clearly stronger in magic than others, and appearances can be deceptive; deciding who to trust divides the three friends from each other when they will absolutely need to work as a team to preserve this different world as well as their home. The narrator is Sloan Andrews, who has hidden dark secrets from her fellow Chosen Ones about how she came to control and then destroy a magical relic she used to help defeat The Dark One. She still suffers from PTSD and chafes at the constant recognition and media attention that results from her celebrity as one of Earth's saviors. Although Sloane's character continues to develop throughout the book, the New York Times rightly notes that, for the other Chosen Ones, "...the characters we were starting to care about [in Part I] are put to one side [in Part II] along with Sloane’s relationships with them; new ones are quickly pushed into a prominence that feels unearned, especially after the slow build of the first half of the book." As Kirkus points out, though, Roth does a good job of addressing the question, "What happens to heroes after they save the world?"