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renategerste 's review for:
Chosen Ones
by Veronica Roth
2.5 stars
positives:
-I loved Sloane's character and loved her relationship with Matt. Not her romantic relationship! But their overall conflict with each other and Sloane trying to deal with them.
-I liked part 1 and the introduction to the characters, I actually really enjoyed each of them and the dynamic they had.
negatives:
-Writing a lesbian character into your book and then conveniently leaving them out of 71% of the book (I did the math, she left the book on page 121 and returned on page 410 with 9 pages left to go) despite her being one of the pretty crucial characters seems like you just wanted a prop. A token gay character. And! It seems like the only thing the author knows about lesbians is that we like to wear suits sometimes, because that's about as deep as we go with this character. "This is Ines, she is a lesbian." *next scene* "Ines is wearing a suit, because did I mention gay?" *fin*
This coupled with the fact The Dark One wanted all of them to get through to the other dimension so he could "make sure" and "be thorough" really just makes it more infuriating that she was left out of basically the entire book. Why even write her in? Another thing - Ines was supposed to have this insane bond with them because she is also a chosen one but their reunion was ? nothing special really. And because we got about 2 lines of dialogue from her in the first 121 pages I really saw no bond and did not care that they were going back to see her.
- At first I liked the idea of the faux newspaper articles given throughout but eventually they just became burdonsome. And I didn't feelt like they gave us enough insight or were interesting enough to warrent reading them. I understand why the ARIS documents were there in the beginning but I almost wish that information had just come out with Sloane talking to Matt or Esther about it.
- Why even bring up that Sloane made the decision for Albie to be tortured instead of her if you weren't going to set that up as a way for the dark one to use it against her in front of Matt/Esther. Nothing really came from that reveal!
-I felt like the summoning of the 3 chosen ones to the other dimension was lazy and while I understand why they cooperated, for the most part, while they were there I didn't believe it.
-TBH I hated Sloane's quick relationship with Mox. There was no reason for it - that girl needs to spend some time alone.
- Speaking of Mox, I thought he was the most bland and uninteresting character and I did not care whether he lived or died and I really think that it should have been easy to make me care about him and what happened to him given his backstory.
- The ending .... did not make me want to continue on with this series and I don't think I will.
- I was not at all into the mechanics of the magic - whistling at a specific pitch seems almost like it would impede the magic user in a way that was just ignored which made this whole thing something I couldn't believe in.
-ALSO Albie dies after acting weirdly proceding when he uses that magical prototype ARIS created. And yeah Sloane blows the building up but .... nothing happens? Like that was just a dead end.
- Overall, this book was all over the place in my opinion trying to be too many things all at once. Nothing feels resolved, and not in a way where I want to keep reading to find out what happens. I was so excited to read this when I read the book jacket because it sounded interesting and was about something I personally haven't read before - the heroes trying to cope 10 years after they save the world. However, the "big reveals" were disappointing and the entire story felt splintered and rushed.
positives:
-I loved Sloane's character and loved her relationship with Matt. Not her romantic relationship! But their overall conflict with each other and Sloane trying to deal with them.
-I liked part 1 and the introduction to the characters, I actually really enjoyed each of them and the dynamic they had.
negatives:
-Writing a lesbian character into your book and then conveniently leaving them out of 71% of the book (I did the math, she left the book on page 121 and returned on page 410 with 9 pages left to go) despite her being one of the pretty crucial characters seems like you just wanted a prop. A token gay character. And! It seems like the only thing the author knows about lesbians is that we like to wear suits sometimes, because that's about as deep as we go with this character. "This is Ines, she is a lesbian." *next scene* "Ines is wearing a suit, because did I mention gay?" *fin*
This coupled with the fact The Dark One wanted all of them to get through to the other dimension so he could "make sure" and "be thorough" really just makes it more infuriating that she was left out of basically the entire book. Why even write her in? Another thing - Ines was supposed to have this insane bond with them because she is also a chosen one but their reunion was ? nothing special really. And because we got about 2 lines of dialogue from her in the first 121 pages I really saw no bond and did not care that they were going back to see her.
- At first I liked the idea of the faux newspaper articles given throughout but eventually they just became burdonsome. And I didn't feelt like they gave us enough insight or were interesting enough to warrent reading them. I understand why the ARIS documents were there in the beginning but I almost wish that information had just come out with Sloane talking to Matt or Esther about it.
- Why even bring up that Sloane made the decision for Albie to be tortured instead of her if you weren't going to set that up as a way for the dark one to use it against her in front of Matt/Esther. Nothing really came from that reveal!
-I felt like the summoning of the 3 chosen ones to the other dimension was lazy and while I understand why they cooperated, for the most part, while they were there I didn't believe it.
-TBH I hated Sloane's quick relationship with Mox. There was no reason for it - that girl needs to spend some time alone.
- Speaking of Mox, I thought he was the most bland and uninteresting character and I did not care whether he lived or died and I really think that it should have been easy to make me care about him and what happened to him given his backstory.
- The ending .... did not make me want to continue on with this series and I don't think I will.
- I was not at all into the mechanics of the magic - whistling at a specific pitch seems almost like it would impede the magic user in a way that was just ignored which made this whole thing something I couldn't believe in.
-ALSO Albie dies after acting weirdly proceding when he uses that magical prototype ARIS created. And yeah Sloane blows the building up but .... nothing happens? Like that was just a dead end.
- Overall, this book was all over the place in my opinion trying to be too many things all at once. Nothing feels resolved, and not in a way where I want to keep reading to find out what happens. I was so excited to read this when I read the book jacket because it sounded interesting and was about something I personally haven't read before - the heroes trying to cope 10 years after they save the world. However, the "big reveals" were disappointing and the entire story felt splintered and rushed.