It is a bleak future. The world has been torn apart by wars, natural disasters, and famine. Only the rich--the elite thrive in the Capitol, and in district 12 a young girl, Katniss Everdeen--
Wait. Wrong book, same set up. My bad.
Let's start over, shall we?
In 1984, civilization has been ravaged by world war, civil conflict, and revolution. Airstrip One---
Gosh, dammit did it again.
Okay, okay. Hopefully I get it right this time.
In the not so distant future, Offred is one of the few remaining fertile women in Gilead---crap!
This review is turning into a complete mess. I promise, one last time, and if i can't get it right, I'll just throw in the towel.
So here it goes, one more college try... in the future the world has fallen apart by wars and economic callapse thanks to a serum that allows people to live forever. However, only the rich could afford the serum. The only drawback, they become infertile. Still, the world is divided into the elite and everyone else. And everyone else wants to be the elite.
In Lutum people live like slaves while the Elite thrive in Olympus and breed the poor. Every year the people in each division of Lutum hope to win the annual lottery that promises them a better life and immortality in Olympus. While the promise of a life of luxury gives the people of Lutum hope, Silverstasia Blackwood doesn't trust the system or the people of Olympus. But it is just her luck that on the year of her 17th birthday, Silver becomes the lucky winner of the lottery and learns that all that glitter isn't gold in Olympus.
What can I say about Chosen? If I'm being honest, I'd say that it is just another series in a long line of YA dystopian novels trying to ride The Hunger Games wave. In fact, the book is almost a carbon copy of the first HG novel. There's the Capitol--called Olympus. Districts, which the author called divisions. Poor citizens and a train from the divisions to Olympus. It even has its own version of Effie Trinket. The main character has to travel around the divisions convincing the citizens of Lutum that Olympus is swell to give then hope. There's a president Kane who is very much like President Coin. It's like the author took elements from The Hunger Games and changed just enough to avoid a lawsuit. Listen, I get it, sometimes people get inspired by other stories, but this was too much heavy borrowing. And it wasn't even that great of a book. There were a lot of dangling plot lines, too many side characters, and too many story threads. It was like the author was confused on what plot she wanted to write. And it was like okay, I'll just have multiple plots.
The main character, Silver, was highly annoying. For some reason her first thoughts are always in question form and after awhile, it started to grate on my nerves. It was like she had a toddler level understanding of the world throughout the book. The constant questions about objects like tables and appliances seemed silly since she's only one generation removed from the great war that supposedly divided the world. In fact, the grandmother character is always telling her how things used to be when she was younger. Which means it wasn't that far in the past. The most annoying part was how Silver understood things like psychotherapy but couldn't tell you what a plastic chair or a coffee maker was. I don't care how poor the people of Lutum were supposed to be in the story, 60 years isn't long enough to forget what simple objects are. It wasn't like the world got blasted to the stone age.
Another thing that bothered me about the book was the pacing. It was sloooooow. There was nothing really driving the plot, which seemed to struggle once the author stopped jacking material from The Hunger Games. The whole forced procreation thing was a snooze fest. The supporting characters were boring. The so called villain was boring. Even the relationship between Silver and her grandmother was blah. For me, you had to squint to see the stakes in this book because they were so low.
The novel ends on a cliffhanger, which I guess if you were interested enough to pick up, you could. Personally, I really struggled through the last 20% of the book. I just wanted it to be over so I didn't have to DNF my first book of the year. I only kept reading because I was waiting for something interesting to happen and the book would get good. For me, that never happened. I definitely will not be finishing this series, and you could skip it too. There are far better YA dystopian.books out there. And before you read the Great Value version of The Hunger Games, just read The Hunger Games. I promise you'll enjoy that much more than this rip off.
Final thoughts:
A poor man's Hunger Games.
An even poorer man's 1984.
And a bootleg Handmaids Tale.
One star because the author tried it.