The Chosen is a young adult Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy novel by L. J. Smith. It's the fifth book in the Night World series and was published in February 1997. It was later reissued in the omnibus Night World 2, along with Dark Angel and Soulmate.
When she was five years-old, Rashel Jordan witnessed the murder of her mother and best friend at the hands of a vampire. Now seventeen years-old, Rashel has gained notoriety amongst the Night World as the Cat, a deadly vampire hunter hellbent on revenge. Recently, girls in Boston between the ages of 12 and 18 have been going missing, and Rashel is convinced vampires are involved.
Her investigation leads her to cross paths with John Quinn, a ruthless, centuries old made vampire and close confidant of the powerful vampire Elder Hunter Redfern. To both their shock and revulsion, the two find themselves strangely drawn to one another and start to realize they may have more in common that they would like to admit. Will Rashel be able to save the missing girls without losing herself? And does Quinn still have some humanity left inside him?
Not to be confused with The Chosen, The Chosen TV Series, or The Chosen One and its derivatives.
Tropes found here include:
- The '80s: The early chapters are presumably set in 1985; Rashel is stated to be seventeen during the main events of the story, which is set in 1997 (the year of publication), meaning Rashel was likely born in 1980. Notably, no one bats an eyelid at a vampire walking around a funfair in a long coat, which were in fashion then.
- Birthday Beginning: The novel begins on Rashel's fifth birthday, with her mother taking her and her best friend Timmy to a carnival. Unfortunately, a bloodthirsty vampire happens to be there too and things go horribly wrong.
- Both Sides Have a Point:
- Rashel and Quinn's experiences exemplify this regarding the vampires vs vampire hunters. Rashel thinks of vampires (and most other Night People) as evil, unfeeling monsters who prey on humans. It's unsurprising considering her traumatic background and the fact she regularly encounters vampires who are horrible monsters. Quinn sees humans as being just as awful as vampires, so why shouldn't vampires just take over? It's revealed this is because Quinn fell in love with a vampire girl named Dove, who was sweet, gentle and never harmed anyone. She was murdered by Quinn's father just for existing and he also tried to kill his own son without mercy. Quinn also lived through the Burning Times where Night People were forced to go underground to protect themselves from persecution. Rashel and Quinn both start to realize that both sides have done pretty awful things to each other, continuing the Cycle of Revenge for centuries.
- Rashel comes to this conclusion regarding her views on the Night World and Circle Daybreak's views. She comes to agree that the Daybreakers are admirable for wanting a world where humans and Night People live together in peace, but she also feels that some of them are overly-idealistic because there are Night People out there who don't give a damn about changing the status quo, and are happy to hurt humans and other Night People to get their way. Rashel decides that this means there may be a place for people like her in Circle Daybreak, fighting back against monsters to protect people who can't fight themselves, be they a human or Night Person.
- Continuity Nod: Hunter Redfern mentions that one of the reasons he's trying to strengthen alliances with other high-ranking vampires via the Blood Feast is because recently many Night People have become overly-friendly with humans, including members of his own family finding human soulmates; this references the events of Secret Vampire and Daughters of Darkness (1996).
- Covers Always Lie: The original 1997 cover depicts Rashel and another vampire hunter investigating an open coffin. No such scene ever occurs in the book, and it's also established that vampires in the Night World series don't sleep in coffins.
- Downer Beginning: Rashel goes through a major Trauma Conga Line at the start of the book. She witnesses a vampire murdering her mother and best friend, and no one believes her. She's sent to live with her aunt Corinne, who is killed when the vampire returns and sets fire to her house in an attempt to kill Rashel, who gets put into the foster system. Her trauma compells her to become a vampire hunter and its mentioned she started killing vampires at the age of twelve.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: There's some melancholy and uncertainty but the ending is largely hopeful for the long-suffering protagonists. Rashel and Quinn both decide to start putting aside their anger and bitterness, work together to save the kidnapped girls and flee to join Circle Daybreak. They both have trauma to work through, and Nyala and Timmy are even more unstable, but they hope that with Circle Daybreak they can all start to heal. Quinn and Rashel also at least have each other for support and affection. Rashel never did get revenge on Hunter Redfern, but she has decided there are more important things to focus on, like protecting other people from what she suffered.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Discounting the early chapters taking place during Rashel's childhood (which largely take place over a day), the entire plot takes place over about a week; a bulk of the action takes place in a single night. During this week Rashel infiltrates a vampire slave ring, meets her soulmate, faces off with her vampire archnemesis and ultimately decides to give up vengeance, her soulmate has a Heel–Face Turn and they both decide to join Circle Daybreak.
- Foreshadowing:
- The vampire who attacked Rashel took Timmy's body with him; Rashel isn't certain why though it was presumably to prevent anyone from realizing what he was. Or because Timmy isn't actually dead.
- Lily Redfern, Hunter Redfern's daughter, is the leader of the slave ring, while Quinn, another close associate of the family, is heavily involved too. This is in spite of Hunter and the Elder Council having made such things illegal, with Rashel remarking Lily and Quinn are taking a huge risk. It turns out Hunter himself is involved and is using Lily as a proxy.
- When Rashel asks Quinn why he wanted to join the Redfern family, he explains he was in love with one of Hunter Redfern's daughters, Dove, and wished to marry her, but that he never got to do so. It's later revealed that Dove was killed by Quinn's father when he learned she was a vampire.
- Great Escape: A large part of the novel involves Rashel infiltrating a vampire slave ring to find out where the girls are being held and orchestrating their escape.
- Heroic Fire Rescue: The moment that cements Quinn's Heel–Face Turn is when he risks his own life to retrieve Nyala from a burning building (that she set alight), when it would've been easier and safer to just leave her.
- Hope Spot:
- Early on, young Rashel gets one of these upon discovering a vampire feeding on her friend Timmy; she manages to scream out for her mother, who comes rushing to help her. Unfortunately, Rashel's relief is short-lived, as the vampire quickly uses mind-control to subdue Rashel's mother before snapping her neck. It does at least give Rashel time to run for it.
- Quinn got one of his own in his backstory: after being turned into a vampire by Hunter Redfern, a horrified Quinn fled into the woods. Dove followed him and he persuaded her that they should go to his father for help. Quinn's father listened to his son explain what had happened...then killed Dove and attempted to kill Quinn for being 'monsters'.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The novel largely takes place in the lead up to and on the night of the spring equinox, which is a holiday for Night People and especially vampires, as it's the anniversary of the day Maya - the first vampire - turned Thierry and thus created the vampire race. Rashel comes to realize the girls are being taken to be devoured at a Blood Feast celebrating the equinox.
- House Fire:
- Following the murder of her mother, Rashel was sent to live with her great aunt Corinne. While trying to sleep, Rashel woke to smell smoke and realized the house was on fire. Rashel managed to escape, but Corinne didn't make it out and there was nothing Rashel could do to intervene; as Corinne was her last living family, Rashel was sent into foster care. Although the police didn't believe her, Rashel knew the vampire who killed her mother set the fire to try and finish her off, cementing her determination to Never Be Hurt Again.
- The climax involves Nyala soaking the vampires' mansion in gasoline and setting it alight using a Molotov cocktail; because the old mansion is made mostly of wood, the whole thing is quickly engulfed in flames. The vampires run for their lives, giving the heroes a chance to narrowly escape.
- Human Traffickers: The villains are a group of vampires and werewolves who are kidnapping human girls to sell them into slavery to Night People. This is illegal under Night World law because it potentially attracts too much attention, though it still happens occasionally. Because the regular human authorities won't be able to do much, vampire hunters take it upon themselves to investigate and shut the slave ring down. Rashel later learns that the slavers aren't taking the girls to sell them but instead to serve them as the main course for a Blood Feast for powerful law-breaking vampires.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: Early on, Rashel kills a vampire who has been specifically targeting young children. Because he's a vampire, no one will ever find out what really happened to the missing children - the only comfort is that other kids will be safe. Given her own childhood trauma involving vampires, Rashel is only too happy to take him out.
- Island Base: Rashel realizes that the kidnapped girls are being taken to one of the secret vampire enclaves due to Daphne overhearing her captors talking about an "ont-cave". It turns out to be located on an island off the Massachusetts coast, as the girls are loaded onto a boat.
- Lovecraft Country: The novel is set in the state of Massachusetts, both in and around Boston and on an island off the East Coast. Boston is crawling with vampires and other Night People - New England is mentioned as being the seat of their power in the US - and they've had enclaves established there for centuries.
- Missing Child:
- Several children have been going missing in Boston recently, with Rashel realizing a vampire is responsible. She hunts down and kills the vampire early in the novel.
- Rashel and the Lancers believe that vampires are responsible for the recent disappearance of over twenty girls, aged between 12 and 18.
- A Minor Kidroduction: The novel starts out with Rashel as a young child to establish her backstory and how she became a vampire hunter; she's in her late teens for the main story proper.
- Monster/Slayer Romance: A significant portion of the plot revolves around Vampire Hunter Rashel Jordan realizing her soulmate is none other than Romantic Vampire Boy John Quinn. Neither of them take it well at first, with Rashel in particular feeling utterly repulsed that she's attracted to a vampire, and they try to bury their feelings. They eventually accept their love and team up to defeat the villains, with Quinn Defecting for Love.
- New England Puritan: When he was human, Quinn lived in a Puritan colony in Massachusetts. His father was the town reverend, although Quinn himself wasn't nearly as pious. The Redfern family lived nearby and were rumored to be witches or demons, although Quinn remarks that people said stuff like that if you so much as smiled in church. Consequently, Reverend Quinn and the townsfolk were quick to turn on the Redferns when they learned of their true natures, with Quinn getting caught in the middle.
- Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: This is pulled off twice.
- Rashel and the Lancers are aware from the start that Quinn is involved in the vampire slave ring, though they guess he's working for someone else. Nearly halfway through, Rashel learns that he's The Heavy to Lily Redfern.
- In the climax, Lily becomes the Obvious Villain, with not even Quinn or her other subordinates knowing she's acting on her father Hunter's orders until this moment. It's justified as Hunter is an Elder and is supposed to be a figure of respectability to the Night World, so it would be damaging for him to blatantly break the rules until he had supporters to back him up.
- Origins Episode: For Quinn, who was first introduced in Daughters of Darkness. Here, he's one of the main characters and his backstory is explored in-depth, including how he became acquainted with the Redferns and became a vampire, and why he despises humans.
- Police Are Useless: Downplayed. The police understandably don't believe Rashel about a monster attacking her mother and Timmy, assuming she's being Innocent Inaccurate; Rashel says the policeman doesn't believe her at all, while the policewoman almost believes her but refuses to accept that possibility. They're kind to Rashel but are unable to really do anything because they're not equipped to deal with this kind of situation. It's for this reason that Rashel tells Daphne going to the cops about the vampires who kidnapped her would be useless, as they will just assume she's misrembering from trauma or won't believe she was kidnapped at all.
- Really Moves Around: Rashel mentions that she gets herself moved to different foster homes every couple of years to keep hunting vampires; it gives her new territory to cover and prevents Night People from potentially hunting her down due to staying in one location too long.
- The Reveal:
- The climax features three big ones in the same scene: Hunter Redfern is the true mastermind behind the slave operation, Hunter was the vampire who attacked Rashel and killed her mother all those years ago, and Timmy didn't die; Hunter turned him into a vampire and has kept him at his side all these years.
- It's eventually explained that Quinn hates humans and has a love-hate relationship with the Redferns because he was in love with Dove Redfern and after Hunter agreed to marriage, he turned Quinn into a vampire without his permission; in a panic Quinn went to his father, the local reverend, only for Reverend Quinn to kill Dove and turn the entire town against Quinn and the Redferns.
- Shout-Out: Upon first meeting Rashel, Daphne exclaims "Oh my god, you're Buffy the Vampire Slayer!" Rashel doesn't quite understand the reference, stating she "missed that movie".
- Time Skip: The first few chapters take place twelve years before the main events of the novel.
- Troubled Backstory Flashback: There are a few hints dropped regarding Quinn's backstory, until it's explained in full via a flashback midway through. Quinn was a relatively ordinary though rebellious Puritan teenager living in 1600s Massachusetts, who fell in love with Dove Redfern, not knowing she was a vampire (though he'd heard and dismissed the rumors that the Redferns were witches). Hunter Redfern turned Quinn into a vampire after giving his blessing for the marriage, after which Quinn inadvertently revealed what they were to the town; the entire colony - led by Quinn's father - ran the Redferns out of town, killing Dove in the process.
- Vampires Own Nightclubs: Rashel discovers that many of the girls who went missing had been visiting The Crypt, a gothic-themed underground nightclub. Upon investigating, she realizes that a vampire slave ring owns The Crypt, and are using it to lure and abduct vulnerable girls.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Lancers are a group of vampire hunters (who occasionally go after other Night People such as werewolves too) who believe their cause is righteous and that vampires deserve no mercy. While they do protect innocent humans from dangerous vampires, most of them dismiss the idea that vampires or other Night People aren't all monsters. They also believe that humans who sympathize with vampires are delusional at best and think Circle Daybreak's goal to achieve harmony is a joke (even though this provides proof that humans and vampires can get along). This increasingly puts them at odds with Rashel, who starts to wonder if she's really much better than vampires and if they're truly incapable of empathy.
- Witch Hunt: In Quinn's backstory, when his father discovered the Redferns and now Quinn too were vampires, he killed Dove Redfern, tried to kill Quinn and led the townsfolk in burning down the Redfern homestead to cast out 'the Devil'.
