Chosen (The Warrior Chronicles Book 1)

This book took me 17 days to read and not because it was long. I kept putting it down and doing other things when I had time to read because the paper thin plot was not interesting and the characters never engaged me in the least. Usually when I give a book a low rating I have a list of things that I actively disliked but in this case it just plain bored me.

The book started out with a very promising first chapter where we meet the child Shanti fights off a brutal attack displaying incredible power. She sees her family and many of her village murdered. She then wakes up as an adult with the flashback seen as a nightmare. It never gets interesting again. Starving in a burnt-out forest, Shanti is picked up by a group of men on patrol and taken back to their town to recuperate. They call it alternately a "nation" and a "city" but the world building is scant and I never got a sense of either. She spends about 70 % of the book just wandering around this foreign city verbally sparring / lecturing the men she meets there. There is a brief battle when the city is attacked by her enemies and she gets to show them them she is bad-ass. She discovers that the Captain (a sort of cross between a King and Mayor though he doesn't really seem to have any duties) has the same mental powers that she has and the same extent. I get the feeling that he is supposed to be a romantic love interest and the reader is supposed to find him sexy. Mostly he is an overbearing asshole. There is a whole lot of talking and some sparring then they go on a rescue mission to retrieve one of the men who has been captured. Then a little more talking and sparring and she heads out on her original mission. The next book is set up in a scene in the last chapter where she hears that one of the Inka (the big bad guys) has someone claiming to have the same level of power that she does and claiming to be "Chosen' - some sort of vague prophesied role that she has cast herself in throughout the book.

This book took me 17 days to read and not because it was long. I kept putting it down and doing other things when I had time to read because the paper thin plot was not interesting and the characters never engaged me in the least. Usually when I give a book a low rating I have a list of things that I actively disliked but in this case it just plain bored me.

The book started out with a very promising first chapter where we meet the child Shanti fights off a brutal attack displaying incredible power. She sees her family and many of her village murdered. She then wakes up as an adult with the flashback seen as a nightmare. It never gets interesting again. Starving in a burnt-out forest, Shanti is picked up by a group of men on patrol and taken back to their town to recuperate. They call it alternately a "nation" and a "city" but the world building is scant and I never got a sense of either. She spends about 70 % of the book just wandering around this foreign city verbally sparring / lecturing the men she meets there. There is a brief battle when the city is attacked by her enemies and she gets to show them them she is bad-ass. She discovers that the Captain (a sort of cross between a King and Mayor though he doesn't really seem to have any duties) has the same mental powers that she has and the same extent. I get the feeling that he is supposed to be a romantic love interest and the reader is supposed to find him sexy. Mostly he is an overbearing asshole. There is a whole lot of talking and some sparring then they go on a rescue mission to retrieve one of the men who has been captured. Then a little more talking and sparring and she heads out on her original mission. The next book is set up in a scene in the last chapter where she hears that one of the Inka (the big bad guys) has someone claiming to have the same level of power that she does and claiming to be "Chosen' - some sort of vague prophesied role that she has cast herself in throughout the book.

This book took me 17 days to read and not because it was long. I kept putting it down and doing other things when I had time to read because the paper thin plot was not interesting and the characters never engaged me in the least. Usually when I give a book a low rating I have a list of things that I actively disliked but in this case it just plain bored me.

The book started out with a very promising first chapter where we meet the child Shanti fights off a brutal attack displaying incredible power. She sees her family and many of her village murdered. She then wakes up as an adult with the flashback seen as a nightmare. It never gets interesting again. Starving in a burnt-out forest, Shanti is picked up by a group of men on patrol and taken back to their town to recuperate. They call it alternately a "nation" and a "city" but the world building is scant and I never got a sense of either. She spends about 70 % of the book just wandering around this foreign city verbally sparring / lecturing the men she meets there. There is a brief battle when the city is attacked by her enemies and she gets to show them them she is bad-ass. She discovers that the Captain (a sort of cross between a King and Mayor though he doesn't really seem to have any duties) has the same mental powers that she has and the same extent. I get the feeling that he is supposed to be a romantic love interest and the reader is supposed to find him sexy. Mostly he is an overbearing asshole. There is a whole lot of talking and some sparring then they go on a rescue mission to retrieve one of the men who has been captured. Then a little more talking and sparring and she heads out on her original mission. The next book is set up in a scene in the last chapter where she hears that one of the Inka (the big bad guys) has someone claiming to have the same level of power that she does and claiming to be "Chosen' - some sort of vague prophesied role that she has cast herself in throughout the book.