Chosen-PC. Cast & Kristen Cast

Chosen
PC. Cast & Kristen Cast
St. Martin’s, Mar 2008, $8.95, 320 pp.
ISBN 9780312360306

When she was Marked by the goddess Nyx, teenager Zoey Redbird is taken to the House of Night School where she will eventually change into a vampyre or die. Her roommate Stevie Rae died in her arms but Zoe soon learned that she became one of the undead. Zoe is the most powerful fledging in vampyree history, able to call and master all five elements. She is trying to find a way to restore Stevie’s soul and humanity but the high priestess in training can’t tell her closest friends because their minds can be read by the perpetrator of this abomination.

Tensions rise when the fundamentalist group People of Faith beheads one of the vampyre teachers and nail her body to a wooden cross. The vampyre High Priestess calls in the Sons of Erebus, vampyre warriors, to guard the school. The only person who can help her get out is Aphrodite who knows what is going on with Zoey because she is the only other fledging whose mind can’t be read. Trying to make up for her sins to the goddess, she helps Zoey and Stevie but the peace that has existed between humans and vampires is shaky and almost any action taken against a vampire will destroy it; Zoey will be in the middle of the two warring factions.

This is the third House of Night novel and it as just as compelling and spell binding as MARKED and BETRAYED. The heroine, a young teen, acts very mature for her age risking her friends’ anger if they find out what she is keeping from them in order to protect them. Her nemesis Aphrodite is a bit softer than in previous tales because she knows her actions went against the will of Nyx. In the Cast mythos humans don’t die to become vampires and humans know about their existence and for the most part accept them.

Harriet Klausner