So far I think I’ve been enjoying rereading the Night World series more than I enjoyed reading them as a teen. What were enjoyable stories before are now much more because I can pick out how layered the stories are.
I think though, #5 The Chosen is the exception. I remember this being my favorite book. Rashel witnesses a vampire attack on her little brother and mother very early in life and spends the following years becoming the most infamous vampire hunter in America. I remember being really attracted to her strength and ferocity, the control she seemed to have in her life. But on this reread the book struck me in a very different way–and I think it’s the way it was intended to be read.
Rashel lives in the Night World, even if she isn’t a vampire or a witch or a werewolf. She’s consumed, obsessed with finding the vampire who killed her family. Literally everything in her life revolves around this. Maybe it’s because any of the Night Worlders would kill her if they ever found out who she was. Or maybe it’s something else.
Rashel’s quest interferes with her ability to relate to foster parents, peers…in short she’s not a real person anymore, she’s just a revenge fantasy playing the part of a person. Until, on one hunt, she recognizes a captured vampire as her soulmate. Too bad he’s Quinn, a merciless killer and heir to the Redfern family’s power.
Faced with feeling something other than cold rage, Rashel is understandably shaken. But she’s also stumbled into a scheme where the vampires are kidnapping and collecting girls for a legendary bloodfeast (a night of gorging on human blood). Once one emotion breaks through Rashel’s obsession others begin to as well. For the first time she finds herself with friends to defend, and true love at risk.
So, really, Rashel isn’t so strong after all. The training, the kill count, the weapons are like a costume to hide all the damage inside. Quinn is nearly as shattered by Rashel’s presence since he’s been trying to suppress feelings of humanity since he was turned hundreds of years ago. And the answer isn’t–can’t be–forcing Rashel to be a vampire, because he can’t do to her what was done to him.
It is an interesting conflict, and a enjoyable read along side the rest of the books. But it’s this book where thing kick up a notch because this is the first book to put the characters directly into a part of the series’ overarching plot. All along the theme has been one of this world changing and no one being ready for it, but it’s with The Chosen that it becomes clear that there are people actively (and evilly) trying to stop the world from changing. So a line is drawn between the characters who want to maintain the status quo and those who feel overwhelmingly in their hearts that change has to happen, even if they don’t know what will come of it (and they know it’ll be hard.)
That’s pretty much a perfect photograph of the process of coming-of-age. But, you know, the vampires and witches and action and danger make it exciting to read.