I can’t believe it’s been 4 years since I read Slayer by Kiersten White! I had a bit of trouble getting the sequel from my library, and I think I just forgot about it for a while. Since my goal this year is to get through all the series I’ve started but not finished, I decided to take another look and see if this one was available on any of the library apps I currently have on my phone. Sure enough, the audiobook was available on Hoopla, so I was able to borrow it right away and start listening.
It picks up a few months after the end of Slayer, in which Artemis took off with her terrible girlfriend and Nina is still trying to get a handle on her slayer powers and struggling with the fact that Leo betrayed them while also trying to mourn him. It’s all very confusing.
It’s not made any less confusing by the fact that, more and more lately, her instincts seem to be tending towards violence, even when it’s unnecessary. Nina knows that’s not who she is — or at least it didn’t used to be who she is, considering when we first met her she was the castle’s healer.
Nina was the narrator of the first book, and most of Chosen is also told in first person from her perspective, but several short sections are also told in third person from Artemis’s POV so we can see what she and Honora are up to. They return to Sean, who is apparently working for someone else who is trying to return a minor hell god known as the Sleeping One to power. Artemis and Honora are temporarily working with them with the secret long-term goal of stopping the Sleeping One from regaining his full strength.
Meanwhile, Nina finds out some local rich asshole is hunting werewolves, so she goes to track him down and ends up involved in the hunt. If she gets the werewolf he has set loose on his grounds, she gets $50,000. Knowing werewolves are people most of the time, Nina takes the other hunters out of commission before tracking down the werewolf and is surprised to find a human meditating. Turns out he’s learned to control his wolfish side, which means the werewolf is none other than our very own Oz!
I loved getting to spend some time with Oz in this book, but the narrator got his voice all wrong. She made him sound like a stupid surfer dude (think Dick Casablancas from Veronica Mars). For the most part, I loved this narrator. She did a great job with all of the different voices and accents — except Oz. He deserved so much better.
Anyway, while she’s hunting down the werewolf who totally has himself under control, Nina runs into three other slayers, including Chao-Ahn, whom we first met in Season 7 of the show.
After she wrangles the slayers and rescues Oz, Nina goes back to the mansion to collect her $50,000 (she technically won the hunt, even if she didn’t kill the werewolf). While going through the mansion, she runs into Leo, who it turns out is not dead! So she’s relieved to see him alive, but still furious at him for betraying them, and now also furious with him for letting her think he’s been dead for the past 3 months. WTF, dude! As if her feelings hadn’t been complicated enough.
So Nina brings Leo, the werewolf, and the three slayers back to the castle, but Oz heads out on his own pretty soon after that.
After trying relentlessly to get Artemis to talk to her, Artemis finally calls Nina and agrees to meet her in a local cemetery, but it’s a setup. Instead of Artemis, a couple vampires show up to keep Nina busy while Artemis and Honora attack the castle. Once Nina figures this out, she heads back to the castle, which is already under attack by the time she gets there. Artemis and Honora had brought some vampires with them, so everyone is busy fighting off vampires and trying to keep Doug safe.
They assume Doug is the one they want because Sean had previously kept Doug captive so he could harvest the Happy Goo he naturally creates. But instead of going after Doug, they take Leo.
Turns out Leo hadn’t told Nina he was alive because he doesn’t want to eat any souls, which means he’s starving himself to death. But Artemis and Nina need him to feed on some souls in order to transfer the power needed to bring the Sleeping One back to full strength. They convince him to eat the souls of some really bad demons by threatening Nina if he doesn’t. Artemis would never hurt her sister, but she did tell Honora to throw her off moving car, and Nina is still grappling with the emotional implications of that. Of course she’s fine because she’s a slayer, and Artemis knew she would be fine because she’s a slayer, but it still hurt her feelings.
Turns out Artemis and Honora never had any intentions of transferring any power to the Sleeping One. Artemis wanted the power for herself. She should have known it would have been too much for a human to handle, but she can’t stand being just the sister of a slayer, so she goes for it anyway.
The result is almost the end of the world. At one point she tells Nina to kill her because she thinks that will stop it, but there’s never any question of Nina hurting her sister. It’s never fully explained how Nina manages to stop the end of the world without killing Artemis. She basically just gives her a hug and wills the end of the world to stop and that pretty much does it. Such a cop out!
Oh, and Imogen’s betrayal is finally revealed at the perfect moment in the most predictable way possible. Turns out she has no intention of stopping the prophecy to save the world. She’s pretty pissed at the world and is ready for it to end, so she does her best to kill Nina, but of course doesn’t survive that mistake.
So they all get to live happily ever after. Honora, despite occasionally working for really bad people, really does love Artemis, and despite Nina’s baggage with her, she recognizes that. So Nina invites her back to the castle while Artemis heals, and they all get to live happily ever after.
That’s not to say that Nina just gets over everything Leo did to them. They still have to duke it out, but those fights happen off-page.