Book Review: The Chosen: Rise Of The Darkness

Reblogged from Horroraddicts.net. Many thanks to David for his review.

Alex is a man who is down on his luck, he lost his fiance’ and parents and is now being plagued by horrible visions. In these visions he sees a wasteland of dead bodies and a beast that is not human. Alex struggles to find answers and has been going to paranormal conferences to find them. Over time he meets some investigators and learns of a prophecy that will bring about the end of humanity.

An old god will arise bringing an army of demons and zombies to kill all the humans and start a new world order. Alex finds out he is the chosen one who can stop the coming darkness and save the world as we know it. Not only will Alex have to fight one old god, there is also another spirit who is trying to gain power and Alex has to fight his inner demons as well. He has help from a team of paranormal investigators, but will it be enough to stop the darkness from taking over?

The Chosen: Rise Of The Darkness by C.A. Milson is a story with a lot going on. Alex is the star and my favorite character but he’s only a small part of a big story. I loved the character of Alex because of the transition he goes through. He goes from rock bottom trying to get over the tragedies in his life to being the only one who can save humanity. The interesting part of his character is that he doesn’t want any of this, he doesn’t want the power that is growing within him and he doesn’t want to be responsible for saving the world. He wants his fiance’ back and a simple life. Alex is thrust into a horrible situation and doing what he has to do. I liked him because I think most people can relate to him.

There were some great villains in this story, one is Tanzac who was a fallen angel and the other is Jamison who is an evil spirit who hates everyone. Jamison is the perfect villain, he was a cult leader and spent his life and death influencing people to do bad things. Jamison is the kind of guy in a book that I love to hate. Tanzac the other bad guy is sympathetic and actually shows compassion at points in the book. I love it that this book has a villain that seems to be very complex and another that you just want to see destroyed.

My favorite part of this book was a scene where a man decides to do a mock satanic ritual to get revenge on a couple of people. While he does some evil deeds he awakens something far worse. I liked how the demon that shows up does good by default. The characters in this story are great and complex. In addition to the characters there is a theme about new beginnings in this book and good coming from evil along with some religious metaphors. My only problem with Rise Of The Darkness was that I felt it lacked suspense at times but the great characters make up for it. Rise Of The Darkness is the beginning of a trilogy and its a good book about good versus evil.

Get the Ebook at ASJ Publishing.