I knew right away that I loved Sloane. It was inevitable. I love the hungry, battered, vicious anti-heroine every time, and Sloane absolutely delivered. CHOSEN ONES brings to the forefront something I've always kind of wondered: what happens AFTER the heroes defeat the big bad? And it does this by unraveling all the tropes from the Chosen One (duh) to faceless baddie. There's a deep analysis of desire, of trauma, of healing, of moving on, of purpose and what it means.

Sloane isn't your typical hero, and I think that's what really drew me to her. She's described as cold and sharp, going out of her way to avoid people. But she's also deeply traumatized. And she has to reconcile that the familiar and safe isn't necessarily what she wants. She is literally vengeance and bottomless anger/guilt. What do you do with a character like that on a quest? You separate her from the group.

From whip-smart dialogue to poignant analysis of the human condition to a deep appreciation for Chicago's history and architecture to an entirely new brand of magic and heroism, Chosen Ones has absolutely earned its place on my five-star shelf. My only critiques are small ones: there's a character whose movements are always described as loping/lopes/loped even less than a page apart and Sloane is low-key obsessed with how tall she is. Those were certainly not enough to detract from my overall experience.