Parents' Guide to

The Chosen: Contender, Book 1

By Carrie R. Wheadon, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 12+

Deadly Maze Runner-like contest with Romans and dinosaurs.

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If you thought the Maze Runner series sorely lacked Roman soldiers and dinosaurs, the cruel world Cade and his reform school frenemies find themselves in has you covered. Plus, they fight dinos with samurai swords and slingshots in a medieval keep. Overall it works as a cool mashup, though a confusing one far into The Chosen. Readers will want to ask many questions of the ever-present floating computer before Cade thinks of them, just to get some idea of the how and why they are there and whether things get more involved plot-wise than kill or be killed.

Answers do come at the very end of this first installment -- grim ones. Here's hoping Contender, Book 2, doesn't go too far down a very dark dystopian path. Avid readers of the genre have been down it too many times before.

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