Young Carnelian has spent his entire life alone with his father, who years ago rejected the savage cruelty of the Masters of Osrakum and was sent into exile. But now a ship has come flying through the winter gales to shatter his quiet world. Three Masters disembark, and as they remove their masks of gold, Carnelian is awed by the light that seems to radiate from their skin. In formal conclave they beg Carnelian's father to return with them to Osrakum to oversee the election of a new God Emperor.
And so Carnelian begins to fulfill his destiny. Along his perilous journey to the Osrakum, he is forced to learn bitter lessons in bloodshed, power, intrigue, love, and treachery--and sets in motion the concluding events in a story four thousand years old.
“Your bones are my bones.”
Ricardo Pinto's The Chosen is an intense exploration of imperialism and eugenics, set in an Aztec-inspired world. The main character is a young achillean man who has been living outside of the empire due to his father's self-imposed exile. When circumstances call the patriarch back to the capital, a long journey of loss of innocence begins to take place, and the protagonist has to reckon with the cruelty of the ruling class - whom he belongs to - who call all others barbarians and beneath them, treating servants as less than nothing and raping and killing them as punishment for inane transgressions.
Published at the end of the Millennium, this novel is a product of its time, but it's also surprisingly modern. It's a dark reflection on the absolute power and corruption of a caste system that employs every possible means so that the status quo is not threatened. Most of the book is almost a travelogue of horrors, until the capital is reached and a soft romance seems to bloom with another boy, creating also the exploration of the delicate balance of power in a relationship. The two young men's sexual awakening is handled with grace, with no uncomfortable focus due to their youth. The plot is pretty minimal, but the finale cleverly sets up the rest of the trilogy.
The prose is quite simple, but the rich worldbuilding makes up for it. This is a complex, dark world, beautiful and terrible.
The Chosen is an old gem.
✨ 4 stars