Book Review The Chosen Trilogy by Alan J. Garner
Reviewed by A. Jarrell Hayes
Alan J. Garner’s The Chosen Trilogy takes the reader on a fictional tour of extinction and evolution: beginning with those lovable and doomed dinosaurs, continuing with early man, and ending with ocean dwelling mermen. That’s right, mermen are part of Garner’s never ending, impartial cycle of evolution and extinction. The natural enemies for these creatures — meat-eating dinosaurs, genocide-bent sabertooths, and highly evolved giant bipedal frogs, respectively — aren’t naturally evil (except for the frog-priest in the third book) but just following the roles assigned to them by nature. Even super-intelligent beings such as a bureaucratic god and his angelic aliens, a DNA-changing holographic reptile-man, and a diabolically hilarious robot with a human’s brain pulling the strings off stage cannot fully control the cycles of evolution and extinction, of life and death, though they try. The protagonists in this series battle extinction throughout the books, even though most of the time they’re oblivious to the seriousness of their plight and vast consequences of their actions — it’s all about survival through change. Garner does not attempt to rewrite history, but the author’s beliefs on evolution, society, and religion are expressed in a not so subtle way throughout the books. Luckily the witty characters and humorous style of storytelling more than compensate for the sometimes slow and tedious plot developments.
Alan J. Garner profile on AllTheseBooks.com
