The world in which Johnis lives has been all but destroyed by a terrible plague that turned the land to desert and most of the people into the disease-ravaged Horde. Only the seven forests surrounding the seven lakes protect the Forest Dwellers from the same fate. Because of the Horde's constant attacks on the forests, the leader of the Forest Dwellers, Thomas Hunter, has been forced to lower the recruitment age for the Forest Guard to 16.
Johnis wasn't chosen to be one of the thousand new recruits to the Forest Guard — too small for his age — but by a twist of fate, he is chosen to lead them. When he and three other leaders set out on their final test to prove their characters, their mission takes an unexpected, but preordained turn, and Johnis discovers that his fate may already have been decided.
Parts of Chosen, which is intended for young adults, were intriguing. I liked the world and its rules about the lake water being necessary to stave off infection by a terrible skin disease. I liked a lot of the foreshadowing. I particularly loved the little glimpses Dekker gives that this world is somehow tied to our own world, as in the following passage of a dream Johnis has:
This wasn't the threatening man-beast, nor Horde, but Johnis couldn't breathe anyway. Something was very wrong. The man wore a shirt made from thin fabric with writing across the breast, and fitted blue pants. Leather boots — but not the dress of a warrior.
More than his dress, the man's demeanor was out of place. Rather than walking like a skeleton in the desert, this man looked healthy. As if he'd had all the water he needed.
[...]
The man motioned to the dune behind him to the right. "There's a killer forcing us to play a game. I need you to help me find the cops. Tell them to get to the library. It's all about the library, tell them."
"Cop?" Johnis had never heard the word.
The story insinuates that the leader of the Forest Dwellers, Thomas Hunter, is also from our world, but much to my disappointment, that story line never goes anywhere. Turns out, this is part of a much larger series, which I didn't realize until I got to the very end and saw the advertisements. The ads in the back of the book claim that you can read this series without reading the other, but it explained a lot about my biggest problems with the book: the way Dekker glosses over some of the finer details about his world (probably because he's already explained them dozens of times in his other books), the somewhat thin characterization of his protagonists.
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