The Chosen [Hardcover]

Were it not for a neurotic obsession with finishing any book I start, I would never had read this whole novel. About the only good thing I can say about The Chosen is that it is not boring. I can add that it is also not erotic at all, nor is it scary. Vera, the protagonist, is a restaurant manager soon to be married. Out of the blue, she is offered a job managing a restaurant at a remote inn for an exorbitant salary. She turns down the offer because of her fiancée; arriving home, she finds her fiancée "entertaining" a girl and a hermaphrodite. She then takes the new job and moves out of town, bringing along three of her coworker friends to run the place. The restaurant and the connecting inn just happen to have once been a sanitarium where the patients were tortured and brutalized. Don't let the back cover mislead you into expecting some haunted house aspects to the story--the sounds heard in the night are judged to be the doors of an elevator opening and closing, and nothing ghostly happens at all. Basically, we are treated to literally hundreds of pages of demonic, disgusting, pointless sex acts which are anything but erotic. I don't mind reading scenes with sex and violence, but the reader of this book is simply deluged with the same lewd descriptions over and over again. Vera begins having erotic nightmares--that's fine, but I don't need to read the same description of the whole nightmare twenty-something times. The characters themselves are superficial and unsympathetic, seemingly capable of expressing anger, sexual desire, and nothing more. Two of the men can only communicate by throwing insulting sexual innuendoes at each other, and their material is below that of even the most dirty-minded juvenile.

There is a story of sorts buried in the morass of sexual descriptions. Every so often, it seems like it might get interesting, but alas it never does. Furthermore, the author does not even bother to tie up many loose ends. The most obvious question harkens to the title itself--Vera was "the chosen," apparently, yet I never found out why she was chosen or exactly what she was chosen for. Some of the basic premises of the plot itself simply make no sense. One thing I found most galling occurred in the last few pages of the book--Vera refers to something that she has no knowledge of whatsoever because the only person to have discovered it is one of the other characters.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, this book is badly written and reeks of adolescence. As is typical with Lee, the plot seems to exist only for the purpose of providing him with a means of unleashing his deep torrents of sexual fantasies. My copy has a number of typos and grammatical errors in it, but I can hardly blame an editor for letting these things slip because no one should have to read this novel thoroughly. I hate to criticize a novel in such harsh terms, but The Chosen may well be the worst book I have ever read.

First published back in November of 1993, US horror author Edward Lee's erotic horror novel 'The Chosen' was the fifth novel for the author to see publication. More recently the book has been re-released by MHB Press in September of 2010 in three different limited edition hardback formats:

Collector's Edition (300 signed and numbered copies) - The book is bound in Colorado Book Cloth with a sewn book block, head/tail bands and a bound-in ribbon book mark. The pages themselves are 90 gsm matt coated paper, which gives the book a good quality weight. This version is the edition shown in the accompanying video.

Deluxe Edition (150 signed and numbered copies) - The book is handmade, quarter bound in red goat skin leather with handmade paper covered boards, including additional colour artwork and issued in a special handmade cloth covered slipcase.

Lettered Edition (26 signed and lettered A-Z copies) - This ultra-luxurious edition is handmade, fully bound in red goat skin leather with gilt edges and handmade marbled endpapers, including additional colour artwork and comes in an extra indulgent handmade traycase.

The MHB Press re-release includes new cover artwork and a small number of black & white illustrations, all by illustrator Paul John Ballard.

DLS Synopsis:
It's the 1990's and successful restaurant manager Vera Abbot is finding that her life is very much coming together as she hoped it would, with her fiancée Paul Kirby doing well with his work as a freelance journalist, as well as the restaurant that Vera has transformed through her own hard work, now doing incredibly well. And from her success with the restaurant, from out of the bue Vera suddenly finds herself being offered a job as the restaurant manager at an exclusive hotel for the extremely wealthy. The position is put to her by the equally wealthy new manager of the hotel - a somewhat understated yet somehow mysterious individual named Feldspar. The new position would at least double her current wage, as well as offering free accommodation within the luxurious hotel, a company car and other such perks.

On the same night that Vera is being propositioned with this potential job of her dreams, her fiancée Paul is out in a popular bar that is frequented predominately by singles, researching the somewhat sordid scene within such establishments, for a four-part series that he has had commissioned. However, later that night, after Vera returns to their apartment, she discovers her fiancée in bed with two young women, all of which are engaging in some very sexual practices.

In that moment, Vera's life suddenly falls apart. And so the next morning, waking up in her car after having fled from their apartment, Vera decides to take the job Feldspar offered her at the new hotel - The Inn. Now that she has suddenly cut all her ties with Paul there is nothing to hold her back from taking on the new position. And so Vera, with a heavy heart, together with a handful of employees that she steals from her previous job, Vera heads off to the remote location where The Inn's renovation is being finished before it is opened up to its 'select clientele'.

Meanwhile, two young psychopathic serial killers named Zyra and Lemi are picking up random men, women and couples in order to satisfy their insatiable libidos and bathe in the bloody gore of their victims blood. But not every one of their victims is killed then and there. Those they choose to, are taken away with them, to fulfil a far more disturbing purpose.

Back at The Inn, the building's haunting past, from when it was a sanatorium known as Wroxton Hall, is putting the new employees ill at ease with their surroundings. Furthermore, a number of them (including Vera) are experiencing bizarrely sexual dreams. And what the hell is it with all of the noise that is heard throughout the night from the mysterious 'select clientele' that none of them have ever seen? Vera is about to find that under the cover of a high-class hotelier business lurks a hideous and blasphemous horror that is forever lusting for the sins of the flesh...

DLS Review:
Lee's 'The Chosen' is a surprisingly slow burner for the first half of the tale, that unfortunately suffers from some considerable sagging in pace and plot development around the mid-section of the novel. This is a shame, because otherwise, the interesting parallel running sub-stories, the personal bonds that build up some tightly developed characterisation, and the unrestrained eroticism that is injected into the horror story as a whole, together creates an otherwise engaging and thrilling read.

The main strength of the novel no doubt lies with the hazy mixture of sordid dreams and drug fuelled orgies which, when splattered so heavily across the entirety of the novel, create an overall unreal undertone to the tale. Luckily Lee cranks up the levels of downright sleaze in the novel, venturing deep into the pits of depravity, and heavy sadomasochistic indulgences at almost every possible opportunity.

This is certainly not a novel for the light-hearted. Its no-holds-barred approach to the levels of eroticism within the general parameters of an otherwise mildly intriguing horror story is what saves the novel as a whole. Without the unrelenting and uncensored scenes of depravity and sleazy sex, the tale would undoubtedly be painfully mundane.

Characterisation (as previously touched upon) is particularly strong, if not a tad on the clichéd side. The employees from the previous restaurant - 'The Emerald', that Vera steals away, are each given their own backstories, unique (and somewhat exaggerated) personalities, as well as tight bonds with each other. Much of the novel is taken up by the antics, readjustment and interaction between the characters, with a colourfully tongue-in-cheek approach adopted towards each of them.

The revelation of the dramatic twist ending is impactful and utterly engaging, although it's actual unveiling is rather contrived and overly explained. However, this is soon cast to the side as Lee steps up the pace, delivering scene after scene after scene of maniacal horror, torture, sex and nail-biting action.

The tale hurtles to an all-encompassing finale that wraps up almost every aspect of the novel with a flash of desperate action and fight for survival. Lee maintains his descriptively graphic approach to the sexual violence throughout these final pages, not letting the ending run away from him without delivering a last punch in the guts for the reader.

All in all the tale suffers from a frustratingly plodding pace that holds the storyline back from fulfilling the erotically charged horror that is constantly beating behind every page. However, when Lee gets to his scenes of sex or horror (or a hefty mixture of the two) then he goes hell for leather at it. Certainly not one of the author's stronger novels, but still well worth a read.

The novel runs for a total of 341 pages.