Archaeologist Annja Creed believes there's more to the apparitions of Santo Niño—the Holy Child—luring thousands of pilgrims to Santa Fe. Other sightings of strange and anomalous creatures in the area indicate a mystery more profane than sacred—with links, perhaps, to Annja's own fate. But she is not alone in her quest to separate reliquaries from unholy minds who dare to harness sinister power. A dangerous yet enigmatic Jesuit, sworn to protect the Vatican at any cost, a brilliant young artist whose genius portrays a truth too potent for words and a famed monster hunter with a terrifying agenda are the keys to the secrets that lie in the heart of Los Alamos—and unlocking the door to the very fabric of time itself….
The Chosen
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
New Mexico
"That poor child," Mrs. Murakami said. "We should stop and pick her up!"
The ceiling of gray-and-blue clouds hanging low over the rented minivan was suddenly veined with lightning. The vehicle's interior flashed blue-white.
It might have been the judgment of the kami. Alien spirits of an alien place, Mr. Murakami thought.
Obsessed enthusiast that he was for the history and culture of the southwestern United States--so different from his grim industrial suburb outside Tokyo--Murakami should have been in heaven. Instead he was peeved. Not to mention lost. "What child?" he demanded, as the echoes of a shattering thunderclap died away.
"That child. Hurry! It's about to rain," his wife replied.
This is the desert, he thought. It isn't supposed to rain. Although from his studies he knew that it did. Rarely. But violently. And there was no denying a violent downpour was in the offing. He could smell the rain and the ozone, overlying the sage and dust of the deceptively flat-looking khaki terrain of the Acoma Indian Reservation where he and his family had wandered, small and utterly lost. A few drops splatted against the windshield like fat, transparent bugs.
He looked the way his wife's sturdy arm pointed. "A child!" he exclaimed. "What can she be doing here?"
She stood in the clumpy weeds by the side of the rough dirt track. She wore a sort of blue dress with a scarlet cape around her shoulders, pinned off center with a gold clamshell brooch. Small pink feet in sandals poked out beneath the hem of the robe. She had a plump, round face framed by flowing brown locks spilling from either side of a hat with an astonishing plume and the brim pinned up in front.
Though he couldn't drive faster than twenty miles per hour without jostling the van intolerably on the horrendous collection of ruts and rocks that passed for a road, Murakami hit the brakes so hard the vehicle squeaked and jerked sideways as it stopped. The children, Taro and Hanako, looked up from their furious head-to-head battle on their video game.
"A little girl!" Hanako cried.
"Can we pick her up?" her brother asked. "Can we, Daddy?"
"We have to!" Hanako said. "She'll wash away." Murakami growled like a bear. His family wasn't fooled. They knew he was a kind man.
But Murakami was also well and truly stressed. They had reservations at the Old Town Hotel in Albuquerque for five that afternoon. He knew that they could be in trouble if they missed their reservation. The whole are was flooded with visitors. But he was a stranger in a strange land indeed. None of his loving studies had come close to preparing him for the unreal size of this western New Mexico desert. The land was so wide he had felt in danger sometimes of falling right off the planet. They had driven through mountains with pine trees, almost like home, between Gallup and Grants. But somewhere south of U.S. 40 they'd found themselves stuck in the middle of a vast bowl of desert rimmed by wind-scalloped mesas.
He stopped the van. His wife hopped out into a barrage of raindrops. She opened the sliding side door of the van and clucked and cooed to the oddly dressed girl.
"What's a child doing alone out here in the middle of nowhere, anyway?" Murakami asked. No one answered him. His children had unbelted their eat belts and were hopping up and down chirping like happy birds.
With Mrs. Murakami's help the child stepped into the van. Startled, Mr. Murakami realized it was a boy.
"Thank you, honored sir, for stopping to pick me up," the child said.
The Murakami children slid the door shut as their mother returned to her seat hastily. Taro and Hanako barraged the curious-looking boy with questions thick and fast as the rain as they helped him buckle himself in the seat between them. He answered only with great, beaming smiles. Gently but firmly he insisted on keeping his staff tucked in a crook of his gowned arm, at a sort of angle to fit the roof.
Murakami started to drive again. He felt a rising urgency. He perceived America as a violent land but had not expected that might extend to its very environment. The growing fury of the lightning and thunder so unsettled him that he had a hard time preserving his stoic demeanor. And the rain suddenly began to rattle off the van's metal skin like ten thousand drumsticks.
Away off to the left he could see the looming sandstone mesa on which an ancient city rested. Its somewhat brutal blockiness was softened by veils of rain that threatened in short order to mask it from view entirely. His objective in driving in to this lunar wilderness was not the great, gaudy Sky City Casino built on the desert, but the real Sky City on its majestic rock slab, the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in North America. People had dwelt up there, over three hundred feet above the surrounding land, since sometime before the twelfth century.
If only he could figure out how to get to the confounded hill.
Lightning flashed and thunder crashed around them so constantly it felt as if they had strayed into the middle of one of America's vaunted shock and awe bombardments. Through the explosive roars and racket of the rain Murakami could hear his children trying to share their handheld games with their new passenger.
His wife had turned around in her seat to fire solicitous questions at the boy. "Where are you from, child? Who are your parents? Where are your parents?"
Murakami was creeping along. He was genuinely afraid he and his family and their peculiar guest would be swept away at any moment by the horrible, ferocious weather. He tried desperately to remember if they got tornadoes in this part of the U.S. "Honored sir," the boy said from the backseat. Murakami drove across a low rise and began to descend. A hundred yards ahead the road bottomed, passing through a gulch with sheer high walls scooped out of the hard earth. Beyond it rose the flank of yet another ridge. He wished his budget had permitted a rental with GPS.
"Please," the little boy said.
"What is it?" Murakami asked. He felt instantly shamed at his brusqueness.
"You must not go down there, sensei."
"Ahh!" Murakami drew in a startled, gratified breath. The child had named him "master."
"But what other way can I go?" he asked, wondering how this strange young child was familiar with Japanese customs.
"You must turn around," the boy said. "If you do, you will find a dirt road a mile and a half on the right, back the way you have come. It is hard to see but you will see it. When you take that, it will bring you shortly to a paved road that will take you where you need to go."
Murakami scowled. If the confounded road was there, how had they missed it? The child didn't even know their destination.
He shook his head. "I don't want to turn back. Surely if we keep going this way we shall get there."
The truth was he was afraid to go back. But he would never admit that aloud.
"Master, please. Your danger is very great if you proceed down this road."
"I think you should listen to him," his wife said, her dark eyes, normally calm, wide and worried behind her glasses.
"Yes, Daddy," his son said. "Listen to him, please." Frowning furiously, Murakami brought the van to a stop halfway down to the gully. "All right," he said, "but if--"
"Daddy!" his children shouted in chorus. They flew from their seats to plaster themselves against the passenger-side window.
"Look!" his wife exclaimed, pointing.
Down the narrow gully from the right came something that turned Murakami's blood to ice. Though he had never seen one in person, and didn't live close enough to the coast to be in any real risk, like many Japanese he feared in his bones a tsunami.
That was what he saw rushing down on them. A wall of water, frothing dirty white--tsunami in miniature, six or seven yards wide and two yards tall. He saw with instant, horrible clarity what would have happened had he driven on. That moving water-wall would have caught the minivan amidships, tumbled it downstream like a toy, until it battered open a window and the turbulent water smashed in to drown his precious family and himself.
In silence that seemed almost like a bubble insulated from the raucous storm noise, Murakami and his family watched the flash flood sweep past. It made a roiled river of the road in front of them.
"You are safe now," the boy said from behind him.
"But your world also faces terrible danger. Please heed that warning, too."
"Yes, yes," Murakami muttered. He turned. "I thank you--"
Hanako screamed.
The seat was empty.
The child was gone.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Demons, Monsters and Mother Church,
By
This review is from: The Chosen (Rogue Angel, Book 4) (Mass Market Paperback)
Annja Creed is on a dig in the Southwest when she and team members see a strange red-eyed creature take flight without flapping its wings. This sighting coincides with local sightings of the legendary Holy Child who appears to travelers, warns them of some impending danger, and then vanishes. While Annja is a little spooked by her sighting she winds up investigating the Holy Child sightings. Meanwhile, the Vatican has dispatched a Jesuit to look into Annja and her relic sword. But no sooner does Annja get involved in her investigations than her life keeps getting threatened. It seems no matter where she goes there is some sort of effort to do her in.
As Annja continues her investigations and avoids imminent demise, she keeps running into the Jesuit. Is he friend or foe is not an easy question to answer. But somehow the two keep getting closer and closer to what is going on. The Holy Child keeps being seen and more monsters put in appearances. The plot threads all reach satisfactory conclusions and loose ends are all tied up nicely. This volume of Rogue Angel reads a little differently that the others. I do not know if they have been released in proper order or not or if this was written by a different author. The books hints at Annja having had her sword for a while but never mentions events of previous books. At on point she scoffs at the idea of demons being real and yet she faced one in SOLOMON'S JAR. But as a stand-alone adventure the book holds togther quite well with good pacing and action although there are a rather high number of typos still in the text. All in all I am still a fan of the series and looking forward to future volumes.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An addicting series....,
By
This review is from: The Chosen (Rogue Angel, Book 4) (Mass Market Paperback)
Annja Creed returns in her most exciting adventure yet in ROGUE ANGEL: THE CHOSEN.
As an archaeologist, Annja Creed looks for the scientific answer to every supposed paranormal event. However, her own sighting of a scary figure at a dig in New Mexico has her questioning whether demonic creatures really do exist. Meanwhile, sightings of the Holy Child are also appearing in the area, warning travelers of doom. Annja investigates, but her life is in peril as never before in this installment of the Rogue Angel series! ROGUE ANGEL: THE CHOSEN is an action packed adventure that grabs readers by the throat and doesn't let go. From the very first page, this story is a headlong rush of adrenaline-laced excitement. Monster lovers in particular will relish this tale as the supernatural elements are more present than ever in THE CHOSEN. Annja Creed's character continues to develop and grow with each new installment of Rogue Angel. In THE CHOSEN, her role as the reincarnation of Joan of Arc is further analyzed. Annja shows more vulnerability in this tale and thus appears more realistic as her superhero qualities aren't as omnipresent. Father Robert Godin's role in the overall drama is a mysterious one and the ending leaves open several intriguing possibilities for future novels in the series. ROGUE ANGEL: THE CHOSEN is an addictive series. Readers will quickly find themselves hooked on this interesting mix of science, the supernatural, and action. ROGUE ANGEL: THE CHOSEN is entertaining and Alex Archer is to be commended for such a superb series! COURTESY OF CK2S KWIPS AND KRITIQUES
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as the others,
This review is from: The Chosen (Rogue Angel, Book 4) (Mass Market Paperback)
First of all, I love this series. The first three books were awesome! Dispite the fact that it is written by two ghostwriters (Victor Milan and Mel Odom)the character of Annja Creed is very complex and interesting. I was looking forward to reading this story, but quickly became bored.
If one could ignore the typos, the action was good, but the storyline was a little difficult to follow. No sooner would the character discover some piece of information - boom - she was flying all over the place to investigate what she just learned. The problem is that there was no thought process for this kind of progression. Annja doesn't think - she just acts - leaving the reader to figure out what is going on. There was no plot leading up to the sudden change in setting and no transition or reason given for all of Annja's sudden moves around the globe. The reader is just supposed to assume that Annja would just go chasing a lead without weighing her options or even thinking about her next move. I thought that was really unrealistic, especially for a female heroine. If men want to write a story with a strong female character, then please give us more to read then just fast-paced action. Yes, action is good, but it would be even better if the reader knew the reasons behind the rest of the plot. At the end of reading The Chosen, I found it was rather average for one of the Rogue Angel novels. Hopefully the rest will be better.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
