Chose versus Chosen

I ran across this sentence in Sanderson's Warbreaker and it immediately sounded off. I'm sure the fault is with me, but I wanted to double check here to clear things up.

Sentence in question:

With Nightblood, she and Vasher had spent much time in thought, then finally chosen a simple, yet elegant, Command.

For whatever reason I have an urge to substitute "chose" for "chosen". Regardless it's an awkward sentence for me.

 

It starts with past perfect and ends in past perfect. If it was written differently, started with pp and ended with past, then the timeline would be different. If the final act "(had) chosen" was to be replaced with "chose" that would bring us to the "now", if the whole narration is in 3rd person, past tense.

 

Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately it still sounds wrong to me, but at least I know what's "correct."

 

Maybe because of skipping the "had" before the "chosen" in the attempt to skip the "had" before the "chosen". Get it?

Anyhow, I also stumble in places when reading a book. It's not so uncommon. I really struggled reading "Under Heaven" in the beginning, because every now and then I would find sentences that were... just unpleasantly structured for me. I still don't know if I'm mistaken. I can only hypothesise since he is an American (I think) published writer and I'm just the novice reader, that he is correct.

 

This seems wrong to me too. Chosen is a participle. I feel like it also needs a 'had' in front of it to agree with the pp of 'had spent', or to change it to chose to make it more present in the story line. Or make chosen an adjective, but that would require rejigging the sentence a bit.

I don't feel 100% about this, so feel free to correct.

 

@booksofkae it does, technically, have a "had" in front of it, but it's such a long-winded sentence it gets a little lost. So yes, it's right, but if the sentence throws the reader this far off does it matter if it's correct?

 

I would use 'chose' as well.

 

either chose or had chosen, by my ear

 

Chosen is correct. As other have said the sentence is in past perfect, and the 'had' in the first part also represents the 'chosen' towards the end of the sentence.

 

Even with the clarification it still sounds out of tune when I read it out loud. Again, I understand the problem lies with me. Something about the "then finally" that precedes it.

then finally chosen . . .

then finally chosen . . .

then finally chosen . . .

 

Indeed. It would have sounded better if it was " ... and finally..." or even better
"... time in thought. Finally they had chosen..."

This sentence doesn't flow so nicely in general. Why do you pay so much attention to it though? Just curious.

 

It's funny how we all 'hear' things differently when we read. The sentence as it is, sounds perfectly proper and correct to my inner ear.

 

An action in the past perfect should always have another action that follows on from it, because past perfect expresses an action which happens before another action.

My feeling is that "chose" is the correct tense in the second part. I disagree about the timeline. If you used "chose", then followed the sentence with another one in the past tense, the timeline would still be in the past:

With Nightblood, she and Vasher had spent much time in thought, then finally chose a simple, yet elegant, Command. They settled down to wait for the Command to take effect.

 

I like this explanation. Ignore everything I said. (I'm serious - this explanation makes it a lot clearer for me).

 

@Hammer Nice explanation!

 

However the grammar works, that is one very poorly written sentence.