Are there any books where the main character isn't the chosen one?

But they save the day anyway

Something like Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities, but more contemporary?

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan? Maaaaaaybe? It's a YA story, a sustained pisstake of portal fantasies, and I think in it noble blond warrior Luke is the chosen one, but grouchy pacifist Elliot saves the day. It's single star reviews are by readers who hated Elliot (his ethics are all on the macro level and he's mean on a one to one basis)

Another "Maaaaaaybe?", in that it's a story that de-centers the Chosen One(s): Patrick Ness's YA novel The Rest of Us Just Live Here. It's set at a high school where there is a group of Chosen Ones (called the "indie kids") who are repeatedly obliged to save the world from some new menace, but that piece of the story takes place in the background. To be precise, it's almost entirely in the chapter titles:

Chapter the Fifth, in which indie kid Kerouac opens the Gate of the Immortals, allowing the Royal Family and its Court a fissure through which to temporarily enter this world; then Kerouac discovers that the Messenger lied to him; he dies, alone.

The focus of the book is on four kids who are just trying to cope with relatively mundane problems -- difficult parents, being gay, eating disorders, a little OCD -- and hoping that the indie
kids are taking care of whatever the hell is going on with all those weird blue lights in the sky and zombie deer running through the forest, and that the high school isn't going to blow up. Again.

Thank you

>3 nessreader: Thanks

>1 Aceinthehole: Un Lun Dun by China Mieville; makes a point of that.

>1 Aceinthehole: If you like Terry Pratchett and other fantasy parodies, check out The Plot Bandits series by Katherine Vick, where the underdogs take over the plot and defy their almighty Taskmaster!