Review of "Slayers" by CJ Hill

Slayers, by C. J. Hill

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Genre: YA fantasy

Reviewed by a guest reviewer: Whitney (Thanks Whitney!)

Summary from Amazon: Dragons exist. They’re ferocious. And they’re smart: Before they were killed off by slayer-knights, they rendered a select group of eggs dormant, so their offspring would survive. Only a handful of people know about this, let alone believe it – these “Slayers” are descended from the original knights, and are now a diverse group of teens that includes Tori, a smart but spoiled senator’s daughter who didn’t sign up to save the world.

The dragon eggs have fallen into the wrong hands. The Slayers must work together to stop the eggs from hatching. They will fight; they will fall in love. But will they survive?

Whitney's Thoughts: This book was a lot of fun, in a Percy Jackson way. Light romance, cool summer camp full of super-hero kids, exciting fight scene at the climax. As the spoiled rich girl protagonist runs up against preconceptions she didn’t even know she had, she gradually and believably becomes a true member of the dragon-slaying team. The insider leaking information to the bad guys also turned out to be a complex character with a nice palette of conflicting motivations.

I’m a steady reader of fantasy, and I’ve suspended my disbelief for a lot of crazy concepts: hairy-toed guys who want to throw a ring in a volcano, broom-riding heroes battling ultimate evil with the help of a talking hat, gladiator teenagers on reality TV, etc.. With this book, though, I had a hard time suspending my disbelief for ancient knights who altered their DNA by drinking liquid gold and transforming their descendants into dragon hunters. The author was a little too flip with dragon “history,” combined with modern pseudo-science, and seemed to be in a hurry to get past the background to the actual story.

I kept reading, though, and once I’d managed to swallow the concept, this book was a fun, clean read.