Slayers (ARC)

Here from the Pato's Cave 24-hour readathon with a review of Slayers, an ARC by C.J. Hill -- a pen-name of Janette Rallison.

Summary: 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?

Dragons are not my favorite mythical creature. In fact I'm rather bored of them. I hated Eragon but when I received this book I was happy because it says on the back, "This ain't your mamma's Eragon" so that made me happy (and chuckle).

I was also pretty thrilled when I found out that this book's dragons were man eating, evil, hellish monsters, not over-sized horses!

The book starts out very movie-like with an action-filled opening. But unfortunately after that it slowed down a lot and got pretty boring because it was mostly Tami, our self-centered heroine, going "OMG! Dragons exist" or "OMG how am I going to become a kick-ass dragon slaying chick?" and that bored me to tears. It wasn't for about another 200 pages that the book started to get good again.

I said Tammi was really self-centered, and she was 3/4 of the book, and when I don't like the main character chances are I won't like the book, but instead I really enjoyed it! The action parts were all very well written and had me on the edge of my seat.

This book has somewhat of a love triangle and usually I don't like one of the romance interests but like the other. In this book I liked them both a lot. Jess, the boy who seems like he would be the Edward of the story. He was very interesting and I enjoyed almost all his scenes and he really came to life for me. The other boy, Dirk, was more conflicted and had a lot to hide. I switched between the two sides a lot and in the end I'm going to hope there's a sequel that makes me choose one of them.

This book has a great plot but it does suffer for lack of a good hero. I'm pretty sure this book is going to have some sort of cult following. This book would also make for a great movie, with the right actors and directors. A fun, interesting novel, but certainly not a must read.

4/5

Thanks to Around the World ARC Tours for providing this ARC.

Slayers will be released November 22nd, preorder it on Amazon.