Slayers by C.J. Hill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got an advanced reading copy of this through netgalley(dot)com.

Slayers is the story of a group of kids with super powers who are training to fight the bad guy. How did they get their super powers? Interesting question. The Slayers got their powers from their ancestors. Who is the bad guy? Dragons. And not the cute, friendly anthropomorphized kind either. These are truly the big, bad monsters of olde. They are terrifying, smart and totally dangerous. Oh, and they can be controlled by a dragon lord. This is where Hill really came up with a cool concept. When the history reported that alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold they got it wrong; they were trying to make liquid gold. This liquid gold would give people powers to defeat the dragons. It ended up being fused with their DNA, and can be passed along to their descendents. The powers can only be triggered by a pregnant descendent being in the vicinity of a dragon egg (about 5 miles). It sounds a little out there, but the story really works well.

Most of the Slayers have known each other and gone to camp together every summer when the story opens. Tori is obsessed with dragons and has been all her life. She is afraid of them, but knows everything there is to know about them. This camp should be perfect for her. It’s called Dragon camp. Once she gets there, not everything is what it seems. She meets two guys, and immediately gets off on the wrong foot with both of them. Then, Dr. B, in charge of camp, resident dragon expert, and leader of the Slayers informs Tori that she will be with the ‘advanced’ campers (Slayers, of course). It takes her a while to figure out what’s really going on, and she isn’t super likable at this point. Luckily as the story progresses she redeems herself, and truly becomes part of the tight-knit Slayer group.

Overall, I really liked this story, and I hope I don’t have to wait too long for the next one!


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