I received a copy of Dragonhunters, by Garon Whited, from Netgalley. I read it on vacation, as I traveled from Tennessee to Florida.
Description from Goodreads:
You don’t become a hero for the money. The money’s nice, sure, but you become a hero because something inside compels you, drives you to it. Defending people from monsters simply doesn’t pay well enough to make it a good career move.
As for hunting dragons… well, the money is usually good, but the job really bites.
A group of five professional heroes goes into the lair of the dragon. Who will win?
Spoiler: The dragon.
But it turns out killing a hero sometimes does nothing more than make him even more determined.
Sometimes, heroes are never more dangerous than when they’re dead!
Review:
Man, what an interesting set-up that failed almost completely for me. Look, there are a ton of really fun ideas in this book. But the writing is so flat, the dialogue so formal and fantasy-quest-like (you know what I mean) that it distances the reader so far that I didn’t connect with anyone. I finished the book feeling like I hadn’t gotten to know anyone, nor did I care about any of them or their endeavor to kill a random dragon. No one had a believable emotion. No one seemed to react at all to, you know, dying and being resurrected, or becoming the locus of four ghosts. And the traveler that caused the whole mess is never explained at all. He pops up in the beginning and then disappears, never to be seen again.
For a while, in the beginning, I thought this might be a parody of a fantasy quest story. And it might have worked in that vein, but it isn’t. It’s an attempt at a real thing, as far as I can tell, and I was just really glad to see the end of it. Perhaps there will be readers that love it. I’m not making a blanket, “It’s bad,” statement. But it sure didn’t work for me.
