Talon (Talon Saga, #1)

by Julie Kagawa

[Kat @ Novels & Waffles]

“My heart gave a weird little flutter. I'd been around Lexi for over a month, listening to her gush over boys, watching her point out the 'gorgeous' ones. I understood human beauty now, and I'd even reached the point where I could nudge Lexi toward a cute guy, and she would agree that he was hot, but I still didn't get the fascination.

Maybe all the boy-watching had finally sunk in, because this stranger was, to use two of Lexi's favorite words, absolutely gorgeous.”

What do you get when you put a fiery redhead with a habit of rule-breaking, her overly protective older brother, and a cute soldier boy with a dangerous secret mission together? Something you've probably read before. You might have even seen it on The Disney Channel.

Dragons and Dragon Slayers – sounds promising enough, right? Wrong. Prepare to visit a doctor after reading this book, because you are going to sprain your eyeballs from all the eye-rolling you'll do. I stopped listening to the audiobook at around four hours in (out of 13). Honestly, I'm surprised I even stuck with it that long. Talon is just one big ball of cliche that has somehow managed to include almost every boring stereotype I can think of:

A bad boy who rides a motorcycle and dresses up in leather jackets: ✔
A forbidden romance with a boy who has gorgeous eyes: ✔
Cute Surfers with bleached hair who say "Duuuuudddde": ✔
Flat characters with no personality: ✔

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. There was absolutely nothing original going on here. The main character is a redhead with a short temper, a stubborn attitude, and is curious to the point of being stupid. Wow, never heard of that one before. Oh wait, yes I have. Moreover, she's a dragon named Ember with red hair. I mean, COME ON. Can't we be a little less obvious here?

Talon alternates chapters between two first-person narratives. The first is Ember Hill, a dragon hatchling who has been sent to live on a breezy California coast in order to learn how to blend in and act like a normal human teenager. Along with her twin brother, Dante, Ember spends her days surfing with her new SoCal friends who fit into that stereotype like a hand to a glove. Her inner dialogue is almost exclusively focused on how much she loves to fly, or how she wishes she were flying, or why can't she break the rules and go flying? If you didn't already catch on, she likes flying.

The second perspective is Garret Xavier Sebastian, who is a member of the secret dragon slaying society, The Order of St. George. This militaristic group hunts down dragons and kills them for the sake of protecting humanity. Garret is known among their ranks as, "The Perfect Soldier," and has been on dozens of deathly missions, despite his youthful age of seventeen. He's considered a seasoned solider, having joined the Order at fourteen. Can we just think about that? Why does this super secret, super dangerous, and super prestigious Order that has been around for hundreds of years allow fourteen-year-old boys to go running around with machine guns? Couldn't they find some more experienced recruits or are they so desperate that they are scraping the bottom of the barrel for people to join their ranks? Maybe I'm just being hypercritical here, but I wasn't buying into it. Oh, and side note, if I have to read one more description about how beautiful Garret's eyes are, I might vomit.

In the end, I found this book to be too juvenile for me to finish. The bland writing, the flat characters, and the over-reliance on stereotypes were hard for me to swallow. If I had picked Talon up ten years ago, before I was more familiar with the YA genre, I might have been able to enjoy it the same way you enjoy a Hallmark Channel movie. You're momentarily entertained, but not WOWed. Now, however, with so many books on by TBR list, I don't see the point in pushing myself to read something that at its best could be labeled, "Brainless fun," when I'm not in the mood for it.