The Accidental Demonslayer (Demon Slayer #1) by Angie Fox

The Accidental Demon Slayer - Angie Fox

Lizzie was living a perfectly ordinary life when a demon appeared in her bathroom. And her dog started talking to her

 

Turns out she has inherited the legacy of the Demon Slayers and her guide to this new world is her long estranged grandmother, witch, biker and expert in the many uses of road kill.

 

She and a handesome shapeshifting griffin need to train her in this new world - especially since there’s a very powerful demon looking for her



There’s some elements of this book I really like, especially Lizzie’s origin. Lizzie was a nice, normal, school teacher. She has a nice, safe, mundane life and she’s dragged to her supernatural legacy by her grandma


And I love the grandma. Her grandma is part of a rather elderly coven who have managed to survive, alone of all the covens, in the face of a demon hunting them because they’re gloriously unconventional. They’re nomadic, bikers and their Earth Magic draws upon a whole lot of scavenging and road kill. And I kind of love this - I love this take on magic not being pretty or nice. I love how it’s by being so unorthodox that the biker granny witches have survived and I like that we have this really excellent collection of kick arse older women each doing their own thing and being decidedly indecorous about it. The coven rocks.

 

And I really like how Lizzie fits in with granny and this coven - i.e. not at all. She’s a nice conventional, a little boring, school teacher. She doesn’t ride motorbikes. She doesn’t fight demons. She doesn’t get dirty. She doesn’t eat road kill. And I like how her rejection of this kind of screws up Lizzie and the coven for a while with Lizzie making a major mistake because she IS human. I love how it sets up this conflict of Lizzie trying to adapt to this new life - while slowly learning to embrace it (I especially love the ending here).

 

There’s also a magical companion dog but meh, doesn’t mean a lot, manages not to be annoying or intriguing which is kind of weird for magical companion animals but does manage to make Lizzie look a bit of a dick for caring more about this dog than various people.

 

Anyone who has read my reviews knows the review is now going to take a negative turn as I talk about THE ROMANCE. I hate the romance in this story.

 

We have Dmitri, a Griffin (of course) who is… ambiguously secretive for no damn good reason for most of the book. I mean we get the answers right near the end for some pointless romance conflict but there’s no reason he couldn’t have been introduced with all of this. I mean he appears and Granny is all “we can’t trust him even though all he’s done is help us and we’d all be dead” but there’s never any reason why Granny doesn’t trust him or can’t explain a little about why she’s suspicious. Or even say he’s a Griffin! I mean, sort of relevant? Instead we have this convoluted mystery so Dmitri and Lizzie can fast forward themselves into a “romance” (if your only criteria for falling for someone is “he’s hot” is it even a romance? Because we know nothing else about him) and Lizzie can continually bounce between “zomg he’s so hot” and “Granny said not to trust him”. I mean this whole unnecessary mystery is there JUST so Lizzie can be conflicted about the relationship. And then when the inevitable happens and we find out that *GASP* Dmitri was looking for a Demon Slayer to take down the big bad for his own reasons and Lizzie is super offended by this because… reasons? It feels like another romance trope that is just shoe-horned in there because this is what romances are supposed to look like: mysterious hot guy, convoluted misunderstanding, etc etc conflict because conflict

 

 

 

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