Slayers of Old by Jim C. Hines Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, urban fantasy
Pages: 363
Published by DAW on October 21, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Golden Girls in this humorous contemporary standalone fantasy about a group of former Chosen Ones coming out of retirement to save the world one last time.
Three former Chosen Ones have joined together to spend their retirement in peace and quiet, running Second Life Books and Gifts in Salem, MA. A calm, peaceful, tourist-filled oasis, where they never have to worry about saving the world. Until some of the locals start summoning ancient creatures best left where they were . . . and they discover that their bookstore basement just may be the portal to the underworld. These ex-heroes may have thought they were done . . . but if they want to finish their retirement in peace, they’ll have to join together to save the world one last time.
Why leave saving the world to the young? Cozy mystery readers looking for an extra dash of magic will eat this story up: fun, funny, and heartwarming, it's a novel about community, second chances, and the healing power of scones.
My Review:
An ex-slayer, a half-succubus, and a has-been wizard share a magical house and a barely scraping by bookstore in Salem Massachusetts. You’d think they’d fit right in. You also might think that it’s the start of a joke – or at least the start of a cozy fantasy.
They do fit right in, or at least they fit in a bit better than they might anyplace else. It’s absolutely not the start of a joke, nor is this as cozy of a fantasy as it might have been (or as the blurb might lead one to believe).
Because, once upon a time when they were all a lot younger, Jenny Winter, Annette Thorne and Temple Benn were each the ‘Chosen One’ for their generation. I want to make a joke and say that “they got better” and the Monty Python joke does certainly apply – at least to the 99-year-old wizard Temple, but that’s not exactly the case.
What they are, more or less, is retired – at least from the whole Chosen One gig. Or so they thought. Jenny walked away from being a Slayer because the price was too high – not only her own soul but the souls of her friends as well. Annette mostly stopped being a paranormal PI in order to spend the time with her grandchildren that she didn’t spend with her son. While Temple Benn is just plain old. And fading. His body’s giving out on him and his mind isn’t quite as sharp as it used to be.
Turns out he’s been having a bit of help with that last bit – but none of them know it. At least not yet. Which is where this story begins.
With Jenny practicing, not slaying, but healing. Of the same creatures she used to fight. It’s her way of paying back to a world whose complexities she didn’t understand when she was recruited by the Guardians Council at age THIRTEEN. Which means that when the monsters come to their door, as long as they swear to ‘do no harm’ for a year and a day, they get healing.
While Annette manages the store, minds the account books and manages the investments so they can all live comfortably. The house is Temple’s, and his own magic and his family’s generational magic is so invested in that house that it takes care of all of them – and they take care of it.
The monster that comes to Jenny for healing is more than just a patient who needs her help. The poor thing, or rather the poor thing’s injuries, are a harbinger of terrible things to come. Because one of the souls that Jenny lost, a once upon a time dear friend who used to be part of her ‘Slay Team’ has found Jenny in Salem. And he’s brought the end of the world along for the ride. Or it’s brought him.
Either way, they’re coming for Jenny, and everyone and everything that Jenny holds dear. It’s time for Jenny, Annette and Temple to gear up for one last hunt, to see if they still have what it takes to save the world, one more time.
Escape Rating A: This is one of those books where a good chunk of the premise is right there in the title. Because Slayers of Old is ‘old skool’ urban fantasy right down to the protagonists’ creaking bones.
Instead, while the setting – and OMG the bookstore! – have their cozy aspects, the story isn’t. Rather, this is very much urban fantasy. Not so much the way it used to be as it was in the genre’s 1980-1990s heyday, but instead, it’s the story of what happened after its, and their, heyday was over. What effect time and sacrifice and living have had on the people who, once upon a time, were the sung or unsung heroes who saved the world and nearly died trying, over and over again.
Who would Buffy Summers and her ‘Scoobies’ have become after their slaying days were over? Slayers of Old is THAT story. And it’s awesome. (It’s also reminiscent of the stories in the collection Never Too Old To Save the World, and the standalone (dammit) A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark, and Hailey Edwards’ Yard Birds series, with a bit of the video game Eternal Darkness thrown in for bodies, spice and eldritch horrors.)
The characters manage to be both fantastic and representative of just the sort of protagonists that we used to see in urban fantasy. Jenny is an older, sadder, wiser and more regretful Buffy, Annette fits right in with paranormal investigators like Mercy Thompson (Moon Called), Kate Daniels (Magic Bites) and Jane Yellowrock (Skinwalker), while Temple is more than a bit of Harry Dresden (Storm Front) 50 years on and every wizard who kept evil at bay with the force of his powers AND every person of or past a certain age who STILL can’t believe that the elderly face they see in the mirror is theirs, because inside they’re still in their prime even though the aches and pains in their bodies tell them that they are not.
Slayers of Old also manages to be a terrific found family story, because a point of how the story works is that Jenny, Annette and Temple all have people that they care about that they’ll give their lives to protect – especially each other. (There’s no romance between any combination of the three of them and there SHOULDN’T be.)
Instead, it’s all for Jenny’s apprentice, Annette’s grandkids, and for Temple it’s Jenny, Annette and the sentient house that has loved and nurtured him all his life – and now cares for all of them and is in danger right along with them.
There’s a full-circle aspect to the story as the villainous intentions are in the heartlessness of Jenny’s former friend and in the hands of kids who were just as naive and easily misled as each of them was, once upon a time. It’s payback in its heartbreak, while being just as batshit crazy as any monster that Jenny ever fought – and just as dangerous.
I loved this one hard, not just because I miss those ‘old skool’ urban fantasies that I read back when they were new and I was a whole lot younger than I am today. Just as the author was when he used to WRITE that sort of fantasy. And just like Jenny, Annette, and Temple.
