Product Description

It is 1940 and Europe is in the grip of World War II. Spike and Dru, Sunnydale's sexiest vampire couple, find it the ideal environment for a blood-stained spree. They set out to kill Sophie, the current Slayer, and all the Slayers-in-Waiting - the "pretty maids all in a row".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #353704 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Spike and Drusilla are regular villains on the hit TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now the un-dead couple feature in their first novel. Author Christopher Golden has taken advantage of their eternal vampiric youth to write an historical novel set in Europe in 1940, where the war of the Allies against Nazi Germany is set side by side with the war of the Watchers' Council against vampires. As the current Slayer, Sophie Carstensen, cuts down not only vampires but Nazi soldiers who have invaded her Danish homeland, we may well ask which war is the more brutal.

Spike has promised Dru a magickal artifact, Freyja's Strand, which will enable her to shapeshift and, more importantly, to see her own reflection. Its current owner, the Ice Demon Skrymir, demands that in payment the vampires kill all the Slayers-in-Waiting. And so Spike and Dru go on a joyful killing spree across Europe and North America, finding ever more gruesome and imaginative ways of murdering teenage girls. The reversal of traditional roles, making Spike the central protagonist and turning the Slayer and the Watcher's Council into obstacles to be overcome, will be disturbing to some, and this is not a book for the squeamish. Charismatic they may be, but Spike and Dru have no consciences, no empathy and no remorse. The combination of sadism, death and sexuality makes this one definitely adults only. --Elizabeth Sourbut

Customer Reviews

Highly Entertaining and Very Well Written
i have read many of the other books from the buffy the vampire slayer series and have had my different opinions on all of them,but i always preffered reading of the past (e.g 1880).
i saw 'Spike and dru-pretty maids all in a row' advertised on the interenet and wanted to buy it striaght away as Spike+Dru are my favourite characters from the buffy series. i was glad to see that it was written in the past of 1940 and hoped it would be as good a read as i was expecting it to be.
I was first glad that many main buffy characters were not in the book at all, as i don't really find them much of an interest to read about, as i always seem to get bored of reading about Buffy's battle scences.

Once i read this book, i was glad that it had been as high as my expectations for it were.
Now, i'm just 13, but i have to say, i'm not really of the faint hearted and enjoyed this book and its horror scences very much.
i was very glad to see Spike and Dru together and the way they had been written in was very good and detailed by Christopher Golden, who i very much agree is an amazing author.

i would highly recommend this book to any Spike and Dru fans who love a bit of horror to read about, but it is not really recommended to Buffy fans who prefer reading of modern day and Buffy's battle scences.
it is very well written and strechs well from day to day and scence to scence.

Definatly a 5 Star Book :)

Gemma Crowley xx

What Spike and Dru did during the War (World War II)
When a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel appears in hardback you know it has to be pretty special, even if Buffy herself is never even mentioned in the book, as is the case with Christopher Golden's "Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All In A Row." The "Pretty Maids" of the title are the Slayers in waiting, those young girls who have been identified by the Watchers Council as potential Slayer and trained so that when the time comes they can handle the responsibility. Hitler's Germany is about to invade France and for once in her un-dead life Drusilla has something in mind for her birthday: The necklace of the Brisings, known also as Freyja's Strand. Spike has promised her the trinket, which is supposedly in the possession of an ice-demon named Skyrmir, who is too powerful for the vampires to overcome. But Skymir is willing to make a deal: if the vampires can find out the names of all the Slayers in waiting and kill them, Dru will get her happy birthday gift.

The Slayer in this novel is Sophie Carstensen, a native of Denmark, who is forced to fleeter country when her Watcher, Yanna, is also a seer. However, with the outbreak of war on the continent, all of the Vampires in Britain head for the battlefield where the pickings will be easy, and the Council orders the Chosen One to follow them, even though the bullets that cannot kill the vampires can certainly kill the Slayer. Meanwhile, Spike and Dru are starting to knock off the pretty maids one by one. When the Council sends the Slayer after the two vampires while the demon Skymir attacks the very stronghold of the Watchers with his horde, Golden's narrative arrives at a most fateful confrontation. I had a little bit of trouble getting into the book, but once the situation was laid out for me I was hooked and the conclusion is as good as anything you will find in any other Buffy novel.

Readers have to remember that the Spike they encounter within these pages is the Spike of the old days, paired up with Drusilla, and not the character's current persona on the television series. His characterization is much stronger in the second half of the book than the first, but it is Drusilla that is really fleshed out in this book. Golden provides an insane sort of logic to her wild visions and ramblings much more so than the series ever had time to develop. Sophie the Vampire Slayer is not Buffy to be sure, but she is certainly a Slayer appropriate to time and place with a very unique relationship with her Watcher. Plus she uses the family broadsword to cut off the heads of the vamps when she dusts them. There is even a reference or two to the Giles family's association with the Council for those who like to see the past tied up neatly with the present. I am one of those readers who think that the very best Buffy stories are penned by Golden and Nancy Holder writing in tandem, but each has proven capable of hitting the mark without the other. "Pretty Maids All In A Row" is certain Golden's best solo effort, richly deserving the hardback treatment. Final warning: do not expect this story to neatly mesh with the mythology of Spike and Dru's background as revealed on this year's cross-over episodes.

"Spike & Dru": Not a Pretty Sight
I've actually been putting off writing this review because I knew it would be in direct opposition to the other reviews previously posted. I wasn't so sure I wanted to be the only dissenting voice, the only discerning reader, the only one who could see that the vampire had no clothes.

Then I thought, "Aw, heck. Why not?"

Christopher Golden's "Spike & Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row" is not a good book; let's get that out of the way up front. Now, not being good as a novel doesn't mean that a book can't be entertaining, but that, sadly, is not the case here.

Wait. Was that a quadruple negative? Let me clear it up; Christopher Golden's "Spike & Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row" is not entertaining. It's basically an experiment in synergy by the Buffy machine, starring the one character who is arguably more popular than Buffy herself, Spike, and his paramour, Drusilla.

Golden selected an interesting setting, Europe at the height of World War II, as a way of introducing a Slayer that Spike could kill with impugnity and giving us some insight to a time when Spike was not the neutered wimp he is in the current series.

Rather than further our understanding of Spike the character, Golden further muddies the waters here by his unimaginative efforts, blatant mistakes and plotline missteps. But before I come down on Golden, I should point out that ANY effort to translate Buffy to written form is an exercise in folly. What works well on the small screen often comes off silly and trite on the stark page - like frost giants, demons and, yes, even vampires and Slayers. The inherent errors are merely compounded by Golden's comic-book prose.
A book based on a popular television series should try to break out of it's frame. Expand the universe, as it were, or at least explain further. If not, why bother writing it at all? I can hear you muttering, "Money, dear boy, money.", but that's not good enough for me.
Here, Golden completely destroys the Slayer universe by introducing a logical conundrum in the persons of the war-era Slayers and the "Slayers in Waiting" - girls who are training to be Slayers should the current one misstep. If, then, there is only one slayer and she happens to be based in Stockholm, Sweden, then the vampires of the world are free to multiply elsewhere, at will. If the Watcher Council orders her elsewhere, then the vamps in Stockholm now take a breather and begin multiplying like fleas, unimpeded. It's a dumb system and one that Golden should never have run with - exposing it to the light of day only weakens it.

Spike and Dru are rendered fairly faithfully, which only underscores how goofy they are as characters. Why do vampires need to have sex? They don't have blood in order to make the parts work, right? Why does Spike smoke? Golden tells the reader repeatedly that vampires don't use their lungs. Why do they speak such wretched dialog? Why would Spike speak like a 21st century man instead of a 40's Brit? And if he feels a jolt of patriotic pride when the Germans attack Great Britain, why would he create a German vampire submarine crew who would then go on to use their supernatural strength against his living countrymen?

There is no real plot - Spike wants to get Freya's Strand, Scrymer the demon wants him to perform a task before he'll give it up. The task, kill all the Slayrs in Waiting, causes Spike & Dru to trot the globe with reckless abandon, killing young girls and their mentors in ever-more-grisly ways. After a few, it becomes neither shocking nor interesting, except possibly to preteens without enough gore in their lives.

Pet peeve: Golden introduces a Slayer in Waiting from Louisiana, who refers to Sophie, the current Slayer, as "y'all." No one from the South would refer to a single person as "y'all" - "y'all" is plural.

This book was a quick read, but not quick enough.