Product Description

A novelisation of the entire seventh season of the Buffy TV saga.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #643609 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Nancy Holder's bestselling Buffy and Angel books include both volumes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Watcher's Guide; Angel: The Casefiles; the Gatekeeper trilogy; the Unseen trilogy; Buffy: Immortal and Angel: Not Forgotten. She is a four-time Bram Stoker award winner for her work in supernatural fiction and lives in San Diego with her husband Wayne and young daughter Belle.

Customer Reviews

Biting the dust
While this novelization claims to contain the entirety of season 7, large portions of the book are best read only after you have seen the episodes. Large amounts of descriptive work is missing, leaving things unclear as to what exactly is happening in some areas, this was taken from the shooting scripts, it seems to read like it also. Half the time you expect to read the words "whoever reacts", trust me, it feels like that. Thankfully I had seen all of season 7 prior to reading this book and was glad I had. All 22 episodes are present, in addition to this some bonus material that was cut form the show for length, which is a nice bonus, but only little one.

Season 7 read better than it was to watch in my opinion, the show fell flat for more than half the final season, thankfully all these dull moments are condensed. However, unfortunately, all the good bits are condensed as well. Much of the charm of the show is lost in the book, partly due to the author's skill I feel, Nancy Holder has always lacked something when I have read her work. Though she isn't any Christopher Golden, she can pull her own weight.

I recommend that this book is bught only if yo uare a completist, a true die hard BtVS enthusiast or just short of anything better to read. While a disappointment, it is a nice way to pass the time, just don't expect anything special.

The Lost Slayer, Pretty Maids all in a Row, Doomsday Deck, the Unseen Trilogy and the Gatekeeper Trilogy all leave this one dusted and wanting. If yo ureally want to read something BtVS related, go for those first.

Not proofread
The novelization of Season 7 must have been written very hastily. It can't have been proofread. It's full of typos, places where words or half a sentence is missing, actual wrong words ('saw' instead of 'say'; 'him' instead of 'her' and vice versa), mixed-up names of characters, and repetitions (bad guys are sent flying or even dusted twice in short order, as if the first time didn't take) not to mention obvious global changes, as when *every* instance of the words 'the first' (as in 'the first time') has a capital F, and every instance of the word 'potential' (as in 'potential danger') has a capital P.

If you can get past all this, the style and pace are quite all right (which is why I still think it merits 3 stars). I can understand it if Nancy Holder would not put her name to this, as she usually has a good grasp of her language, which is why I assume that this book was published in a hurry before proofreading. However, certain expressions give the author away, to those familiar with her work.

Conned
Ok, ok, so maybe I'm an insufferable pedant, but I had to restrain myself from going through this book with a highlighter and marking over the literally hundreds of spelling errors. It horrifies me that somewhere out there, someone was being paid to edit this book and clearly just couldn't be bothered. It almost feels like they thought "Oh well, the series is over, so why should we bother delivering quality to the fans anymore?"
On top of this, the book was clunky and badly written, breaking virtually every rule of grammar and style. The word for word recount of the dialogue I could have dealt with, but as the surrounding text doesn't support it properly, it quickly became tedious. Quite frankly, it felt rushed; as though the dialogue had been written and the author had just filled in the gaps with "...and then this happened and so did this and then they said..."
As a huge BTVS fan I was hugely disappointed by this book, to the point that I wrote in to the Official Magazine to complain. Anyone thinking of buying it, no matter how much you loved the show... If you are at all literate- JUST DON'T.