Buffy the Vampire Slayer

From the back cover:
A rash of student suicides sweeps through Sunnydale High, jolting the community. When the newly arrived grief counselor ends up killing himself, Buffy and the gang begin to suspect there’s something supernatural to blame. Soon one of their own begins to show signs of debilitating despondency, and it becomes a race against time for the Slayer to defeat the ancient threat known as the Suicide King.

Review:
This is the first book in the Stake Your Destiny series—a Buffy Choose Your Own Adventure book, in other words. It takes places in the second season, between the episodes “Reptile Boy” and “Halloween.”

This was fairly decent, for a book of its type. The dialogue wasn’t bad, and occasionally sounded quite true to the characters. It’s canonically correct, and even superficially touches on Angel’s quest for redemption. The variety of conclusions was interesting, too: two good outcomes, two fair outcomes (success with a price), and a plethora of bad outcomes.

My main gripe here is that it was almost always obvious which option would lead you to the end by the page number. Also, there were a couple of errors (like Buffy falling to the floor when outside) and several uses of the dreaded “magic with a k.”

I took care to chart my options, making sure I’d read every page. It really was kind of a pain in the butt, and ultimately not worth it. While the book transcended some of the limitations of the genre, it’s still a COYA book at its heart. There are more of these, but I think I’ll pass.

From the back cover:
As long as there have been vampires, there has been the Slayer. One girl in all the world, to find them where they gather and to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their members. She is the Slayer.

Exclusive Interviews, Totally Pointy Profiles, Behind-the-Scenes Info, and Other Buff-stuff About the Hit Show.

Review:
The title Watcher’s Guide suggests to me that the guide is meant to augment the experience of someone watching the show. In addition to a description of the episodes, therefore, I expected at least some analysis, some discussion of what the episode was truly about, or its purpose in furthering the events of a particular story arc or a character’s development.

Instead, the action of each episode in the first two seasons is summarized in a few paragraphs, a quote of the week is chosen, romance progress is charted, and there’s a small section devoted to continuity between episodes. If one is already a watcher of the program, this information is irrelevent and redundant. I have found much more insightful episode commentary online.

On top of that, the summaries are fond of including questionable value judgments, deeming things hilarious or gorgeous, for example, that really aren’t, in my opinion. Example: Is the following exchange “hilarious,” as claimed, or merely cute, funny, and totally in character?

Oz: I’m gonna ask you to go out with me tomorrow night. And I’m kinda nervous about it, actually. It’s interesting.
Willow: Oh. Well, if it helps at all, I’m gonna say yes.
Oz: Yeah, it helps. It-it creates a comfort zone. Do you wanna go out with me tomorrow night?
Willow: (cringes and slaps her hand to her forehead) Oh! I can’t!
Oz: Well, see, I like that you’re unpredictable.

The latter half of the book is made up of sections devoted to monsters, relationships, cast and crew interviews, and a list of all the songs to appear in the episodes. The monsters and relationships sections just reiterated things that I already remembered from watching the show, though I guess the former could be useful if one, like, urgently needed to refresh their memory on Machida. Every member of the cast and crew that you could possibly think of got their own interview. Some of these were interesting, but they got repetitive. But hey, at least I now know about everyone’s scars, tattoos, or other distinguishing marks!

What is excellent about the Watcher’s Guide is that it often includes dialogue from the script that didn’t make it into the finished episode. This ranges anywhere from a couple of lines to full-blown scenes, some of which are awesome to have in print—like the dialogue we don’t get to hear from the phone call at the end of the episode “Passion,” for instance.

From the back cover:
Most teens have trouble finding themselves now and then, but when you’re living on a hellmouth, “trouble” is an understatement—especially if you’re Xander Harris. He has never been very popular, and has never had much luck with women, but he is uniquely Xander.

After a Sunnydale High field trip to the zoo, Xander becomes obnoxious and aggressive. Giles thinks it’s typical adolescent male behavior, but Buffy knows better. And when he finally scores “cool” points by making the Sunnydale High swim team, he’s thrown into the middle of something, well… fishy.

Still, once Xander is excluded from the Slayer’s most recent anti-apocalyptic campaign, he finds himself battling his own private evil—and saving Sunnydale High from a fate it never imagined.

Review:
Continuing the alliterative trend from volume one, the three episodes picked for novelization in this book (“The Pack,” “Go Fish,” and “The Zeppo”) are billed as three tales of transition, transformation, and transcendence. Um, okay. I didn’t really think Xander was that affected by donning skimpy swimwear. It’s interesting to note that in all three of these episodes, the villainous baddie ends up getting devoured.

I am happy to say that Jeff Mariotte does a better job conveying the thought processes of the characters than his predecessor from volume one, though frankly, that wouldn’t be difficult. Sometimes they’re covered in a simple paragraph, and I didn’t have any specific problems with those, and sometimes, when it’s something the character would’ve said in their mental voice, they are italicized. It’s the italicized thoughts that are more prone to being irritating, and occasionally, downright jarring. A little setup for this snerk-inducing example from “The Pack:” Xander is prowling around with the other hyena-possessed kids, feeling all wild and hungry. They’ve just sampled the hot dogs of some students, spurned them, and have now caught a whiff of something more appetizing.

The scent grew stronger as they stalked the halls, headed directly toward their prey. Something weak, something that could be brought down by the pack.

Or rather, the Pack, Xander thought, suddenly realizing that it should be capitalized.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have an episode title!

Seriously, this is so stupid! There was just a scene where Xander was too affected to be able to comprehend geometry properly, but here he is contemplating the abstract significance of his little group and how it should thusly be conveyed in writing? How very primal a sentiment! *eyeroll*

Other than that, and noting that once, in “Go Fish,” the names of two swim team members were confused, I have nothing to complain about. Again, the major reason this is entertaining is because the original episodes were. Mariotte neither added much of value nor fouled them up.

From the back cover:
Unfulfilled crushes. Awkward first conversations. A date who wants you… dead.

Having a Y-chromosome in Sunnydale is never easy. But Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s friend Xander Harris seems to find more than his share of trouble with the opposite sex.

At first Xander is happy being the teacher’s pet—until his schoolboy crush brings out her true animal instincts. Then his whirlwind romance with the exotic foreign exchange student falters when she demands the ultimate sacrifice.

Some members of the Slaying squad might say that dating Cordelia Chase could kill a guy. But Xander’s relationship with the high-maintenance Cordy actually seems to be working out—until she decides he’s seriously harming her social standing. His crafty plan to win her back may earn him more love than one guy can handle.

Now, collected for the first time, are three stories from the hit TV series chronicling Xander’s search for love on the Hellmouth.

Review:
This book includes novelizations of the teleplays for “Teacher’s Pet,” “Inca Mummy Girl,” and “Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered,” hailed on the front cover as three tales of danger, duplicity, and desire. Alliterative! Framing these is a little piece where Xander has been to The Bronze, had his clothes criticized by Cordelia, made out with her, and now has returned home to compare all his various romantic experiences. It doesn’t strike me as particularly Xander-like, but at least it’s brief.

I think it’s cute that the font for chapter headings and page numbers has little blood dribblies. I guess it’s cheesy, but for some reason it amuses me. Also amusing, but in a sad way, are the typos that made it through an evidently lackadaisical editing process. Examples: in “Teacher’s Pet,” the real Mrs. French wears a “cardigan sweather.” In “Inca Mummy Girl,” when Willow goes to dissuade the delinquent kid from mucking about the museum exhibit, she heads off to “soothe the savage breast.”

Some of the invented thoughts for the characters are entertaining, like Xander’s revelation that, when five, he once retaliated against Cordelia by dumping a bowl of ice cream on her head. Spike’s are pretty decent, but I think that’s because Spike doesn’t do a lot of self-filtering before he speaks, so his thoughts are most like something he’d actually say. Most of the rest are either:

1. Lame – Like the very generic desire to see the world ascribed to the real Ampata (foreign exchange student in “Inca Mummy Girl”) before he gets mummified. His supposed last thought? “Now I’ll never see Paris.” Groan.

2. Unnecessary – Xander, after loudly declaring Angel to be an attractive man in front of some jock types, thinks:

Bad enough Blayne’s dissing my studliness, the last thing I need is everyone hearing me talking about attractive men.

Way to overexplain the joke, dude.

3. Just plain wrong – (Dingoes Ate My Baby is unloading their equipment for a performance. Devon is slacking and talking to Cordelia.)

Of course, had Oz actually been upset, it probably would’ve been more due to the fact that Oz didn’t have a girlfriend of his own to be distracted by. It’s not like Devon ever carried the heavy stuff anyhow.

Does that sound even a little like Oz thoughts? Not to me.

Of slight canonical interest is that the photo of Xander, Willow, and Buffy in 10th grade that’s seen several times in the series is declared twice to have been taken by Willow’s mom. Except Willow’s mom canonically shows zero interest in her life until the episode “Gingerbread,” which aired January 1999. This book was published in February 1999, so probably couldn’t have been changed once Sheila’s general disinterest in her daughter had been established. It was also published before the whole “who exactly sired Spike” thing was cleared up, since Spike specifically mentions Angel siring both he and Drusilla.

By far, the best reason for reading these novelizations is the dialogue from the real episode that couldn’t be fudged with. Even though “Inca Mummy Girl” isn’t one of my favorite episodes, I’d forgotten that it has several great quotes in it. The best one (in my opinion) looks rather flat on the page, but when I hear Xander actually saying it, it still evokes a giggle: “What he lacks in smarts, he makes up in lack of smarts.”

Overall, it’s an okay book, but that’s entirely due to the original writers of these episodes. Without their actions and dialogue, I don’t know whether this author could portray these characters at all convincingly.