Halloween Rain – Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
Bad Bargain – Diana G. Gallagher
Afterimage – Pierce Askegern
Pub: Simon and Schuster
633 Pages.
“Into each generation a slayer is born, one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil.”
Way back in 1997 Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit the small screen and became a cultural/geek/feminist icon. It was a time before Vampires sparkled. A time when blood suckers got staked, when librarians were almost cool, and when fashion was horrific.
The TV series and its spin off follow the titular heroine and her closest friends through the trials of highschool (and later university in that strange tradition of fictional towns suddenly expanding as needed by the plot) and beyond balancing the perils of the paranormal/mythical against the stresses of real life/education (think Harry Potter). The main antagonists were vampires (don’t think Twilight) although many other creatures appeared as “monster of the week” (thin Supernatural with less male/female models as main characters) and as the series bookending Big Bad (a term the show was responsible for coining).
First off the format of the collection is a little odd, containing as it does stories that occur in series 1 and 2, but without anything beyond content to place them. There’s unexpected progression between books and spoilers for anyone not at the right point in the shows.
Halloween Rain (Season 1) Sunnydale legend tells of the daemon Samhain, the Pumpkin King, the eternal spirit of Halloween, and a being powerful enough to have killed a slayer before.
Bad Bargain (Season 2) and tells a tale of magic gone awry as the Sunnydale High rummage sale is overtaken by an insidious daemonic invasion, which the Slayer and her watcher are powerless to stop.
In Afterimage (Season 2) the town is plagued by mysterious new arrivals and a spate of coma victims when a newly renovated drive in cinema is reopened.
The strange thing about reading a tie in novel for a TV show is hearing the character’s voices and being able to picture the scenes. It’s a different feeling to having your own imagination fill out the characters and something which likely colours this review. As does nostalgia.
The three tales are all worth reading, but the quality certainly improves as you go through (This may be a date thing. HR was written in 1997, concurrent with the show, while both BB and A were written in 2006, so not so much quality as contemporary styles and ). None of the tales having gaping plot holes but none of them are labyrinthine epics, but nor should they be expected to be. Each captures the monster of the week feel of the shows well, and any of the three could be the novelisation of an aired episode rather than additional material.
All three stories get the main characters right to a large degree. On occasion the dialogue and inner monologues feel a little forced, not perhaps fitting the character, and at times parts of the book come across as painfully American, although I suspect this is a result of the mixing of 90’s slang, and target audience appeal. Giles and Spike when they appear also ring false at times, with overlaboured Englishness. In all add to the B movieish charm of the Buffyverse though (ironic given the subject matter of Afterimage).
Talking of the Buffyverse, Halloween Rain does run roughshod over the background a little, regarding the supernatural and Halloween. Also all three books sample the wider ‘verse to a wider or narrower degree, inserting characters that rise to prominence in later series, which is nice, but occasionally overplayed.
All in all the book is one for fans. If you’re new to Buffy the TV series remains the best place to start. The stories add depth outside the series and are probably the best way to get a Buffy fix outside of reading Season 8 (although their respective Wikipedia entries are keen to point out the books are not considered canon).
Happy New Year Un:Bound, looks like is going to be a good one.
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