Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic Addition To The Series
Review: Golden has done it again! This book was amazing- the author stuck true to the characters and made believable new ones. The plot was brillant and original. The TV series even seemed to borrow the idea of the potientals being killed off for season 7. Kudos to Chris.My Opinion: Buy as soon as possible, disconnect the phone and lock the doors. You won't want to be bothered while reading this Buffy-world masterpeice.
Rating:
Summary: Spike and Dru at their sexy best
Review: Vampires, vampires everyone and boy do I love that. This book is a fantastic journey into Spikes per-Buffy life; when it was just him and Dru and happy meals with legs during the second Great War. Spike is very evil in this book, hunting down innocent girls and killing them in the most violent ways possible, and yet you still have got to love him. The story is not cannon, but still quite an acute character study. I would give this book a strong PG-13 boarding on R for extreme written violence and sexual situations. So if you're ready, do yourself a favor and check this book out.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Good Pretty Maids
Review: Sure it changes Buffyverse history to have Spike kill a third Slayer, but it is done so well, I had to admit it should have been this way.
The plot (it has one) is clever and instructive. Fans always have questions about how the mantle of the Slayer is passed on, and this novel illustrates how that works. I especially like that Spike and Dru's impulsive, selfish character flaws unintentionally ruin the plans of the novel's evil mastermind even while they achieved their personal evil ends.
I am struck by the World War II setting: Which is more important, the historic war or the fantastical one? The author handles this issue with enough taste for the 21st century, though I doubt anyone who remembers 1940 would agree. One line about the collusion of all sides to fight demons probably would have been censored had this novel somehow been published in, say, 1944.
The violence seems a bit strong for the very young and so is the sex (it too would have been toned down more in 1944); although somebody age 12 wrote a review above, so what do I know?
That the character Eleanor Boudreau from Louisiana says "y'all" to one person does not strike me as descriptively ungrammatical; "y'all" can indeed be singular while the plural of "y'all" seems to be "all y'all."
Rating: 
Summary: "Pretty Maids" ain't Pretty
Review: 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? 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.
Rating:
Summary: Pre-Buffy but just as good
Review: This is a book about what Spike and Dru got up too before Buffy was around. They go half way around the world, even though the war is on! They get a list from the Council of Watchers that has the names of all the slayers-in-waiting and are determined to destroy every name on the list and so destroy the line of slayers FOREVER! I am not going to give the end away,it is worth reading to find out. However Buffy herself is not in it,but we do meet Giles' grandmother!
Rating:
Summary: Spike and Dru
Review: I love Spike and Dru! This book was one of the best Buffy books i have read. I loved the way the author protrayed the way that Spike would do anything for Dru. This made the book more enjoyable.
One good thing was it had few characters. in most Buffy books, thre are extra characters that make it difficult for you to keep all the different storylines straight.
This book takes place long before Spike and Dru came to Sunnydale and that is good because the show is talking about the history and now you get to experience first-hand (with the exception of "Fool For Love") the the way these charcters were in the past and that they really did have a life before they had met Buffy.
All in all i loved this book. i would recommend it to anyone who likes Spike and Dru and Buffy books in general.
Rating:
Summary: I like Spike but...
Review: This book is really very monotonous and uninteresting. There are very few characters that one got to know enough to care about. This seemed to me to be no more than an excuse to show the innovative and grotesque ways that Spke killed the watchers in waiting. I like Spke and Dru on the series and wanted to like this book but it was not readable.
Rating: 
Summary: Summer of '42, for Spike and Dru
Review: "Hello, young lovers, wherever you roar...!" Ambitious, overlong epic fantasy adventure novel, that hits and misses. Spike and Dru are well-written, but psychopaths don't generally work as protagonists unless the other characters in the story are more abominable than they are (e.g., The Godfather). The plot is terribly thin for 353 pages, consisting of nothing, really, but an ongoing, globe-hopping odyssey of war and murder. The majority of the characters are barely introduced before they are dispatched, their sole reason for existing being to provide fodder for Spike and Dru. There's far too much action, and too many characters. The story has all but no focus at all, just a scenario consisting of a list of people to be killed. However, fans of the characters won't be disappointed, and even non-Buffy readers/watchers who like this kind of thing will have a good time with it. I'd recommend it most for anybody who likes their characters twisted, and their action hot and heavy.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful spike/dru darkness
Review: christopher golden has darkly written a wonderful story for all spike/dru fans. his writing really does the duo justice. hoping he has more in the works. i would recommend this book to any fan.
Rating:
Summary: A rare find
Review: I loved this book. It's rare to see a noveliaztion of a TV show that truly has nothing to do with that show other than certain characters, and (I think) it's very rare to find Buffy books that are well written. This book is both. Okay, I'll admit that I bought it just because I'm a Spike obsessor. But I truly enjoied it. My only problem is a slight contradiction with the Buffy episode Fool For Love, which I won't state because it would probably qualify as a spoiler. If you're a Spike fan, Drusilla fan, or want to read period pieces with a demon-y twist, I highly recommend Pretty Maids All in a Row.
| 
