Rating: 
Summary: The worst buffy book I've read
Review: I found that the problem with this book is that it had too many flashbacks and not enough story "in the now". It seems as if Ms. Holder got carried away with the flashbacks then realised she had a page limit so squashed the ending down to fit it in. There are too many useless flashbacks which do nothing but frustrate the reader. The ending is too rushed and is not the same as the bit at the beginning. When I first read the book, I was nearly at the end when I thought that the book was a 2-parter, as there was no sign the book was nearly at an end. In trying to fit the ending into about 10 pages, Ms Holder loses a TREMENDOUS amount of detail. I would also have liked to have learnt more about India Cohen. She seems like an interesting character, but we could have learnt more about her. I also found the bit about Xander's cousin a useless side plot. I didn't even realise they were talking about Xander until the end, but it just sounded so silly.
Ms. Holder's books are usually very entertaining, but unfortunately this one gets lost among flashbacks.
In conclusion, this book could have been fantastic, but instead, I wish I hadn't bought it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Four Join... (Obviously)
Review: I found this book a fairly enjoyable read. Not enough to knock my out of my seat and exclaim: "Oh my GOD!" but good enough. The plot was different (slightly) and I enjoyed watching the main characters interact. Main complaints are the storyline jumping from past to present without warning. The ending was a bit...confusing in ways and didn't really leave me as satisfied as I expected. Not all questions that arise during the book are answered, leaving you bewildered about why not. My opinion: If you feel like a book to pass (alot of) time, this is the one.
Rating:
Summary: Way too many Slayers and not nearly enough time (pages)
Review: I have been waiting a long time for some sort of story line involving the Slayer before Buffy. The good news about "The Book of Fours" is that India Cohen is a character in Nancy Holder's latest Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel. The bad news is that it is hard to work too much about India into the novel because we when it comes to Slayers past and present we also have Faith and Kendra, not to mention Lucy Hanover roaming around the Ghost Roads. "The Book of Fours" takes place during the first half of the third season of Buffy, before Faith turns into a rogue Slayer. After one of her L.A. classmates dies and Willow is severely injured in a car accident, Buffy is forced to deal with the mortality of her friends. The ante is upped when Buffy and Faith both begin dreaming about strangely swathed figures carrying horrific boxes across a desert. Eventually the villains this time around are revealed to be the Gatherers and their representative on earth, the sorceress Cecile Lafitte, in yet another human minion spending centuries trying to bring their evil overlords to Earth, while Sunnydale is best by an elemental onslaught of earthquakes, floods, hurricane winds and fires. In the end it will take four Slayers to fight the big bad evil brewing in Sunnydale. Ultimately, all of the other Slayers receive rather short shrift in this novel. The story with India was that she was in love with her Watcher and he with her, but they never got around to telling each other let alone do anything about it. The idea of Christopher "Kit" Bothwell, India's Watcher, being haunted by the death of his Slayer is a solid idea but gets somewhat lost in all the other activities in the book. Neither Buffy nor Giles have any strong reactions either to the forbidden love or the inevitable death of the Slayer raised by the story of India and Kit. Faith is just there, the building tension with Buffy implicit but not really developed; there is not any real reason this story has to be told at that particular point in the Buffy chronology. One of the themes of this novel is what it means to be a Slayer, but Buffy and Faith never get around to any serious discussion of their obviously different takes on what is happening and what it all means. Kendra is basically tacked onto the story, being the necessary fourth for the novel's climax. But if there is very little to the meeting of Buffy and her predecessor India, there is even less with Faith and Kendra. These should be monumental moments and they pass without much consequence, although Holder creates a nice moment where Buffy sees the shade of the Slayer yet to come. The book touches on the unique circumstance of having two Slayers at the same time, but does not pursue it; at some point this needs to be worked out, because having more than one Slayer either means the powers of the Slayer are diluted or suggests you have the potential for creating an army of Slayers with just a bit of mad scientist creativity. One of the strengths of this novel is that Holder continues to work in the Ghost Roads and some of the other characters and details from the Gatekeeper Trilogy, which remains the best of the Buffy original novels. One of the new ideas introduced is that each Slayer represents a basic element: India-water, Buffy-air, Kendra-earth, Faith-Fire. This is certainly interesting idea raising all sorts of questions: Will the next Slayer represent water? Is the order always the same, and if so, what significance might it have? How exactly do the Slayers match up with their respective elements? In "The Book of Fours" this idea becomes rather cumbersome: there are four axes, each of which matches up with an element and which will instantly slay the corresponding Slayer with but a touch, a weird sort of Russian Roulette version to slaying the slayer with a 1-in-4 chance you have the right ax for the right Slayer. However, the point here is simply to justify having the four Slayers stand together (with Willow and Cordelia serving as the human hosts for India and Kendra). The more I think about it the more I wish "The Book of Four" had been four books, each focusing on one of the four slayers, each volume adding another piece to the puzzle. Certainly Holder does not suffer from a lack of good ideas, but there is just too much worth pursuing crammed into this one (there are a couple of subplots involving Xander's cousin and Micaela Tomassi that disappear for most of the book and suddenly pop up at the end again). Her ideas for Buffy's predecessor were worth developing a lot more than she had time/pages to do in this book. The story of the Slayer before Buffy should have been a great tale to be told, but "The Book of Fours" is merely good. Most readers will find it enjoyable, but somewhat disappointing given "what might have been."
Rating:
Summary: Way too many Slayers and not nearly enough time (pages)
Review: I have been waiting a long time for some sort of story line involving the Slayer before Buffy. The good news about "The Book of Fours" is that India Cohen is a character in Nancy Holder's latest Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel. The bad news is that it is hard to work too much about India into the novel because we when it comes to Slayers past and present we also have Faith and Kendra, not to mention Lucy Hanover roaming around the Ghost Roads. "The Book of Fours" takes place during the first half of the third season of Buffy, before Faith turns into a rogue Slayer. After one of her L.A. classmates dies and Willow is severely injured in a car accident, Buffy is forced to deal with the mortality of her friends. The ante is upped when Buffy and Faith both begin dreaming about strangely swathed figures carrying horrific boxes across a desert. Eventually the villains this time around are revealed to be the Gatherers and their representative on earth, the sorceress Cecile Lafitte, in yet another human minion spending centuries trying to bring their evil overlords to Earth, while Sunnydale is best by an elemental onslaught of earthquakes, floods, hurricane winds and fires. In the end it will take four Slayers to fight the big bad evil brewing in Sunnydale. Ultimately, all of the other Slayers receive rather short shrift in this novel. The story with India was that she was in love with her Watcher and he with her, but they never got around to telling each other let alone do anything about it. The idea of Christopher "Kit" Bothwell, India's Watcher, being haunted by the death of his Slayer is a solid idea but gets somewhat lost in all the other activities in the book. Neither Buffy nor Giles have any strong reactions either to the forbidden love or the inevitable death of the Slayer raised by the story of India and Kit. Faith is just there, the building tension with Buffy implicit but not really developed; there is not any real reason this story has to be told at that particular point in the Buffy chronology. One of the themes of this novel is what it means to be a Slayer, but Buffy and Faith never get around to any serious discussion of their obviously different takes on what is happening and what it all means. Kendra is basically tacked onto the story, being the necessary fourth for the novel's climax. But if there is very little to the meeting of Buffy and her predecessor India, there is even less with Faith and Kendra. These should be monumental moments and they pass without much consequence, although Holder creates a nice moment where Buffy sees the shade of the Slayer yet to come. The book touches on the unique circumstance of having two Slayers at the same time, but does not pursue it; at some point this needs to be worked out, because having more than one Slayer either means the powers of the Slayer are diluted or suggests you have the potential for creating an army of Slayers with just a bit of mad scientist creativity. One of the strengths of this novel is that Holder continues to work in the Ghost Roads and some of the other characters and details from the Gatekeeper Trilogy, which remains the best of the Buffy original novels. One of the new ideas introduced is that each Slayer represents a basic element: India-water, Buffy-air, Kendra-earth, Faith-Fire. This is certainly interesting idea raising all sorts of questions: Will the next Slayer represent water? Is the order always the same, and if so, what significance might it have? How exactly do the Slayers match up with their respective elements? In "The Book of Fours" this idea becomes rather cumbersome: there are four axes, each of which matches up with an element and which will instantly slay the corresponding Slayer with but a touch, a weird sort of Russian Roulette version to slaying the slayer with a 1-in-4 chance you have the right ax for the right Slayer. However, the point here is simply to justify having the four Slayers stand together (with Willow and Cordelia serving as the human hosts for India and Kendra). The more I think about it the more I wish "The Book of Four" had been four books, each focusing on one of the four slayers, each volume adding another piece to the puzzle. Certainly Holder does not suffer from a lack of good ideas, but there is just too much worth pursuing crammed into this one (there are a couple of subplots involving Xander's cousin and Micaela Tomassi that disappear for most of the book and suddenly pop up at the end again). Her ideas for Buffy's predecessor were worth developing a lot more than she had time/pages to do in this book. The story of the Slayer before Buffy should have been a great tale to be told, but "The Book of Fours" is merely good. Most readers will find it enjoyable, but somewhat disappointing given "what might have been."
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible
Review: I have read almost all the BtVS books in the series and this one is by far the most dull and uninspiring one I have ever had to sit through. I am only half way thru and there are so many charcaters to keep track of it's almost impossible.
A ex Jamacian Watcher's insane wannabe lover who turns zombie/ancient dark goddess. Some pool in the middle of nowhere who spits out weapons, Xanders nephew etc etc. And Willow did not lose all her hair. How did it grow back so quikly then?
This book is confusing and boring and doesn't hold true to the characters on the show.
Too many unknown characters and not enough Buffy characters.
Rating: 
Summary: Great story!!
Review: I liked this one alot. The storyline is great, integrating the stories of Buffy, bad girl Faith, Kendra and the slayer before Buffy, India Cohen. I enjoyed reading the flashbacks that were about India, I found it interesting to read about another slayer. The overall story is great and the character interaction is very true to the show. There is alot of action and the book is in no way slow to start....it actually starts with quite a bang. -Rory-
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but not the best
Review: I personally agree with what others have said about this book. It has alot of information. At some points you could say too much. I would like to see more written about faith and India and about sluyers in general. Also to find out what happened to willow as the book ended without telling us.
Overall it was good, but lacked things at certain points.
Rating:
Summary: do yourself a favor, ONLY read the back cover
Review: I picked up this book because I am a huge fan of Buffy, and very interested in the Slayer mythology. This one promised a story about Buffy's predecessor India. I was hoping for something good, but was sorely disappointed. There's a bout 70 pages of good story crammed into 400 pages. First of all, the characters were totally out of, well, character. It seemed like the author tried to hard for it be "hip" and funny, instead failing to stay true to the source material. Also, there were way too many subplots, none of which went anywhere or had any purpose. This ties into my third complaint, that the author was never consistant with details. At times she would go into a 6 page spiel about Xander's cousin's cancer or some stupid thing, and other times she left out so much that it was virtually incomprehensible. The first and last 20 pages are just jumbles of words and have no connections. I like non-linear storytelling, but there are flashbacks in flashbacks in flashbacks here when a simple paragraph detailing what happened would work. I also hated the shifting from third-person to interior monologue without segues. Very confusing. I actually started liking it in the middle. The villain seemed very unique and menacing. This is completely deflated by the ending, however. One minute everything is chaotic and crazy (bad details again), and the next it all just ends and everything goes back to normal, without an explanation. The climax is anti-climactic and it all ends in 5 pages. Another fault is lack of internal continuity. At one point there is a full paragraph copied word for word 2 pages later.
The climax is in the prologue, which is a serious no-no, especially since the prologue and the end of the book don't match up in the unfolding of events or dialogue. And if India and Kendra had to possess Willow and Cordy's bodies to fight the Gatherer, why did Lucy just pop in as a ghost and start kicking [rear]? And what did Mirielle have to do with anything? Or Neema and Micaela? Hanging plot threads abound here; if they tie into other books, that's just as bad, since any story should stand on its own. Also she gets info from the show wrong; example: she calls Kendra's Watcher ROGER Zabuto, when on the show they clearly called him SAM Zabuto. Maybe the editor went crazy from reading all 400 pages over and over. I hope he/she got fired for letting this poorly constructed book hit the shelves. You may think that is harsh, but I spent time I will never get back reading this drivel. In short, read the back cover and you've got as much info as you need. The story never resolves and the promise of an interesting villain is trampled by never explaining it clearly enough. Yes, there is action, but it doesn't matter if you don't know why and what they are fighting. The show always explored motivations for characters' actions, but everything in this book just unfolds, often without telling us why. It is a poor addition to the Slayer library.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: I read this book in one night, I couldn't put it down, and when I finally hit page 401, I was so sad that it was over. I wished I had slowed down a bit, savored it more. Two thumbs up for Nancy Holder, this book was written amazingly well and captured the truth of the characters. I believed what I was reading. I could truly see Buffy and the Scoobies doing and saying what Nancy wrote on the page. So take my advice. Rarely does one come across a book based on a television show that speaks so honestly about it's characters, so take your time, savor the words, let them weave into your thoughts, You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: The Book of 4's feels like 4 different books
Review: I read this book this past summer in the absence of any new Buffy episodes on television. I wanted something that would give me the feeling I get when I watch the show. I wanted to be excited, intrigued, amused--on the edge of my seat. This book presents none of this. The premise of learning more about the Slayer who came before Buffy is very intriguing as is the hope that we will see Kendra, Faith, Buffy and India (Buffy's predecessor) all kicking some major demon butt. Yet the book fails to live up to the standards that the show so often successfully delivers. The set-up to the big fight is way too long and full of so much extraneous information that never really comes into play. There are also waaay too many characters here and not enough Scooby-Gang interplay; too much backstory and not enough "in-the-library" plotting. The story jumps all over the place and there are too many things going on at once. Despite all this, there are a couple of things worth mentioning. Firstly, the character of India is fairly well-rounded and interesting. Other things to note are a Spike and Dru cameo and a couple of good Oz "scenes", though a "wink-wink"-Seth Green reference may make you groan out loud. All in all, this is an unsatisfying adventure and proof that if Joss Whedon isn't at the helm for the dramatic twists of the chosen one, then things in Sunnydale are pretty much as "authentic" as the Buffy-Bot.
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