Rating: 
Summary: What Should Be Endangered is This Lackluster Book
Review: This book had the potential to be very interesting, but it did not live up to this potential in the slightest. It baffles me that the publishers choose this particular book to be published in hardcover no less! The main plot sounds interesting enough. Enter a wicked vampire "queen" that was once a chaste nun(much like pre-vamp Drusilla) with aspirations of world domination via mating with the beast that is the origin of all vampires on Earth. Team that with a world-class hunter hoping to find a cure for his beautiful, vampire wife--or at least take revenge on all vampires for the tragedy that befell his wife. Add Angel and friends--even rogue slayer Faith into the mix and it still ends up being one big snoozefest. First of all, the character assassination of Angel in this book is the worst I have ever seen in these tie-in novels. One minute he is saying Buffy is his soulmate and true love. The next he is drooling over how beautiful Cordelia is. And just to make sure everyone is as confused as possible, Angel then mentions his obsession with Darla as well. Geez--why didn't they throw in some more women to the mix so that everyone can see how fickle Angel really is. Why focus on building a good storyline when you can just mention in every paragraph how many women Angel has had in his life? The authors also tried to pick up where the season 2 episode "Darla" left off. In flashbacks they try to show what happened with Darla after Angel got his soul back. This was the most horrific characterization of Angel ever! Totally implausible and inconsistent. If Angel was written like this on the actual show I would never watch an episode. Terrible! The next problem was how little Faith was actually in this book. One of the reasons I picked up this book was because of the lack of Faith on the show the last couple of years. While the writing of Faith seemed pretty consistent with the show(unlike Angel), Faith was not really used to the fullest potential. She was actually in the book very little. And when she was it was usually to say she was a slayer and strong. Big deal. Another wasted opportunity. The other major problem was the lack of a good climax to the story and a boring ending. The villians were original and showed promise, but the whole book felt like it was building to some great finish, but it never got there. The book was set at a sluggish pace and then the "grand" finish was in a few pages and was very anti-climatic. Usually these type of books suffer from a convulted plot so dense with characters one needs a chart to keep track. This book was quite simple to follow, it was just too boring to be worth caring about. So, in closing I do not recommend this book. I gave it 2 stars because the premise was an interesting one, but it never paid off. Save yourself the time and money. If you read the summary on the dust jacket, you will basically know all you need to know about this book. Very disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: great book
Review: this book starts out with cordelia having a vision that faith is in mortal danger from an unknown enemy. when the gang investigates, the run across a man named chaz who is trying to find a way to cure his wife from being a vampire. in the past these 2 have set up elaborate hunts for various species and his wife's next game is a slayer herself. on the road to figuring all of this out, they run across another vampire who was turned dby drusilla who has a game plan of her own with the help of wolfram and heart. with all of these characters as villians, you know that this has to be a great book. it is long but well worth the read.
Rating: 
Summary: All vampires and one slayer on the endangered species list
Review: To get to write a hardcover book in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel universe you have to come up with one or more really good ideas, and at face value Nancy Holder and Jeff Mariotte certainly get that far in "Endangered Species." The title refers to both of the book's major plotlines. The first involves an arcane ritual that would end the afterlife of every vampire on Earth and the second concerns a hunting party whose prey is Faith, the incarcerated Slayer. Yes, the latter was already an episode on "BtVS", but Cordelia took Faith's place in that particular outing and the idea is certainly worth revisiting, especially when you are not limited by what can be done on television. But clearly that first idea is the key selling point and makes Angel confront the irony that he might be helping bring out his own demise. However, the thesis of this critique would be that Holder and Mariotte do not really carry off these neat ideas. The Slayer Hunt plotline is the most disappointing. This time around this idea is set up to be much more in the mode of "The Most Dangerous Game" (in fact, specific reference is made to that title). But when we finally get around to the long awaited hunt I have to say that nothing really happens. There is a lot more running than there is fighting, partially because Faith is not alone in the jungle as she flees the dozen hunters who have paid $5 million each for the opportunity to bag a Slayer. Even when we get down to some actual fighting, the emphasis is on...Wesley. Now, I like Wesley's character and consider his transformation from woefully weak Watcher to rouge demon hunter a masterful revitalization of the character. But in this story Wesley suddenly starts channeling Jim Shooter and insisting that the prey cannot kill the hunters because the hunters are human. Give me a break; better to end up with your head on a wall than hurt a human being who is trying to kill you? I think not, Wes. I was also irritated that we were not getting back to the Slayer Hunt soon enough once we were off to visit the other plot line, although this feeling lessened once I discovered I was not missing much. The plan to rid the world of all the vampires has some nice complications that up the ante. The ritual actually involves bringing back the Beast of the First Blood, which the psychotic vampire Benedicta and her ancient druid lover Bran want to conjure up they can create a new race of super vamps. But the theory is that if the Beast of the First Blood is slain, all of the vampires who sprung from this original font will become dust in the wind. To make this even more interesting, Angel is aided in this effort by Chaz Escobar, a hunter who has killed every rare animal and demon on the planet apparently. Escobar is interested in the ritual but because he wants to restore his wife Marianna, who is not only a vampire, but also the one who came up with the idea of the Slayer Hunt. This obviously provides the link between the two plot lines. Ultimately, my main complaint about "Endangered Species" is that a lot of rabbits get pulled out of the hat to resolve each of these plot lines satisfactorily. The best stories in this genre are those where you can look back and see how everything fell into place, but there is no way you can get that feeling from the way this one winds up. I also found the witty repartee to be a bit much, especially with regards to Cordelia, who has to think most of her one liners because she spends most of the climax of the book bound and gagged. "Endangered Species" takes place early during Season 2 of "Angel," when Fred was still afraid to leave the hotel. There is also some decent back story on Darla's attempts to restore Angelus after the Boxer Rebellion episode, which introduces us to Lohiau, the most interesting of the supporting characters. I really want to give "Endangered Species" a 3.5, splitting the difference between a 3 for the Slayer Hunt and a 4 for the Beast of the First Blood bit. Deciding to round up or down has been difficult, because every time I think the latter could be nudged up a bit I want to start deducting fractions from the former. But even as disappointing as the Slayer Hunt was, it is not really as bad as a 2 and if it was not there at all I would have said this book was a solid 4. Another way of putting this would be, wait for this one to come out in paperback.
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