Rating: 
Summary: One of the best books of Buffy
Review: "Chosen" is a great summary of what happened in season7.It tells what some of the characters are thinking.Even though the book is 688 pages long,I read in 3 days. The book is very interesting.If you loved season7 or didn't see it,this is a great book for you!It told you what Buffy felt about Spike being dead,she wasn't sad,she was happy for him because now he can rest.Buffy didn't say that on the last epesode.What caused this book to lose a star was the editing.Every time somebody said "the first" something they always capatilized it,even if they didn't mean the first evil.There were some errors but you can still understand what they're saying.Chosen is a great book,it even has pictures.So if you really liked the 7th season or didn't see it,this book if for you!
Rating:
Summary: A novelization based on the final season of "BtVS"
Review: "Chosen" is the thickest "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" paperback at 672 pages, which is because it is a novelization of the ENTIRE seventh and final season of the series. You heard me right, Watcher Wannabees of the world. The season that just ended, the one that will not be coming out on DVD until late next year at the earliest, all twenty-two episodes from "Lessons" to "Chosen" are weaved into one giant novel. I assume the weaver is Nancy Holder, since she is the one that is listed as the author when you order this book. But the only place her name appears in the entire volume is in inside back cover ad for her original "BtVS" novel "Blood and Smoke." But her name is not on the cover, it is not on the title page, it does not appear at the end of the acknowledgments. I have to think that once upon a time her name was there but now like the city of Sunnydale it is gone from the face of the Earth. How strange.Holder, of course, is well qualified to write a novelization based on the seventh season of the cult hit TV series created by Joss Whedon, having co-authored both of the first two volumes in "The Watcher's Guide" and written several first rate original "BtVS" novels, both with Christopher Golden ("The Gatekeeper Trilogy") and by her lonesome ("The Book of Fours"). More to the point, she has done "novelizations" of invidiual episodes before ("The Angel Chronicles, Volume 1"). Dealing with the entire final season plays to one of Holder's strength, which is developing what the characters are thinking, adding to what is in the script without getting in the way of the story (e.g., Anya's final scene in the book). She also has an advantage because this time around there is no reason to hide what is happening at the beginning: the young women being hunted down around the world and being skilled by the Harbringers are Potentials. Consequently, the best parts of this book are not only Holder's retelling of our favorite moments from the season, but her explication of those moments where we were not quite sure what was going on (mainly involving the diabolical machinations of the First). The end result is an entertaining way of dealing with the final season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the fact the series is over and we have to actually go out in the world and have lives now. It will be interesting to see how Joss Whedon fills in the gap that exists now between the assorted volumes of "The Xander Years," "The Willow Files," "The Faith Trials," and so forth in which various episodes of "BtVS" from the first four seasons have been apapted into short stories and "Chosen." Recent collections have tried to provide some thematic unity to the assorted stories they contain and obviously "Chosen" is an attempt to do that on the broadest possible scale. Will there be volumes forthcoming covering seasons five and six? Good question. But just like Dawn's final question to Buffy, it remains unanswered for now.
Rating: 
Summary: "Choose" not to read this
Review: "Chosen" was written by Nancy Holder, who is usually a great Buffy writer, but it is -- in my opinion -- a poor, poor example of her work, which is made obvious by the fact that she "chose" to have her name taken off the book's cover before it was printed. It is a very rushed book, full of cliches, no extra material (straight regurgitation of the episodes and dialogue) and it is riddled with copy editing errors, the worst of which is that one of the editors of the book obviously went back and did a "Replace all" on all incidences of the phrase "The First," as in the "The First Evil." But unfortunately it also capitalizes MANY other incidences of "the first" inappropriately, as in "Dawn was The First to take a shower." So, bad, bad, bad book. Not worth the paper it was printed on. Pass on it. If you want to read a great Buffy novel, try anything by Christopher Golden, especially "The Lost Slayer" and "Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row." He is extremely respectful of continuity and knows the characters well and has a great ear for dialogue and voice and is an all-around imaginative writer with a flair for storytelling. I met him at Moonlight Rising and he was very charming and nice to boot. And he co-writes the scripts for the Buffy videogames, which are amazing, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing "novelization."
Review: ...The book appears to have been slapped together by someone working from the scripts without any real understanding of the characters or story. Although a few scenes were fleshed out, for the most part it reads more like a synopsis than a novelization. Entire scenes are condensed into a single line of exposition, or completely missing, and the author appears to be writing to a much lower age level than the material is designed for.... ;-)
Rating:
Summary: Season 7 dialogue?
Review: After skimming through this book in a bookstore, I decided not to buy it. I've enjoyed most of the Buffy books out there, this one, I felt lacks depth. I felt that the way they portrayed the train of thoughts of our favorite characters didn't do them any justice. If you want a great story, buy "Monster Island" instead. Fantastic read! If you want info on the 7th season, wait for the release of the Watcher's Guide.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable Story but Sloppily Done
Review: Being a watcher of the show and a reader of the Buffy books, I was eagerly anticipating the release of this book - WOW an entire season in one novel!! I went to the store, picked it up, and started reading when I got home. I thought the story was great; I couldn't put it down - But then I started noticing the continuous gramatical, punctuation, and spelling errors. After the first I was like, "Well, the editor missed that one." I think I lost count of the errors by page 50 (of the nearly 700 pages)!! While I totally enjoyed the story of the Seventh Season of Buffy, the errors kept annoying me. There was one instance where the book leaves out an entire line of dialogue and at one point there was an entire paragraph where every single sentence had some type of error. So, while I would recommend this to anyone, be warned that the publisher obviously forgot to have an editor read it first.
Rating: 
Summary: Typos not a bother
Review: Being that I'm a casual reader, it takes something to really keep my attention span going, "Chosen" really did it for me! I just started watching BTVS last year, the "older" episodes, and I was hooked! Before reading this book, I did not see many of Season 7 episodes, for that reason I purchased it. I did not even watch the finale! After I started reading the first few chapters, I watched the finale and read along with the book, I was so excited I had to read it during the commercials! Yes, I did notice the typos, just some misspellings and missing letters, the capitalizing didn't bother me, I was to enthralled in the book, it didn't matter. I would recommend "Chosen" to each and every Buffy fan!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, except for the nonexistent editing
Review: Chosen is a bit of a tome, covering all of Season 7 in a 672-page, 22-chapter novel. Whoever cobbled it together from the scripts didn't get a credit anywhere in the book, and it was rushed out so quickly that nobody proofread it at all. It's chock full of those wrong-word-for-the-context typos that spell-checkers don't catch, ... someone apparently did a global search and replace that capitalized The First (e.g. The First aid kit) and Potential (e.g. Potential weapons) at every appearance. Annoying much? Nevertheless it's fun and funny and semi-insightful, and manages to convey the season's story arc in a fairly coherent and satisfying way. I still have problems with that brat Kennedy (SO different from Tara) and the motivations behind Buffy being kicked out of her own house, but these issues don't ring quite as false on the printed page as on screen. Kudos, Mr-or-Ms Anonymous! Since I didn't have the sense to tape these episodes as they aired, I'll have to settle for the book until the Season 7 DVD set comes out in a few years.
Rating:
Summary: Jhaeman's Reviews
Review: Chosen
By Nancy Holder (2003) RATING: 2/5 Stakes SETTING: Seventh Season CAST APPEARANCES: Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, Anya, Dawn, Andrew, Jonathan, Kennedy, Faith, Spike, Angel, Robin Wood, The First, Amy, Caleb, Hallie, D'Hoffryn, Quentin Travers, Molly, Rona, Annabelle, Chloe, Vi, Chao Ahn, Amanda, Kelly, Shannon, Colleen, Dianne, Caridad, Isabella. BACK OF THE BOOK SUMMARY "The First has come to Sunnydale and set its sights on taking down the Slayer. On the side of the White Hats: Buffy, Xander, Willow, Anya, Dawn, Giles, Spike, Faith, Angel, and an assortment of young, innocent, untried Potentials. In this season-spanning storyline, Buffy Summers will learn about the primeval origins of her own strength, and have the opportunity to train those who would succeed her. And as the forces of evil find their way back to the Hellmouth-where it all began-the Slayer will uncover what being the Chosen One is all about: Power." REVIEW Unique among Buffy novelizations, Chosen doesn't simply present one or two episodes in book form; instead, it novelizes the entire seventh season in a thick, 700-page tome. Buffy's seventh and last season was certainly a grim one, but also included some of the show's best writing. Many of those great scenes-Xander telling Dawn that she's not special, she's extraordinary; Anya and Andrew having a wheelchair fight; Buffy, Willow, and Dawn facing their demons in "Conversations with Dead People"-are included in Chosen, and it's impossible to read the novelization without feeling the same emotions elicited by the episodes themselves. To a large degree, however, that's the purpose and effect of any decent novelization-to embody, in a different format, what made the original episodes great. Although Chosen is satisfactory in this sense, it fails in others. Most glaring (and annoying) is the incredibly poor proofreading, literally the worst I've ever seen from a mainstream press. Words are frequently misspelled, grammar is massacred, and some idiot used the computer's "Find and Replace" function improperly, resulting in every single instance of "potential" capitalized as "Potential" and every "the first" capitalized as "The First." Thus, Xander tells Spike that "I take The First shower in the morning" on page 98. Even a quote from one of the characters on the back cover of the book has a grammatical error. I understand Simon Pulse was in a hurry to release the book to coincide with the show's final episode, but a final read through by an English graduate student would have made the book look far more professional. Fortunately, the unintentional humor created by these frequent errors helps replace much of the intended humor from the shooting scripts that was left out due to space considerations. Holder, unlike the authors of other Buffy novelizations, takes more freedom with the scripts, often giving us her interpretation of what the characters are thinking or what certain dialogue means. There's nothing inherently wrong with this-novelizations don't have to be (and shouldn't be) word-for-word recreations of the script; but it can be jarring to Buffy fans who made different interpretations of what certain scenes in episodes meant. For example, the very last scene of the very last episode of season seven depicts Buffy staring out over the crater that used to be Sunnydale, with an enigmatic smile on her face. Holder's interpretation of this scene is that Buffy is thinking of the "cookie-dough" metaphor she gave to Angel earlier. Not necessarily the wrong interpretation, but perhaps different than how other fans (including myself) interpreted the scene. To some degree, it takes the fun away when mysteries like this are "solved" by the writers of novelizations. Overall, Chosen is the worst of the Buffy novelizations I've read so far. It competently recreates the episodes like any minimally-acceptable novelization, but is otherwise an error-strewn mess. It should be purchased only if you've never seen season 7 episodes and can't wait for the DVD, or if you were foolish enough not to record them and want to reexperience certain key moments. (c) 2004 Jeremy Patrick-Justice...
Rating:
Summary: Jhaeman's Reviews
Review: Chosen
By Nancy Holder (2003) RATING: 2/5 Stakes SETTING: Seventh Season CAST APPEARANCES: Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, Anya, Dawn, Andrew, Jonathan, Kennedy, Faith, Spike, Angel, Robin Wood, The First, Amy, Caleb, Hallie, D'Hoffryn, Quentin Travers, Molly, Rona, Annabelle, Chloe, Vi, Chao Ahn, Amanda, Kelly, Shannon, Colleen, Dianne, Caridad, Isabella. BACK OF THE BOOK SUMMARY "The First has come to Sunnydale and set its sights on taking down the Slayer. On the side of the White Hats: Buffy, Xander, Willow, Anya, Dawn, Giles, Spike, Faith, Angel, and an assortment of young, innocent, untried Potentials. In this season-spanning storyline, Buffy Summers will learn about the primeval origins of her own strength, and have the opportunity to train those who would succeed her. And as the forces of evil find their way back to the Hellmouth-where it all began-the Slayer will uncover what being the Chosen One is all about: Power." REVIEW Unique among Buffy novelizations, Chosen doesn't simply present one or two episodes in book form; instead, it novelizes the entire seventh season in a thick, 700-page tome. Buffy's seventh and last season was certainly a grim one, but also included some of the show's best writing. Many of those great scenes-Xander telling Dawn that she's not special, she's extraordinary; Anya and Andrew having a wheelchair fight; Buffy, Willow, and Dawn facing their demons in "Conversations with Dead People"-are included in Chosen, and it's impossible to read the novelization without feeling the same emotions elicited by the episodes themselves. To a large degree, however, that's the purpose and effect of any decent novelization-to embody, in a different format, what made the original episodes great. Although Chosen is satisfactory in this sense, it fails in others. Most glaring (and annoying) is the incredibly poor proofreading, literally the worst I've ever seen from a mainstream press. Words are frequently misspelled, grammar is massacred, and some idiot used the computer's "Find and Replace" function improperly, resulting in every single instance of "potential" capitalized as "Potential" and every "the first" capitalized as "The First." Thus, Xander tells Spike that "I take The First shower in the morning" on page 98. Even a quote from one of the characters on the back cover of the book has a grammatical error. I understand Simon Pulse was in a hurry to release the book to coincide with the show's final episode, but a final read through by an English graduate student would have made the book look far more professional. Fortunately, the unintentional humor created by these frequent errors helps replace much of the intended humor from the shooting scripts that was left out due to space considerations. Holder, unlike the authors of other Buffy novelizations, takes more freedom with the scripts, often giving us her interpretation of what the characters are thinking or what certain dialogue means. There's nothing inherently wrong with this-novelizations don't have to be (and shouldn't be) word-for-word recreations of the script; but it can be jarring to Buffy fans who made different interpretations of what certain scenes in episodes meant. For example, the very last scene of the very last episode of season seven depicts Buffy staring out over the crater that used to be Sunnydale, with an enigmatic smile on her face. Holder's interpretation of this scene is that Buffy is thinking of the "cookie-dough" metaphor she gave to Angel earlier. Not necessarily the wrong interpretation, but perhaps different than how other fans (including myself) interpreted the scene. To some degree, it takes the fun away when mysteries like this are "solved" by the writers of novelizations. Overall, Chosen is the worst of the Buffy novelizations I've read so far. It competently recreates the episodes like any minimally-acceptable novelization, but is otherwise an error-strewn mess. It should be purchased only if you've never seen season 7 episodes and can't wait for the DVD, or if you were foolish enough not to record them and want to reexperience certain key moments. (c) 2004 Jeremy Patrick-Justice...
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