Chosen

Rating:
Summary: Please tell me they fired the editor
Review: I just happened upon this book, and being a huge fan of BtVS, i immediately grabbed it. I thought it was a great idea to put S7 into a novel. I just wish it would have been better written. Not only were there at least 2-3 typos per page, which became extremely irritating, but it seemed like there was no character development. If I hadn't followed the series on TV, then i would not have any insight into these characters. This book can not stand alone, but is a nice keepsake for true buffy fans. Read at your own risk.
I gave this book three stars partially because i couldn't bear to give anything less to something that had to do with buffy. Also, it's nice to have something that came straight from the actual series in a novel form.
I recommend this book only to true Buffy fans. Anyone else will probably hate it.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: I loved this book that spanned the entire seventh season of BUFFY. It captured all the unforgettable moments that are precious it even added things such as characters thoughts. The only thing that stopped CHOSEN from getting 5 stars was the numerous(and irritating) typos and errors in the book. I love BUFFY!!!

Rating:
Summary: Season 7
Review: I loved this book, because Season 7 was my favorite Season of Buffy, and this is a novelization of the season.

One thing ticks me off though...Why did the freaking publisher release this with the ending to the series finale "Chosen" in the book BEFORE the "Chosen" aired???How ridiculous.

Rating:
Summary: :)
Review: I never really got to see the 7th season , so this book helped me out a lot.I would reccomend it to someone who is a hard-core buffy fan but didin't get to see the 7th season.Or if you loved the 7th season then this book is for you because this book is written about the 7th season of buffy.
But, due to the fact of weak poteniol-girls the 7th season wasn't all it was hoped for.yes i hated the potentiols, yes they hit like a GIRL would.Not to mentain they were stupid.

Rating:
Summary: COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN!!
Review: I pretty much agree with "johnnyafropuff". I love reading a book when I can picture every word, and having watched the seventh season this was certainly easy to do. Sometimes while watching the series, the dialogue flies by so quickly it's difficult to take it all in. This book helps with that problem, and gives you time to mull over the dialogue and re-read without re-winding your video! I especially loved the cave scene in the end with the narative on Spike. Very satisfying and helped to alleviate what was for me the very much unexpected finale.

The editing was dreadful! After the first few chapters, I took a pen and began my OWN editing! Thus a less than five star rating. I hate being distracted by bad editing.

As far as I am concerned, if books were issued covering each season, I would certainly buy them all. I would also love to see ANGEL issued in this way. What a treat to read narative which completes the dialogue! This allows the reader to take the series a step further and presents a clearer picture of each scene, plus explanations and ideas which may have escaped the viewer.

Buffy and Angel fans, BUY THIS BOOK! ....and try to ignore the (lack of) editing.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly Written, Poorly Edited
Review: I recently picked up a copy of the twenty-two episode adaptation of the seventh and final season of Buffy. I finished "reading" the book yesterday, and I'm appalled at the poor quality and lack of editing. "Chosen," titled after the final episode of Buffy, purports to be a novelization. Typically, such projects are thin to begin with because the authors are under pressure to produce completed text within a short period of time. Occasionally, a tie-in is well written and developed. This is not the case with "Chosen."

One would think that nearly 700 pages of text would produce something compelling or at least interesting. Although there's ample room to play in the written world of Buffy, the unnamed author -- none was listed on the cover or interior, despite a lengthy dedication -- dedicates only twenty pages per episode during the first third of the season. As a result, the writing is very sloppy with frequent skips over dialogue and description. The end result is that it reads like a poorly transcribed summary of the episode that one might find in a teeny-bopper's blog. Don't get me started on the horrid adaptation of "Storyteller" or the the adaptation's reference to the Kennedy/Willow sex scene, which reads like vague soft porn written by a thirteen year old.

Would it kill the author to actually use the dialogue, description, and whatever physical behavior and facial expressions from the cast? This example is not inconsistent for "Chosen," and there were several times in the book when I had to re-read paragraphs to figure out what was happening. At one point, during an exchange between Buffy and Willow, the author writes, "Buffy confessed to Willow..." and then "Willow confessed to Buffy...." without any actual dialogue. It was extremely frustrating and anti-climatic, especially for an episode like "Beneath You."

Editing posed another issue in this book. The Big Bad villain is The First, an ancient evil that spawned all evils. Obviously, when one refers to this characters, one capitalizes the first letter of each part of its name. Unfortunately, it looks like someone got sloppy with a search and replace tool and knocked out any instance of those two words so that a sentence like, "Willow took The First thing out of the box" looks absolutely ridiculous. In other editing faux-pas, quotation marks were dropped from the beginning of dialogue exchanges so that it wasn't clear that dialogue actually occurred until the closed quotation marks appeared.

It's clear that Simon Pulse, a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster, rushed this novelization in time for the final episode. But if they knew the show was ending some 4-5 months before the final episode actually aired, and had such a project in mind, why wasn't more care taken to ensure the tie-in was at least grammatically and editorially correct?

"Chosen" as a book is worthless, filed with poorly constructed, passive sentences, oodles of tell rather than show sections, and painfully obvious typographical errors. It's far better to watch Buffy re-runs and read the scripts than to waste of [money]and a lot of paper. Thank god for fanfic.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I think season 7 was a disappointment for most Buffy fans. Don't get me wrong, the season had a very strong beginning. but ended with very little concern for the characters we have grown to love. Sadly, the show became plot driven, and introduced at least ten more characters, therefore not giving enough time to really get inside everyone's heads.

I bought "Chosen" with the mindset that I can finally know what the individuals are thinking, and I would again forge that connection with the show that I had lost in the final season. Not the case. I was even more disappointed than before! Yes there are certainly plenty of typos, but that is not even the most annoying aspect. The author (I could not find the author's name anywhere on the book) neglected to get inside everyone's heads. Even my favorite episodes from the season were boring! I felt like I was reading a "how-to" manual. There is very little emotion portrayed between everyone, and I finally quit reading it after only 8 chapters.

I am a huge fan of Whedon, and the show, but this book is an embarrassment to the Buffyverse. I would suggest spending your money on something more fulfilling, such as "The Lost Slayer," by Christopher Golden. That will meet any Buffy fan's expectations.


Rating:
Summary: Chosen: The REAL Story Behind the Book
Review: I was very excited when I heard this book was coming out. My best friend got it as a birthday present, and as I was looking through it- I too noticed many errors not only in quotage but in continuity and just general following of the last season of my beloved show. Now I never missed an episode in all 7 years, so I pride myself on knowing my Slayer stuff. I emailed Nancy Holder and asked her about it and she informed me that she had nothing to do with the book. True, she was going to write it, but had a prior commitment and had to back out of the project. Those who credit Nancy Holder with writing the book, should disregard the information because she didn't write it. In fact, if you look at the book itself, it has no author at all. I'm glad to be able to clear up this matter and hopefully, have restored a little confidence on N.H's behalf.

Rating:
Summary: Good story.... bad editing
Review: I'am a very big fan of the show, so I thought it would be interesting to read the 7th season book. It started off good, but then I started to notice all the typos in it. I mean, the author would just spell names wrong. For example: Harbingers would be spelled Harbringers. The author would also capitilize "The First" in every instance that it was used in. Even if it had nothing to do with the character. Overall I think the story was good and the book was well spoken. But I think they were in such a hurry to get the book out on shelves that they did a very poor job on editing it. If you are a Buffy fan, read it. If not, you might get frustrated with all the mistakes in it.

Rating:
Summary: Great Novel gives you a sense of closure
Review: I'm a HUGE Buffy fan and I was so happy to read the novelization of BTVS seventh Season! I ingored the errors (only bad thing). It's really great for fans who felt like there were to many un-answered Questions. I enjoyed also how is spoke what the characters were saying and feeling even though it was un-spoken and the B/S stuff really was awesome for B/S fans like myself. I enjoyed how it said all the things that were not said during many of their "moments". Espically how at the end it touched on both how Buffy and Xander about losing the person they loved. Buy it. It's worth it!