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Summary: This book is scary!!
Review: This book scared the witts out of me. I have not been able to look at pumpkins or scare crows the same since I read it.
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Summary: Classic Buffy The Vampire Slayer!
Review: This book was really cool. It had all the classic Buffy The Vampire Slayer banter and jokes. Plus it had a scary side to it. Spooky stuff!! Hope to see some more like these!
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Summary: This isn't Buffy
Review: This book was unmitigatedly awful. There is far better Buffy writing at Internet fanfic sites. Their descriptions of Samhain were bizarre and completely made up (Celtic pumpkin kings, forsooth) and the dialogue and characterisation in no way captured the humour, inventiveness and wit loyal viewers expect. Reading this book was a teeth-grindingly terrible experience, and I am definitely going to stick to watching the TV show from now on. Joss Whedon knows what he's doing.
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Summary: Pure, Scary Fun!!!!!
Review: This Buffy book is one of the scariest in the series. Next to "Blooded" its the best Buffy book. It had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I read it all in one night. I could not put it down. I was spooky too. I love to be scared, therefore I loved this book! I recommend this book to every Buffy fan who loves to be scared! Great fun! Exciting! Thrilling, etc!!!
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Summary: Your Better Off Reading The Harvest
Review: This is book was not as good as I expected it to be! The author spends 8 pages on just one thing. This Buffy book is nowherer near as good as the Harvest. Your better of buying that.
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Summary: This is cool
Review: This is one of the best Buffy books which was aimed at younger people (unlike Blooded, etc.). I did find the part in the Graveyard near the end went on way to long, and their should of been more to do with that Irish guy, but this is still a brilliant book
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Summary: This is a really good book
Review: This was a very good book. Especially if you like the history of different holidays. Even if you don't like that type of stuff its a good adventure book. I couldn't put it down.
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Summary: A Great Buffy Book!!! One of my favorites.....
Review: This was one of the first Buffy books that I read. I thought it was great and it hooked me onto the Buffy books. The story centers around an legend in Sunnydale that if it rains on the eve of Halloween, that a scarecrow will walk amoung the living and kill anything in it's path. Buffy, being realitively new to Sunnydale, doesn't believe in the legend, but Willow and Xander are wary of it. Well, Halloween rolls around and guess what....it's raining. That's a big uh-oh.... Anyway, I won't give away anything else....you'll have to read the book and find out what happens! :-) -Rory-
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Summary: "You Feel Every Fear You Ever Had..."
Review: Throughout the seven-season run of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" only three of its episodes took place on Halloween: "Halloween", "Fear Itself" and "All the Way" (in seasons two, four and six). Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder, who are possibly the most famous of the Buffy novelists try to fill in the gap of season one, with this: "Halloween Rain."
It's Halloween (duh) and Buffy is on her nightly patrol of Sunnydale before heading off to the Bronze to enjoy the Halloween party with her friends. But unfortunately other forces are on the loose - after a run-in with some vampires at the Bronze, Buffy meets up with the town crazy-man Glenn O'Leary, who claims to have seen zombies moving in the cemetery. Buffy sends Willow and Xander to get Giles and heads off to sort things out.
This however could prove to be a fatal mistake. Giles has been researching the origins of Halloween and matching it up against a local Sunnydale legend: that a scarecrow soaked with Halloween rain will come to life and begin a slaughter. Willow and Xander arrive just as the pieces come together: Samhain was the demon-worshipped-as-a-god who now exists in spirit form within pumpkins and scarecrows, giving him the title "the Pumpkin King" or "Jack 'O Lantern". Years ago another young Slayer named Erin Randall fought and was killed by Samhain - but her Watcher left the details of the fight and how he might be killed.
The Scoobies race off to Buffy's aid, who is at this moment going up against a cemetery full of zombies - called up under Samhain's power. Having no idea what's going on, Buffy ducks into a nearby cornfield to hide. But as the rain begins to fall, a scarecrow begins to stir...
"Halloween Rain" is one of the few Buffy novels that would have made a good episode - and is in fact better than some of the episodes that *were* made. Golden and Holder manage to easily meld the 'true' mythology of the Celts, Samhuinn/Halloween, and the modern day practice of the holiday with their own fictional legend of scarecrows and rain. There actually *is* a scholarly link between all of these elements, making this book have far more resonance than it has any right to (it's only a one-hundred-and-sixty page teen-read!)
However, I found when reading this book that I was not so much interested in the story as I was in the little bits and pieces of information and trivia that Golden and Holder sprinkle throughout. Among these was a look into the life of a past-Slayer, something that the show virtually ignored (only three appeared in the show, and of these only one was named) but something that always fascinated me, and a familiar looking zombie - remember Mr Flutie? Likewise, there's a reappearance from Aphodesia, who was a gossip in episode one of the show, and we actually get introduced to a person I always thought should have had a place on the show - the manager of the Bronze.
It has been a long-running gag in the show that Halloween (assumed to be a wild night for ghouls and spooks) is actually the time that the forces of darkness take a night off - a typical Joss Wheden idea. However Golden and Holder actually take the time to explain *why* this happens in the historical context of the holiday - and there aren't many novelisations out there that actually explain and *add* to the mythos of the show.
It takes a little too long to get to Samhain and the zombies (the first act is taken up with a botched rescue mission and your standard Bronze vampires), and in the seven year run of the show I never once noticed a cornfield in Sunnydale, but once it gets going, this is one of the best "Buffy" books out there - and it was only the second one written!
Rating:
Summary: Not too interesting. Weak plots and bad humor.
Review: When I read books in the BTVS series, I expect to be on the floor, rolling around laughing until my stomach hurts. This book didn't even get a snicker out of me. Xander's usual sarcasm was dried up and the whole deal with halloween rain and scarecrows: looks like it came out of a bad 50's scifi movie.
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