Rating: 
Summary: "You are...Beneath me..."
Review: A great Buffy novel, combining scenes from episodes and some great background on Spike, Dru, Angel and Darla. The story switches from the year 2000 to the 1800's in almost every other chapter. This is one of the bettey Buffy novels I have read and highly recommend it. Also may be of interest to those studying drama and theatre.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Novel
Review: An absolutly great Buffy novel. Buffy does not play a part in it (her lines could probably fit on one page), Willow and Spike are what it's all about.
Some of the best parts were the flashbacks to Spike's past. It answered alot of questions an how he dealt with his "friends" who ridiculed and humiliated him and what happened to Cecily. Spike is one of my favorit characters on the show and I love reading about his past.
The whole idea of Addams and his Explorers Club is also very interesting.
All in all a very good book, highly entertaining!
Rating: 
Summary: Willow and Spike take on the Addams Family
Review: As the front cover indicates, "These Our Actors" by Ashley McConnell and Dori Koogler features Willow the good Wicca of Southern California with the Big Bad Spike. Willow is taking a drama class at UC-Sunnydale and when helping at the theater she discovers the place contains the spirits of characters from plays performed in the past. The class is taught by Professor Addams, who has some interesting ideas on the relationship between drama and magic rituals. Even more interesting, we learn that Spike knows Addams from the days when he was still human. It seems Addams is interested in going back to the time before the first drama, when the point was to literally invoke the gods. Of course, this begs the question as to why Addams would want to do such a thing, but you know it just cannot be for anything good.
"These Our Actors" is one of those plays where we alternate chapters between the past and the present (and if the two authors each took one time line my guess would be McConnell did the story set in the past concerning Spike and Koogler did the tale set in the present with Willow and her drama class). Although I have to profess that I am getting a bit tired of blasts from the past showing up in seemingly every "BtVS" novel, the parallel story lines work well here for the most part. The story of Spike in the past also deals with what happened right before and after Drusilla turned William the Bloody (Bad Poet) into a vampire, an event that was covered in flashback in the episode "Fool for Love." Of course, this finally gives us an opportunity to get around to the obvious scene that was missing from that episode, namely how Spike got his name, as the new vampire takes his revenge on those who taunted them. Under the story telling principle that it is a small world after all, Cecily, the object of William's affection who taunted and humiliated him, is the daughter of Addams. For me the highpoint of the novel was when Spike--albeit it with help from Drusilla, Angelus and Darla--take his revenge on Addams and his daughter. It is really evil, wicked, bad, mean and nasty. I think I actually shuddered when it became clear what was going to happen.
Overall, "These Our Actors" does a nice job of capturing the character of Spike, especially in the story line dealing with the time he became a vampire. I am not exactly sure when the story takes place in the show's chronology, but apparently it was a time when Buffy was still taking classes or at least considering doing so, but also when Willow is comfortable going public with her relationship with Tara. That suggests early (?) in season 6. This only matters because I think the characterization of Willow skews too much towards the "old" Willow who tended to lack self-confidence as a Wicca. But then I usually find that most writers of these original novels based on the hit TV series created by Joss Whedon are so enraptured with the "original" Willow that they resist recognizing her growth and maturity on the series. Drusilla, Angelus and Darla are more central to the story than Buffy, which is fine for this tale, and I especially like the way Dru is depicted in the novel. There is also a treat for students of drama as memorable lines from great plays are sprinkled throughout the book, testing your knowledge of who said what when (e.g., "Attention must be paid").
Finally, I have to take issue with something that was tossed off in this novel. No, it is not the question of how a vampire survives on an ice flow for a month without the sun getting to them or whether Medea the princess of Colchis was ever properly considered a queen when she lived in Greece with Jason, but rather the extremely disparaging remarks Giles makes about Anoulih's version of "Antigone." I do not think the French dramatist can be faulted for using the ancient Greek myth about the ill-fated daughter of Oedipus as a text from which to construct a morality play that would speak to the situation of France under the German occupation during World War II. But more to the point, Anoulih's modern version has the virtue of making the title character the main character of the play. When I teach my students about the key concepts of a Greek tragedy they read "Antigone" and almost always immediately point out that it is Creon, not Antigone, who is the tragic figure in the play. After all, Antigone is executed for obeying the laws of the god and burying her brother (if a handful of dirt on the face can be called burying), but Creon ends up losing his wife and son because of his actions. There are plenty of plays to ridicule, but Anoulih's "Antigone" is not one of them and Giles should have known better.
While not a great "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" novel, "These Our Actors" is certainly well above average without any major faults that make you want to demand a rewrite. The climax is a pretty good payoff for the set up, which is always a good sign in these books. The parallel stories work pretty well, although that usually means you are more interested in one of the two at any given time. But the Spike in the past story line can stand on its own and for that matter so does the Willow in the present once you know how Adams and Spike know (and hate) each other.
Rating: 
Summary: Wasted potential
Review: Being a Spike fan, I was excited to see a book that would have him in a prominent role. In this, I wasn't disappointed. However, I can say that the story of Spike's past was the main reason I kept reading the book.The beginning starts off slowly, and includes some unnecessary information--often repeated throughout the book--that doesn't add to the meaning or plot of the story. Willow's section is the most tedious, partly due to the difficulty in making her a vibrant character on paper. In contrast, the characterizations in the Spike section were very well done, and the sub-plot was engaging. The idea behind the story was a good one. If the ending had been less confusing and muddled, and had tied the two plotlines together with much more of a dramatic punch, then it would have been an excellent Buffy novel. As such, it's only worth reading if you want to know more about who Spike was before, and immediately after, being turned into a vampire.
Rating:
Summary: a fine fine BUFFY novel
Review: Disclaimer: the authors of this most excellent BUFFY novel are friends of mine; the three of us each had short stories in the 2000 anthology X-MEN LEGENDS. Now that you know my biases, this is one of the finer examples of BUFFY novel-ness, as it carries on two parallel plots, one focusing on Willow, and also featuring Spike, and one featuring William-turning-into-Spike, also featuring Darla, Drusilla, and Angelus. The book does a masterful job of weaving in and out of the onscreen scenes, building on stuff that was established but not elaborated on (Spike's origin and the awesome foursome of him, Dru, Darla, and Angelus; Willow's Intro to Drama class), retroactively setting the stage for future events (Willow realizing just how bloody powerful she is), and telling a cracking good yarn to boot. The characterization is spot-on, the dialogue matches the onscreen personae, and the little touches, both regarding 19th-century Victorian life and modern-day college theatre, make the book fire on all cylinders. My sole complaint is that the 19th-century climax is stronger than the modern one, which makes the latter seem a bit anticlimactic (literally). But that is a minor complaint about what is overall a most frabjous book.
Rating:
Summary: A Clarification
Review: I am not writing to rate this book for reasons that will be obvious in a moment. However, as the rating block is required I will use the present average so as not to skew the numbers. Dori Koogler is my wife.
I AM writing to clear up a misapprehension expressed by Lawrence Bernabo in his otherwise excellent review.
He correctly assumed that the writing team of McConnell and Koogler split the story lines. However, his guess of who wrote what is reversed. Anyone who is on one of the on-line Buffy lists already knows Dori's fascination with Spike.
Rating:
Summary: The Spike and Willow team
Review: I loved this book. I devoured it. It was nice to see Willow willing to get help from Spike, and Spike so willing to help her. I've always liked their relationship and it was fun reading about their adventure. I also liked reading about Spike's past. It went into more detail than the "Fool for Love" episode. Spike is so different from any other vampire. I wish they would write more books involving him.
Rating:
Summary: very confusing and weird book
Review: i usually love all the buffy the vampire slayer books that come out but this was an exception. willow decides to take her drama
class even though buffy cannot because it interferes with her
new and improved slayer schedule. willow then volunteers at the
theater where soon after, things start to go wrong. at first they
seem like harmless pranks until she starts to hear the voices. this leads her into an investigatation of the theater, some of the ancient plays and their connections to the gods. as a by line
they also give us a good description of spike's early life before
he became a vampire. this was the only decent part of the book.
the ending confused me more and left me wondering what the writer
was thinking. i say please go and read any other buffy book but
this one. i wish someone had warned me.
Rating:
Summary: Spotlight on Spike
Review: Like other reviewers, the ending puzzled me. I reread it several times and still didn't get it. However, the rest of the book was good enough that it didn't matter as much as it might have. This was an expanded 'Fool For Love' in a way, the episode in which we first meet William with his doomed love for Cecily. Having that story fleshed out and seeing the consequences of her rejection of William was fascinating. The scenes with the four vampires were very enjoyable.
I didn't miss Buffy; Willow is a strong enough character to carry a story and Spike is too; when you have both of them, that's plenty to keep fans happy.
The book was well written and the characters were true to those on the show.
Just a pity about those last few pages.
Rating:
Summary: Trying not to give it away......
Review: Now I've read alot of Buffy books but this is the first one I've ever been compeled to review. It was Fantastic we get to see some of Spike just before and after he was turned. Seeing the differences in his charicter was Amazing.
It was Fun having Willow as the focus of the book, this is a definite must have for Willow fans.
the interaction between W/S was great,good banter.
one Suggestion to the Fans re watch "Fool for Love" before reading the book.
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