books 2005: The Book of Fours, by Nancy Holder

[supercheesegirl]

I just finished The Book of Fours, by Nancy Holder (it's a Buffy book). Not sure what I thought of it. A lot of it... didn't make all that much sense. People would show up all unexplained, or not show up, or someone starts chanting about something we never heard about before, and it was just kind of weird. Also, if Lucy Hanover lived during the Civil War, then that doesn't make sense with the story in Tales of the Slayers, vol. 2 about the Civil War Slayer who dressed like a boy to fight in the army. Not like any of this is canon Buffyverse, but still. And I don't think it's cool to almost mortally wound a major character, because that does sort of deviate from the show; if Willow had needed brain surgery and had half her head shaved sometime during the third season I think we would've heard about it. I don't think I like Nancy Holder all that much as a writer. I did like that this book brought together some of the different Slayers and expanded on Slayer history, though. But overall, meh.

(On one hand, I'm sort of analyzing a bit much for the bit of fluff that is a Buffy novel, but on the other hand, these things are written for Buffy freaks, like me, who know way too much about the Buffyverse, so it's excusable to overanalyze. I digress.)

Comments

[quebelly.livejournal.com]

Nancy Holder's writing is pretty horrible. The only thing I've liked by her is her short story in the first Tales of the Slayer. She makes the characters seem so vapid. And she uses buffy-speak when describing things. That drives me nuts.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wasn't impressed. The plot was interesting, but she just didn't write it very well.

[theemdash]

I really like The Book of Fours. I view it as AU (which helps explain some stuff). But overall I really liked the story and I liked the exploration of India. And I liked that they stole my idea of a Slayer/Watcher relationship. Okay, maybe not "stole" but I had that idea too. ;)

Have you read Pretty Maids All in a Row?

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

What's AU? The story I liked, and I liked India. The Slayer history stuff was cool, and the relation of Slayer power to the four elements was really interesting to me. I just wasn't thrilled with Nancy Holder's writing. I mean, you or I could do a way better job on a Buffy novel than that.

Haven't read Pretty Maids All in a Row. Tell me about it?

[theemdash]

AU=Alternate Universe

Sadly, I think Nancy Holder and Christopher Golden are the best Buffy writers out there (I haven't some some of the new writers, though). On the level of sentence, though, I don't think I've read any that have excited me.

Pretty Maids All in a Row was written before "Fool For Love" aired. At that time we knew that Spike had killed a Slayer during the Boxer Rebellion and that he had killed another one at some point. PMAIAR speculates on who that other Slayer was. It's set in the 1940s and is actually a really cool story. In fact, the story is very much the plot for Season 7. If you can accept it as AU, it's pretty good. That one is by Christopher Golden. And he is cool. I met him at DragonCon. And I forgot my book! GRRR. But he was still cool. Very friendly and very funny. And I like PMAIAR

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

I feel like I've read something else of Christopher Golden's--I have two other Buffy novels--and I think I liked him. I'll check that out.