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Title: The Evil That Men Do by Nancy Holder ISBN: 0-671-02635-6 Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment Pub. Date: 01 July, 2000 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.28 (29 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Enjoyable...but not Buffy
Comment: This book was not at all boring, but it definitely was not Buffy. I agree with another reviewer when he brought up the similarities between Spike and Dru and this book's big baddies Helen and Julian. The quips weren't as witty as the tv show's, in fact many were out of character. The author depended way too much on references to the show--for example Willow's many references to her resolve face. The book covered a few more serious topics, most notably the shooting at the high school.
The JIST: All of Sunnydale seems to have a really short fuse as of late, coincidentally right after her scary dreams. A classmate of Buffy's, under an "influence", shot his parents and then killed his fellow schoolmates. Buffy and the slayerettes must battle against humans, demons and vampires in a battle with odds way against our slayer. In the end, Buffy and the group have to fight against century old evils (one of which is Angel's old girlfriend pre-soul) and each other to save the world from Meter (the mother of alll evil, yadayadayada who will be called to earth and cause yet another apocalypse).
CONCLUSION: Despite not being like the show, the book was really enjoyable. I especially liked how action-packed it was. The flashbacks were very interesting, and I personally enjoyed it more than Immortal (which I found a little slow).
Rating: 5
Summary: Evil dwells here...
Comment: 'The Evil That Men Do' was the first Buffy book I read, and it sure as hell got me into them. I was worried that the books mightn't be very good, given how frequently they're being written, etc., but, thankfully, I was mistaken. Nancy Holder has great insight into all the characters, Willow and Xander especially, as well as the dialogue used in the show. It was impossible to put this book down from the word go, it just got more and more fascinating. All the flashbacks to Ancient Greece, with the slayer Diana, and her friend Helen (who is turned to a vampire, and is the main evil character in the book), were possibly the best part of the book. If you are a fan of the show, you MUST get this book, especially if you haven't read any Buffy books yet.
Rating: 1
Summary: terrible beyond belief
Comment: Let's get one thing straight: I am a Buffy fan, and very glad to be one. This side idolatry, however. And it is mere truth that the second-worst feature of this great series is its unspeakable ignorance of history (the worst is its foolish and illiterate attitude to Christianity). BtVS likes to use long depth of past events; the results are lamentable, because Joss Whedon is one of the unfortunately large amount of people who know nothing about history, but have strong views about it anyway. All seven series are sodden with this, to the extent that I think I can seriously say that BtVS never once dealt with the past without some major unlikelihood or downright howler.
This is bad enough in the TV series, which has the charm of the interpreters and the frequent genius of Mr.Whedon; it is absolutely disastrous in derivative products. The writer of this novel has had the wretched idea to try to root its menace in the immemorial past, setting half of it in the Roman Empire; her idea of which it would be kind to call ignorant. This would actually be a fairly decent story, though nothing special, but for the dreadful void where an idea of the past should be. It is quite useless to enumerate Ms. Holder's errors (she seems to think that Caligula had something to do with the Fall of the Roman Empire); because the point is not merely the desperate, damaging ignorance, but the fact that she seems altogether unconcerned to do anything about it. The research for this novel is skimpier and trashier than a Christina Aguilera dress; but it is the mental environment which is hideous, satisfied with its ignorance, indeed actually unwilling to learn, lest the learning spoil its mental images - lest, that is, they may be forced to confront their prejudices against reality. The story as she tells it would not even exist if she had the least idea of Roman realities; any research would be death to the ideas she has conceived. It is therefore to her advantage to continue not to know, lest her work be made ever so slightly more difficult. That this means that she slanders the past would not, I suppose, trouble her; but she should also realize how counter-educational, how damaging to her readers, it is to deliver such an insane idea of our common background. She is effectively fostering ignorance for money, making a living as a writer by fostering ignorance.
The slight excuse for this is that it is difficult to set an horror story anywhere but in the modern age. Horror stories set, say, in the Middle Ages, or in Classical Greece, or in Han China, always have to subtly slant the environment to make it suitable for emotions or ideas that are not native to it. Horror is a modern genre, barely older than the Romantic age, and while ancient literatures had plenty of horrible stories to tell, it was the horror of reality, not of imagination: war, pestilence, betrayal, crime, death in its ordinary thousand forms. However, the masters of modern horror all worked hard, if not always successfully, to root their stories in good sound research: think of the elaborate reading, the careful research and intense feeling for the past in the work of, say, H.P.Lovecraft, or of the ecyclopedias, travel books and even railway guides consulted by Bram Stoker for DRACULA. For one thing, good reading can help any writer; part of the interest of Lovecraft's work is the fascination for the past that he conveys. But even more importantly, bad research is an insult to readers: not only does it say that the writer is ignorant, but that the writer expects readers to be ignorant and does not think them worth the effort. In THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, Lovecraft throws off, off-handedly, the fact that the Black Prince was notorious for a massacre in 1370, or that seventh-century British script had a particular shape (which he correctly imitates), and writes a whole colonial-age romance with names and places all in place. This says to the reader: I think you know all that, and, if that is not the case, I know that you are capable of finding out. Nancy Holder's says: I know that you are too lazy to get off your couch and get a book of reference from the shelf; therefore I will feed you pap in which Christians are being fed to the lions in the Coliseum in 40AD, because the only thing you care about is sex and violence.
This is the horror of this book: the shameless exhibition of its mind. Educators, especially history teachers, should read it as a set text, and shudder. A not uneducated, American citizen, who has enough familiarity with books to want to become a professional writer, has this sort of idea of the past: this is terrible beyond belief. This is what Americans have learned about history. This is what modern education has done to one of its subjects: not only ignorance, but self-satisfaction; not only blind prejudice, but no notion whatever that there is any virtue in trying to broaden your horizons, learn something beyond what you think you know, and discard the figments of the darkness in which you walk. This is not only the ignorance, but the spiritual darkness you have taught them to value.
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Title: Prime Evil by Diana G. Gallagher ISBN: 067103930X Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Sins of the Father by Christopher Golden ISBN: 0671039288 Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Paleo by Yvonne Navarro ISBN: 0743400348 Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment Pub. Date: 29 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Resurrecting Ravana by Ray Garton ISBN: 0671026364 Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment Pub. Date: 01 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Obsidian Fate by Diana G. Gallagher ISBN: 0671039296 Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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