Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1: Coyote Moon; Night of the Living Rerun; Portal Through Time [Paperback]

There are 3 books in this volume and I will review and rate them individually which seems only fair.

3 of 5 stars: Coyote Moon
The first book in this volume takes place during the summer between the first and second seasons of the TV series. Late August to be exact. With the summer coming to a close a traveling carnival arrives in Sunnydale coinciding with the appearance of a pack of wild coyotes. First the coyotes seem to be content with just harrassing the local pet population but with closer observation by the Slayer, she quickly learns otherwise.

This is the very first Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel I had ever read. I can admit that I did have high hopes and I wasn't completely disappointed. I thought the story was original and pretty well laid out and it progressed nicely and things played out well and in a believable fashion (pertaining to the Buffyverse). Events and locations were described to satisfaction which I find necessary, and in reality is just my preferance but I find it helps with the emersion of the reader into the story. There were a couple things that were mentioned that I would have liked to know more about but that were not pivitol to the story. For the most part this selection stayed true to the charcters created and developed in the series. That said, I don't think that Giles, Xander or Willow were dead on. Which I imagine can be a bit difficult in carrying characters from a TV series to a book. Although I found Buffy to be pretty believable.

There were a few grammar errors which really bothers me with any publication. All in all I am glad to have read Coyote Moon and would recommend it for a quick enjoyable read.

1 of 5 stars: Night of the Living Rerun
This is the second book in the volume and takes place during the first season of the TV series. The Master is still undead beneath Sunnydale and awaiting the Arrival of The Despised One. Who even The Master fears. Yikes! Buffy, Giles and Xander start having vivid dreams of people and events that took place during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Buffy is a previous Slayer, Giles is the previous Slayer's Watcher and Xander is an accused witch. Its seems as if the events of the past are repeating themselves.

The idea behind the book was a good one but there were several things that could have been improved upon to make this a great book. It really seemed like this would be an interesting story to get into and enjoy but sadly the execution was terrible, the characters weren't fleshed out and the descriptions of both was muddled and vague. Just to name a few. And then there was the massive amounts of grammarical errors. Seriously, even if everyone else who was suppose to be looking over this book before it was published missed all of the mistakes, how could the author??

I would have been just fine with not having read this book and I wouldn't recommend it unless you have an abundance of free time and absolutely nothing better to do and even then probably not. I think I would rather watch paint dry. Seriously.

4 of 5 stars: Portal Through Time
This is the last installment in this volume and is by far the most well written. It takes place in the early part of the second season before Angel loses his soul. He plays a vital role in this story. Angel discovers the plot of two vampires time traveling to points in the past to try and disrupt the current timeline so that the Master would have risen at the end of season one of the TV show. Needless to say the Scoobies must also travel to the past and try to disrupt the vampire's plans. Be ready for a history lesson. But hey, there are worse things out there.

The execution and momentum of this arch is very satisfying and well done. The story moves along at a rapid pace with action around every corner. The rules of time travel can seem a bit complex but luckily we have Xander there to help clarify and at times dig us deeper into the events. I thought that all of the known personas from the show were represented well within their characteristics and even the new comers where true to what has come to be expected from the TV show.

As I stated before the story as a whole was very well written with only minor errors in the grammar department. A very enjoyable read. I highly recommend.

I do wonder....What were they thinking when they changed the logo? I hardly recognized this as a Buffy product. BIG mistake in my book.

Amidst the Twilight craze, some teenagers looking for something more than entertainment have turned for the first time or with renewed interest to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Many reasons could account for this, but of all the vampire books out there, there is only one mythos of a Vampire Slayer. Buffy shares some qualities of other teen books such as those written by Stephanie Meyer, Rachel Meade, or others. For instance, like those other aforementioned books, Buffy is originally aimed at a teenage audience and bemoans the difficulty of high school, the discovery of love, the loss of love...and other things which readily appeal to a teenage crowd. But what's more important is the superior qualities of Buffy compared to these other works. From a historical perspecctive,vampire slayers are nothing new. But from a fictional perspective, this is very original and makes Buffy stand out. Also, the characters in Buffy tend to ressemble real people who you know as opposed to Meyer or Meade. There is an incredible, incremental rise from immaturity to maturity throughout Buffy--and this applies to Buffy Summers specifically, as well as Willow, Xander, and others. What Meade and Meyer accomplish, in my opinion, is a not so well-done rip off of Buffy which is both unimpressive and unmemorable, added with their own lame spin.

In any case, this book, a repackaged combination of three books placed into one, is a decent showing of the ressurection of Buffy in 2010, although the format could be better. I'll take this opportunity to agree with the other reviewer who is disappointed by the extremely unBuffy logo on the front of the book. For fans like us, the Buffy logo is a representation of the mythos as a whole, and while marketers might think it's 'cooler' to come up with their own logo style, we don't think it's cool at all, and think it smacks of a hastily completed effort. And, like the other reviewer, I dislike the particular books that were chosen in this combination because they're not in chronological order. The books should have been printed in threes by season. So, for instance, because "The Harvest" was the first book which was printed and started Season 1, that should have been first. After that, "Halloween Rain"--one of my favorites--should have come second, followed by "Coyote Moon," just like the original way these came out when they were first written and published individually in the 1990s.

No matter, it's still very nice to see even one Buffy book on the Young Adult section of the bookstore where I work, and I hope that a high sales rate might encourage Simon and Pulse to continue re-releasing Buffy books, and maybe...releasing new titles. I haven't seen a new Buffy title since 2008, and I'd love to see more. There are some very good things about this Buffy the Vampire Slayer Volume 1 edition. For instance, the book is a fairly high quality softover, as opposed to the original book constitutions, which were released in mass market trade paperback, with a handful released in hardcover.

Although I have to be honest and say that I don't really care much for the cover art, and would have rather seen a character from the series on the cover, preferably Giles or Buffy. Anyway, I have every Buffy boook ever made, but the copies of "Coyote Moon," "Night of the Living Rerun," and "Portal Through Time," which I have are pretty well worn despite my tender care and good treatment. The reason? As I said, trade paperback isn't the best quality. The pages of a softcover are superior as they are made of thicker yet glosser paper, and the spines are much tougher and won't bend in half easily. One other thing I like about this edition is that the words are in larger print than orinigally. Imagine my surpirse to discover that a someone at S&P Pulse had the brains to actually reproduce the books in said larger print. I've come to expect the worst in quality when it comes to S&P, but this time they got something right. This was probably pretty expensive but they did it anyway and it was for the best. Nothing is more annoying than reading a paperback and then discovering that the softcover print is the same size. Companies know this, and every once in a while they'll act on it, like S&P.

I didn't like everything about this edition, but I still bought it from Borders. I don't spend very much money, but I'll go out of my way to buy anything Buffy, because it's one of the few TV shows I really like, and the books are pretty well-written as well.

This story was my favourite out of the three. I have also read Buffy the Vampire Slayer Books 2 and 3 and all of the 6 books were awesome. But, Portal Through Time was my absolute favourite!!