Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (Hardcover)

Once i read this book, i was glad that it had been as high as my expectations for it were.
Now, i'm just 13, but i have to say, i'm not really of the faint hearted and enjoyed this book and its horror scences very much.
i was very glad to see Spike and Dru together and the way they had been written in was very good and detailed by Christopher Golden, who i very much agree is an amazing author.

i would highly recommend this book to any Spike and Dru fans who love a bit of horror to read about, but it is not really recommended to Buffy fans who prefer reading of modern day and Buffy's battle scences.
it is very well written and strechs well from day to day and scence to scence.

Definatly a 5 Star Book :)

Gemma Crowley xx

The Slayer in this novel is Sophie Carstensen, a native of Denmark, who is forced to fleeter country when her Watcher, Yanna, is also a seer. However, with the outbreak of war on the continent, all of the Vampires in Britain head for the battlefield where the pickings will be easy, and the Council orders the Chosen One to follow them, even though the bullets that cannot kill the vampires can certainly kill the Slayer. Meanwhile, Spike and Dru are starting to knock off the pretty maids one by one. When the Council sends the Slayer after the two vampires while the demon Skymir attacks the very stronghold of the Watchers with his horde, Golden's narrative arrives at a most fateful confrontation. I had a little bit of trouble getting into the book, but once the situation was laid out for me I was hooked and the conclusion is as good as anything you will find in any other Buffy novel.

Readers have to remember that the Spike they encounter within these pages is the Spike of the old days, paired up with Drusilla, and not the character's current persona on the television series. His characterization is much stronger in the second half of the book than the first, but it is Drusilla that is really fleshed out in this book. Golden provides an insane sort of logic to her wild visions and ramblings much more so than the series ever had time to develop. Sophie the Vampire Slayer is not Buffy to be sure, but she is certainly a Slayer appropriate to time and place with a very unique relationship with her Watcher. Plus she uses the family broadsword to cut off the heads of the vamps when she dusts them. There is even a reference or two to the Giles family's association with the Council for those who like to see the past tied up neatly with the present. I am one of those readers who think that the very best Buffy stories are penned by Golden and Nancy Holder writing in tandem, but each has proven capable of hitting the mark without the other. "Pretty Maids All In A Row" is certain Golden's best solo effort, richly deserving the hardback treatment. Final warning: do not expect this story to neatly mesh with the mythology of Spike and Dru's background as revealed on this year's cross-over episodes.

Then I thought, "Aw, heck. Why not?"

Christopher Golden's "Spike & Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row" is not a good book; let's get that out of the way up front. Now, not being good as a novel doesn't mean that a book can't be entertaining, but that, sadly, is not the case here.

Wait. Was that a quadruple negative? Let me clear it up; Christopher Golden's "Spike & Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row" is not entertaining. It's basically an experiment in synergy by the Buffy machine, starring the one character who is arguably more popular than Buffy herself, Spike, and his paramour, Drusilla.

Golden selected an interesting setting, Europe at the height of World War II, as a way of introducing a Slayer that Spike could kill with impugnity and giving us some insight to a time when Spike was not the neutered wimp he is in the current series.

Rather than further our understanding of Spike the character, Golden further muddies the waters here by his unimaginative efforts, blatant mistakes and plotline missteps. But before I come down on Golden, I should point out that ANY effort to translate Buffy to written form is an exercise in folly. What works well on the small screen often comes off silly and trite on the stark page - like frost giants, demons and, yes, even vampires and Slayers. The inherent errors are merely compounded by Golden's comic-book prose.
A book based on a popular television series should try to break out of it's frame. Expand the universe, as it were, or at least explain further. If not, why bother writing it at all? I can hear you muttering, "Money, dear boy, money.", but that's not good enough for me.
Here, Golden completely destroys the Slayer universe by introducing a logical conundrum in the persons of the war-era Slayers and the "Slayers in Waiting" - girls who are training to be Slayers should the current one misstep. If, then, there is only one slayer and she happens to be based in Stockholm, Sweden, then the vampires of the world are free to multiply elsewhere, at will. If the Watcher Council orders her elsewhere, then the vamps in Stockholm now take a breather and begin multiplying like fleas, unimpeded. It's a dumb system and one that Golden should never have run with - exposing it to the light of day only weakens it.

Spike and Dru are rendered fairly faithfully, which only underscores how goofy they are as characters. Why do vampires need to have sex? They don't have blood in order to make the parts work, right? Why does Spike smoke? Golden tells the reader repeatedly that vampires don't use their lungs. Why do they speak such wretched dialog? Why would Spike speak like a 21st century man instead of a 40's Brit? And if he feels a jolt of patriotic pride when the Germans attack Great Britain, why would he create a German vampire submarine crew who would then go on to use their supernatural strength against his living countrymen?

There is no real plot - Spike wants to get Freya's Strand, Scrymer the demon wants him to perform a task before he'll give it up. The task, kill all the Slayrs in Waiting, causes Spike & Dru to trot the globe with reckless abandon, killing young girls and their mentors in ever-more-grisly ways. After a few, it becomes neither shocking nor interesting, except possibly to preteens without enough gore in their lives.

Pet peeve: Golden introduces a Slayer in Waiting from Louisiana, who refers to Sophie, the current Slayer, as "y'all." No one from the South would refer to a single person as "y'all" - "y'all" is plural.

This book was a quick read, but not quick enough.