Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

This anthology of three stories represents excellent value for money for Buffy fans. Each story deals with a different challenge for the Slayer and features the familiar characters from the TV series, their personalities faithfully rendered onto the page. The action is relentless, though some narrative space is given to sketching in the relationships between the protagonists. ‘Coyote Moon’ is the weakest of the stories, with heavy emphasis on stereotypical teenagers and all the predictable elements of the vampire genre a little too enthusiastically exploited.

‘Night of the Living Rerun’, set in the era of the Salem witch-hunt, has more veracity by virtue of its historical detail and the third offering, ‘Portal through Time’ features more of the wise-cracking humour which enlivened the TV series.

The stories are competently written, with liberal doses of teenage slang – sounding rather dated – and will carry Buffy fans along but there is little depth or literary engagement here – just formulaically good reads.