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One of the great things about BUFFY's early years was that the sort of characters - new girl in school, class clown, computer nerd, prom queen - we've seen in a dozen teen movies turned out to be a whole lot more engaging that we might have feared. Cordelia Chase could have been little more than your typical snobbish cheerleader who thinks the whole school revolves around her, but the writers allowed Charisma Carpenter to make her so much more. Despite some early involvement with the Scooby Gang, Cordelia clearly regarded Buffy and her friends as lesser lifeforms until she had to be rescued by the Slayer in the penultimate episode of season one, OUT OF MIND, OUT OF SIGHT, the first of the three episodes novelised here. One of the perennial problems with novelising BUFFY episodes is the fact that many episodes tend to form part of a much bigger arc. That's less of a problem with some early episodes, with Angel handing over the Pegamum Codex the only real reference to an ongoing story. The usual poor Pocket Books proof-reading rears its head, with an inconsistent spelling of Marcie Ross' name. Then we skip over a couple of episodes, picking up with SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. A slight nitpick here, but saying that everything was sweetness and light over the summer contradicts the HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION, VOL. 1 collection. As with the first part of the book, the episode is novelised in a fairly straightforward way, although Buffy's defeat of the Master has to be quickly filled in. Giles' attempts at asking Jenny Calendar out on a date, and Cordy's science project based around the tomato provide some lighter moments in the BUFFY take on FRANKENSTEIN. Finally, we see the biggest battle of 1998 - not Mr. Trick's Slayerfest '98 but the one between Buffy and Cordy over who makes Homecoming Queen. The structure of THE CORDELIA COLLECTION is slightly different from many other Pocket Books novelisations. It's simply split into three separate parts without any separate chapters and there's no linking material (which is a plus as far as I'm concerned). A reasonable novelisation of three Cordy-based episodes, but it's nothing special and now that the series is available on video and DVD, you have to wonder what the point of these novelisations is. BACK TO THE TOP |
THE CORDELIA
COLLECTION, VOL. 1 |
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