"Everybody's using the Web now," Cordelia tells Doyle as, frustrated by Angel Investigations' difficulty in attracting clients, she decides that it's time the outfit had its own site.

But the helpless - well, the rich helpless - aren't the only ones using the Internet.  As we learned in I Robot...You Jane, it's also used be demons to attract their victims.  This time around, it's the Vishrak demon Yunk'sh, who is taking advantage of computer nerd Elliot Grundy's gullibility in order to track down the victims he needs to complete the ritual which will re-establish his power via a series of chat rooms.

Of course, you can't have a demon leaving a trail of corpses (or what's left of them) across LA without drawing attention to yourself.  With the LAPD on the case, Angel has access to Kate Lockley's case notes but, of course, he has to play along with her idea that a cult is responsible for the murders.

In fact, a cult is on the scene, but they're also trying to track down Yunk'sh to enslave him for their own purpose.

Despite all this, and the inclusion of a local TV presenter, Avatar is probably the least successful original Angel novel so far.  Although, given the overall standard of the series so far, that's no real disgrace.

Unfortunately, the idea of a demon using the Internet to find his victims is rather old hat these days, and as soon as we learn that Yunk'sh is using birthdates to select his victims, the identity of one becomes rather obvious.

And, yet again, the novel is set before Hero - whilst it was initially nice to have Doyle back, there's only so many times you can read about him trying to summon up the courage to ask out Cordy without it starting to become a little repetitive.

Overall, Avatar is not a bad book, although it suffers from being part of a range that has certainly delivered the goods so far, but it lacks that certain something that would have made it stand out from the crowd.

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