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With
its early chapters concentrating on a gun-toting student on a killing
spree at Sunnydale High, The Evil That Men Do was understandably
shelved because of the same events that disrupted the end of season
three, delaying its release by over a year.
All
the usual elements in a Buffy book, especially a Nancy Holder
one, are present and correct - Boco del Infierno, tons of
flashbacks, an enemy that knows Angel from way back, no real sense
that the book really fits into the TV series' continuity and Willow
and Buffy falling out. It must be all those lattes they're
always drinking in the novels.
This
time around we're introduced to a slayer of Slayers, a one-time
friend of a Roman Slayer who was forced to fight for her life by
killing demon after demon in the gladiators' ring.
Not
for the first time in the Buffy novels, the flashbacks are
actually more interesting than the present day stuff. It would
be nice to think that these glimpses of previous Slayers and Angel's
past are part of the 'official' continuity but they're probably
just as likely to be contradicted or even ignored by the television
series. Of course, it's possible that the flashbacks seem
more interesting simply because we're getting just the 'highlights'
from the story, but even so, I would liked to have read more about
slaying Roman style than a Scooby Gang who seem out of character
compared to how they're portrayed on the screen. There's also
an awful lot of action scenes which rarely work well on the page.
The
Evil That Men Do isn't the first Buffy novel to feature
a bust-up between the Scoobies, although it is unfortunate that
the book's delay has meant that it has been published after the
likes of Power of Persuasion and Prime Evil which
have also featured this sort of thing. As with previous Buffy
novels, there's a whole possession thing causing a lot of the arguments,
which is a handy way of avoiding having to get the characterisation
nailed down properly.
This
is disappointing because one of the great things about Buffy
is the characters and the fact that they're not static. The
snapshot approach adopted by Pocket Books doesn't help and neither
do the facts that that the characters don't act as they do on TV,
and that what happens to them is unlikely to be referred to again.
The
usual complaints about the Buffy novels aside, there's still
things to enjoy about The Evil That Men Do. The flashbacks
are enjoyable and the story is interesting even if the characterisation
isn't that great, with a few things that we've seen before.
It's just a shame that it's not really been worth all the wait.
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