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Nancy
Holder is the Buffy equivalent of Doctor Who novelisation
king Terrance Dicks. Both are adept at adapting televised stories
into book form and able to meet their required page count with the
minimum of fuss.
Yet
while Dicks' novelisations at least served a purpose in the pre-video
era (and in any case, a lot of 1960 Who is missing from the
BBC archives), Holder's adaptations are largely pointless, especially
with the three episodes in 180 or so pages that Pocket Books allows.
So
instead of the journals of Rupert Giles, we've got the usual
Pocket Books format of three vaguely related episodes with a bit
of bridging material to link all three.
This
time around it involves Giles and the demon Krathalal which provides
a way to link three episodes which take place on or near Buffy's
eighteenth (Helpless), nineteenth (A New Man) and
twentieth birthdays (Blood Ties).
One
of my biggest complaints about Pocket Books' novelisations is the
format itself. The linking material is often in the first place,
or at least involves the title character of the book somehow reflecting
on previous adventures. But, of course, the adventures themselves
often involve scenes that the title character would have been unaware
of at the time, or indeed knowledge that none of the Scooby Gang
would have been privy to.
The
format also Holder to explain away the ending of A New Man
(Giles: "she [Walsh] duped him [Riley] even then") but
it still jarred as far as I was concerned. Once again I'm left wishing
we either got straightforward novelisations of maybe a couple of
linked episodes or proper first person accounts that don't necessarily
bother with stuff that they wouldn't no about.
Another
problem with novelising Buffy episodes is the heavily reliance
on story arcs, with A New Man (the Initiative) and Blood
Ties (Glory) suffering on this score. To be fair, Holder does
briefly fill in a few gaps to explain a few things.
Within
the confines of novelising three episodes, Holder does a reasonable
job, but there are a few slip-ups. Blood Ties sees Dawn missing,
but Holder has sends "Willow [and] Dawn [to the] west side"
to find her. She also calls Giles' shop both the Magic Box and the
Magick Box, which is a bit sloppy.
Oh,
and in case you're wondering, "Boco del Infierno" makes
an appearance on the very first page (line three, to be precise).
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