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Tempted
Champions
sees two of the Scooby Gang faced with a life-changing choice,
and as the cover shows, the pair in question are Buffy and Anya.
As
usual, there's a new Big Bad in town. After a run-in with Anya,
it's obvious that she's possessed with skills way above that
of a normal vampire. But who is she, and just how is Buffy going
to deal with her?
Well,
the first question is handily answered by the Pocket Books blurb
writer as - not for the first time - whopping great spoilers
are given away to anyone reading the back cover.
Sadly,
this potentially interesting confrontation isn't explored to
anything like its full potential as that old Buffy fault
of too many characters to include rears its head once more.
So
instead of concentrating on Buffy, we get Anya faced with a
choice of returning to her old demon ways, forcing her to question
her relationship with Xander (which she also did in Doublemeat
Palace).
Despite
my criticism of the inclusion of this element of the book, Anya
has rarely been better. Freed from her tendency to say the wrong
thing and talk about sex all the time, she is actually a three-dimensional
character for a change.
However,
this is also at the expense of fleshing out the main plot which
could - and should - have been handled better. Instead we pretty
much get the usual Buffy novels' Big Bad who is new in
town and has some history with both Angel and Spike. The guest
appearance by the former could probably have been dispensed
with as well, and far more time could have been spent on the
Buffy/Celina relationship, particularly in the final confrontation.
The novel also falls into the TV series mistake of assuming
that everything is available via the Internet, instead
of having the Gang do some actual research.
There
are also a couple of errors in the continuity department. The
references to the "Magic Shop" (not "Box")
are relatively minor, but a far bigger howler occurs when we
learn that the events of Forever have already taken place,
despite the novel being set "at the beginning of the fifth
season". Surely either the author or someone at Pocket
Books should have spotted that one?
Still,
after forcing myself to complete The Lost Slayer, it
was good to find a readable Buffy novel. Just a shame,
then, that the need to include all of the Scoobies and some
dodgy continuity meant that Tempted Champions wasn't
as good as it could have been. Concentrating on Buffy and Celina
would have been a fascinating novel, and it's disappointing
to see that idea wasn't explored to its fullest. BACK
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