"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 by 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. back
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