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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 always 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 know 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). BACK
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THE JOURNALS
OF RUPERT GILES, |
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