Pyramid Review
Reading The Vampire Slayer: An Unofficial Critical Companion to Buffy and Angel
Edited by Roz Kaveney, 2001
Tauris Parke $14.95
296 pages; ISBN 1 86064 762 6; $14.95
With the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game in stores now, many referees are building and developing their own campaigns. There's already a good deal of source material available; the DVDs and videos, official references such as the scripts, Watcher's Guides, and Monster Book, and spin-off publications such as the novels and comics. All of these can be useful, but they're aimed at a popular audience and rarely look below the surface veneer of the characters.
Reading The Vampire Slayer is different; while written by authors who obviously have a real love for the series, the tone is more academic, and seems to be aimed at university media studies courses. Nevertheless it's readable, often funny, and packed with insights into the characters and their motivations. It covers Buffy seasons 1 to 5 and Angel seasons 1 and 2; a second edition adding the next two seasons should appear at the end of 2003.
Before going on I should declare a bias; I know Roz Kaveney, have written for her fiction anthologies, and am one of a group of friends who spent way too much time talking about the shows while she was putting this book together. She doesn't need my help to sell it -- it's already doing extremely well -- but bear this in mind.
The book opens with a brief introduction and five-page list of the main groupings of . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: November 8, 2002
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