The very first Buffy books

In preparation for Slayer coming out here tomorrow, I went right back to the beginning with the first four Buffy tie-in novels.

Spoilers for out-of-print twenty-year-old books to follow:

The Harvest is a novelisation of Welcome To The Hellmouth, with a few lines of cut dialogue.

After that, there is some Early Instalment Weirdness in store.

Halloween Rain does the Halloween episode before the show did and gets contradicted by it as a result, as well as going for the classic pumpkin-headed scarecrow monster. Not that I’ve ever done that for a Halloween episode. Irksomely it manages to do the Samhain is a guy thing after establishing Samhuinn as the event. And pumpkins are anachronistic for the last time he fought a slayer. Giles, Xander and Willow have a lot of trouble with two vampires. Two of the staff at the Bronze get named in a piece of worldbuilding that doesn’t go anywhere. A red herring, maybe?

Coyote Moon has werecoyotes before the show got to werewolves in season two’s Phases, and magic-using skinwalkers in particular way before season four’s Pangs. And creepy carny types. (And Buffy spending the summer vacation between seasons one and two in Sunnydale instead of L.A..) And it claims that Giles helped rear hounds for fox hunting. I don’t think so, book.

Night Of The Living Rerun has the Master (so this should really be before Coyote Moon) attempting to repeat a ritual that was performed by the secretly-demon-worshipping authorities behind the Salem witch trials, drawing in the Slayer of the time as well as an actual witch who escaped the trails. Involving the supernatural in an infamous miscarriage of justice where the supernatural was supposedly involved is always in dubious taste. Also it features a walk-on part by Old Scratch, where the series avoided that and Angel finally suggested that being the Devil was a job title. And some of the characters introduced have jokey names. Buffy also defeats a horde of zombies by leading them to the cops. Which even for Sunnydale is pushing the suspension of disbelief effect. Which this book hints is a spell...

Rain and Moon both have attractive young sinister beings making advances on Xander and Willow. The guys hitting on Willow are both big, blonde and prone to wearing cowboy hats. I did not think that was her type.

Rain and Rerun both have zombie hordes, largely as distractions. And Buffy hits them so hard she gets stuck inside their decaying bodies. Ew. And the knowledge of previous slayers and Watchers is key to both.

They all have Buffy get beat up pretty badly - back to her season one power level where she got knocked out more than once.

They all also go with books not having the budgetary restrictions of TV shows, as Rain has the aforementioned horde and the huge burning animated scarecrow, Moon would need a creepy carnival to shoot in and a bunch of coyotes, and Rerun has historical flashbacks, several hordes of zombies, animated body parts, a visit to Buffy’s mom’s gallery that we never see in the show, a hundred extras in one scene and a steakhouse that would have to be purpose-built because it gets trashed.

I did also like some stuff, though, honest!

Halloween Rain: As noted, I’m always up for a killer scarecrow with or without a pumpkin head. Vampires putting the moves on our young heroes early enough for them to fall for it. The town crazy turning out not to be all that crazy really. Xander and Willow as Mulder and Scully. The moaning of zombies being shockingly depressing. And a little scene of Buffy feeling bad about going out and leaving her mom alone on their first Halloween in Sunnydale was a really nice touch.

Coyote Moon: The creepy carnival is a classic. And I like that the villains aren’t actually a big threat to humans, or trying to be - though they have a go at dogs - so there’s some debate about how violent a response they deserve. And Buffy attempts to scare the visiting villains off by claiming to be the local witch queen.

Night Of The Living Rerun: The characters who come in are potentially interesting, though maybe introducing four in one book is pushing it. The conspiracy theory reporter, the professional mediums and in particular the paranormal news TV producer could each individually be a big problem for monster hunters trying to maintain a secret identity.

And they all had me imagining extra snarky dialogue, as they’re not as dialogue-y as the show:

“Duh! No, wait, no duh. I retract that duh.”

“This is less a truce and more you begging for mercy.”

“Should we expect any further help from him?”
“No, he ran off with his tail between his legs. Literally.”

“Is this what you ran in from?”
“No, not these particular monsters...”