Allow me to introduce to you to, two more examples of writers that should not write books for the Buffy and Angel series. I'll set up the scenario for you. Once upon a time, there was a man, who wrote comic books and who only wrote Buffy novels with the assistance of another. This man met and married a woman, who only wrote articles about neurology and neurosurgery. Their first joint writing venture came in the form of a short story found in Angel: The Longest Night Vol. 1. This just happened to be the only out rightly bad story in the anthology. Now, much to my chagrin, they have teamed up once again, this time shoveling out a full novel no less! Scott and Denise Ciencin were not meant to write anything related to Buffy universe! And yet, somehow their publisher allowed them! It's called Buffy: Mortal Fear, and it made my brain hurt!
Let me start by explaining what this story is about. Buffy Summers, a vampire slayer, receives several phone calls from a mysterious man named Simon. He's basically acting as her 911 tip line, calling and telling Buffy that a demon will be attacking innocents at certain places and times. Buffy follows his tips and kills the demons. Much to her surprise, a piece of a broken sword forms out of the bodies of each set of demons. It soon becomes clear that Simon is sending her after the sword fragments for his own malicious purposes. As Buffy begins to research this, her two best friends, Xander and Willow, as well, as her sister Dawn begin acting off-beat. Their impulses are getting the better of them. Dawn begins to seriously rebel against her sister and all other rules. Willow gets so competitive at school that she nearly fries a fellow student with the magic that comes from her dark side. Xander feels so incompetent compared to his supernatural friends that he begins looking for new friends at the risk of his job, and worse, his life! Never mind the strange, tattoo-like mark that is forming on each of their shoulders. And let's not forget about the virus that's spreading in humans and killing vampires! Or the scary robotic girl who's kicking everyone's ass!
Having trouble following? So was I, and I'm a huge fan of the series! The plot line of this story is obviously way too complicated. It joins four completely separate themes into one huge ball of un-established connections and painful misinterpretations. Here I am, sitting down to enjoy my book and I end up feeling like I needed to whip out a textbook on robotics!
So, we've got a storyline that's impossible to understand without a PhD. Add to that a lack of good mythology. The television series was famed for it's mythology-it's ability to make something that had no basis is reality sound like it does, all the while, giving the fictional event it's own history. The authors of this story did not do a very convincing job at creating this caliber of mythology, because their background story does not explain anything that's going on. I don't even know why they gave the sword mythology when it really didn't help explain anything!
On top of that, there's the lack of continuity with the television series. The story takes place in what is apparently it's own reality. The story takes place at a time where Spike, a vampire ally of Buffy's, has his soul, but Buffy doesn't know it yet. At the very same time, Willow is back from London and dealing with what she had done when she'd left out the dark side of herself, and Anya (Xander's ex-demon, then demon, then ex-demon again girlfriend) is dealing with her third crack at being human. Reading the story gives the reader the idea that the story takes place in Season 7 of the famed television series. But, then, those three events never took place at the same point of the season, so I was led to return to the alternate universe theory.
This story was written by authors who have no business writing for this genre, instead of concentrating on perplexing their readers with the most complex story they could think of, they should have been concentrating on creating a solid, fast-moving plot, and better understanding of the characters they were working with. This story does not plug in well with the rest of the series. It's another mind-numbing book for the bargain bin!
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