Customer Reviews

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chosen

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

The story this book tells, believe it or not, is actually better than the one that we were presented on the screen this season. Read all at once, S7's major themes are presented in much sharper focus. Spike's martyrdom and Xander's eye are foreshadowed as early as the fourth and fifth episodes, and whoever did the ghostwriting on this did a fine job of sympathizing Buffy's internal monologue while the rest of us were screaming a word that begins with "B" and does not end with "uffy" at the screen. No, the reason this book loses two stars is a much stupider, lazier reason. It doesn't appear that anyone bothered to copyedit this book at all. It's rife with typos from start to finish, and while many of them stop at being simply annoying, there are several that are so bad that they interfere with understanding the book. For example, every time that the words 'the first' are used, they are capitalized, regardless of whether it refers to the Big Bad or not. There is one instance where the writer was referring to the first Sunnydale High School that I had to read five times to understand. It's terrible to see a good book brought low because of an impatient lack of effort.

Being a watcher of the show and a reader of the Buffy books, I was eagerly anticipating the release of this book - WOW an entire season in one novel!! I went to the store, picked it up, and started reading when I got home. I thought the story was great; I couldn't put it down - But then I started noticing the continuous gramatical, punctuation, and spelling errors. After the first I was like, "Well, the editor missed that one." I think I lost count of the errors by page 50 (of the nearly 700 pages)!! While I totally enjoyed the story of the Seventh Season of Buffy, the errors kept annoying me. There was one instance where the book leaves out an entire line of dialogue and at one point there was an entire paragraph where every single sentence had some type of error. So, while I would recommend this to anyone, be warned that the publisher obviously forgot to have an editor read it first.

The author of 'Chosen' had the easiest writing assignment in the world: copy dialogue verbatim from each of the 22 episodes of the seventh season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", add in some non-dialogue sentences, including such phrases as *she said* and *he said*, then get it published. The result is this 668 page novel that feels more like a seventh-season summary than an actual novel.

My first complaint is that the novel feels rushed. Obviously, they wanted it to get to stores at around the same time as the series finale aired, so maybe that accounts for the numerous grammatical and spelling errors, and the occasional absence of quotation marks where there should be some. But even if that is an excuse, there is nothing more annoying than reading a published book that was supposed to have gone through an editor before being published. These mistakes should not have been left in.

My second complaint is this: I knew this was going to be a young adult novel, like pretty much all of the "Buffy" novelizations, but I just felt like no effort at all was put into it to make it readable even by 13-17-year-olds, let alone us older "Buffy" fans who are no longer teeny-boppers. Using such words as "kissage" and telling us that "Kennedy licked Willow with her pierced tongue" produced major gagging spells, and many rollings of the eyes. Come on. I've read a couple other "Buffy" novels, and they are not nearly this bad. Of course, the other novels are based on original ideas, not on actual episodes. As for being based on the entire seventh season, all 22 episodes together would equal more than 668 pages (with fairly large print, too), so some things are left out, and all the rest is so rushed that it barely feels like anything important is happening.

In my opinion, the final season of "Buffy" was superb. That season alone would definitely get 5 stars. But this book only touches the surface. If you saw all 22 episodes for free on your TV, you do not need to read the book. 'Chosen' is basically just a summary, or overview, of the season as a whole. But if you can remember most of the things that happened this season, you do not need the summary of it. If you would like to know what happened in a certain episode, I would suggest waiting for another "Buffy" guide to come out in the future that will give an episode guide of seasons 1-7. You don't need to waste your time on this poorly written novel. If you feel you must read something Buffy, try any of the novelizations NOT based on an episode, or try going to a "Buffy" fanfic site. But please, save your money on this one.

Chosen
By Nancy Holder (2003)

RATING: 2/5 Stakes

SETTING: Seventh Season

CAST APPEARANCES: Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, Anya, Dawn, Andrew, Jonathan, Kennedy, Faith, Spike, Angel, Robin Wood, The First, Amy, Caleb, Hallie, D'Hoffryn, Quentin Travers, Molly, Rona, Annabelle, Chloe, Vi, Chao Ahn, Amanda, Kelly, Shannon, Colleen, Dianne, Caridad, Isabella.

BACK OF THE BOOK SUMMARY

"The First has come to Sunnydale and set its sights on taking down the Slayer. On the side of the White Hats: Buffy, Xander, Willow, Anya, Dawn, Giles, Spike, Faith, Angel, and an assortment of young, innocent, untried Potentials. In this season-spanning storyline, Buffy Summers will learn about the primeval origins of her own strength, and have the opportunity to train those who would succeed her. And as the forces of evil find their way back to the Hellmouth-where it all began-the Slayer will uncover what being the Chosen One is all about: Power."

REVIEW

Unique among Buffy novelizations, Chosen doesn't simply present one or two episodes in book form; instead, it novelizes the entire seventh season in a thick, 700-page tome. Buffy's seventh and last season was certainly a grim one, but also included some of the show's best writing. Many of those great scenes-Xander telling Dawn that she's not special, she's extraordinary; Anya and Andrew having a wheelchair fight; Buffy, Willow, and Dawn facing their demons in "Conversations with Dead People"-are included in Chosen, and it's impossible to read the novelization without feeling the same emotions elicited by the episodes themselves.

To a large degree, however, that's the purpose and effect of any decent novelization-to embody, in a different format, what made the original episodes great. Although Chosen is satisfactory in this sense, it fails in others. Most glaring (and annoying) is the incredibly poor proofreading, literally the worst I've ever seen from a mainstream press. Words are frequently misspelled, grammar is massacred, and some idiot used the computer's "Find and Replace" function improperly, resulting in every single instance of "potential" capitalized as "Potential" and every "the first" capitalized as "The First." Thus, Xander tells Spike that "I take The First shower in the morning" on page 98. Even a quote from one of the characters on the back cover of the book has a grammatical error. I understand Simon Pulse was in a hurry to release the book to coincide with the show's final episode, but a final read through by an English graduate student would have made the book look far more professional. Fortunately, the unintentional humor created by these frequent errors helps replace much of the intended humor from the shooting scripts that was left out due to space considerations.

Holder, unlike the authors of other Buffy novelizations, takes more freedom with the scripts, often giving us her interpretation of what the characters are thinking or what certain dialogue means. There's nothing inherently wrong with this-novelizations don't have to be (and shouldn't be) word-for-word recreations of the script; but it can be jarring to Buffy fans who made different interpretations of what certain scenes in episodes meant. For example, the very last scene of the very last episode of season seven depicts Buffy staring out over the crater that used to be Sunnydale, with an enigmatic smile on her face. Holder's interpretation of this scene is that Buffy is thinking of the "cookie-dough" metaphor she gave to Angel earlier. Not necessarily the wrong interpretation, but perhaps different than how other fans (including myself) interpreted the scene. To some degree, it takes the fun away when mysteries like this are "solved" by the writers of novelizations.

Overall, Chosen is the worst of the Buffy novelizations I've read so far. It competently recreates the episodes like any minimally-acceptable novelization, but is otherwise an error-strewn mess. It should be purchased only if you've never seen season 7 episodes and can't wait for the DVD, or if you were foolish enough not to record them and want to reexperience certain key moments.

(c) 2004 Jeremy Patrick-Justice...

I don't think ANYONE edited this book..... but the story was accurate to the season. In the novelization, you get more insight to what's going on in the character's minds. Reading this explained a lot of nagging questions that just watching the seventh season left. I truely enjoyed the story, however, the typos were obnoxious. It's like someone spell checked it and sent it directly off to be published. I noticed that "first" was capitalized everytime it was used. Even in sentences when THE FIRST wasn't even being discussed. But despite this annoyance, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it.

I recently picked up a copy of the twenty-two episode adaptation of the seventh and final season of Buffy. I finished "reading" the book yesterday, and I'm appalled at the poor quality and lack of editing. "Chosen," titled after the final episode of Buffy, purports to be a novelization. Typically, such projects are thin to begin with because the authors are under pressure to produce completed text within a short period of time. Occasionally, a tie-in is well written and developed. This is not the case with "Chosen."

One would think that nearly 700 pages of text would produce something compelling or at least interesting. Although there's ample room to play in the written world of Buffy, the unnamed author -- none was listed on the cover or interior, despite a lengthy dedication -- dedicates only twenty pages per episode during the first third of the season. As a result, the writing is very sloppy with frequent skips over dialogue and description. The end result is that it reads like a poorly transcribed summary of the episode that one might find in a teeny-bopper's blog. Don't get me started on the horrid adaptation of "Storyteller" or the the adaptation's reference to the Kennedy/Willow sex scene, which reads like vague soft porn written by a thirteen year old.

Would it kill the author to actually use the dialogue, description, and whatever physical behavior and facial expressions from the cast? This example is not inconsistent for "Chosen," and there were several times in the book when I had to re-read paragraphs to figure out what was happening. At one point, during an exchange between Buffy and Willow, the author writes, "Buffy confessed to Willow..." and then "Willow confessed to Buffy...." without any actual dialogue. It was extremely frustrating and anti-climatic, especially for an episode like "Beneath You."

Editing posed another issue in this book. The Big Bad villain is The First, an ancient evil that spawned all evils. Obviously, when one refers to this characters, one capitalizes the first letter of each part of its name. Unfortunately, it looks like someone got sloppy with a search and replace tool and knocked out any instance of those two words so that a sentence like, "Willow took The First thing out of the box" looks absolutely ridiculous. In other editing faux-pas, quotation marks were dropped from the beginning of dialogue exchanges so that it wasn't clear that dialogue actually occurred until the closed quotation marks appeared.

It's clear that Simon Pulse, a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster, rushed this novelization in time for the final episode. But if they knew the show was ending some 4-5 months before the final episode actually aired, and had such a project in mind, why wasn't more care taken to ensure the tie-in was at least grammatically and editorially correct?

"Chosen" as a book is worthless, filed with poorly constructed, passive sentences, oodles of tell rather than show sections, and painfully obvious typographical errors. It's far better to watch Buffy re-runs and read the scripts than to waste of [money]and a lot of paper. Thank god for fanfic.

Just got done reading "Chosen" (thanks to the local library). I'm a big Buffy fan, but I've gotta say, I'm glad I didn't pay for this one. Yes, it's the thickest Buffy novel out there, but that's not enough of a redeeming quality.

In short, the only reasons I can think of to buy this book are 1) you're a big big fan and must have *every* Buffy novel ever printed, or 2) you missed the last season and for some reason don't own the DVDs of that season. Otherwise, save your time and watch the episodes instead. It's more fun.

This novelization is basically the scripts for all the episodes from Season 7, with the script directions removed and a bit of explanation and description mixed in. The "original" parts are fairly bland, and definitely teen-oriented as far as slang and word choice. If you're old enough to drive, the tone and language will grate on your nerves after a while.

The worst part, though, (which many other people have mentioned) is the truly abysmal proofreading, or lack of proofreading. Most noticeably, every time the phrase "the first" is seen, it's capitalized as The First. So you have mentions of The First donut and The First shower, among other things. The writer couldn't decide if the villains were Harbringers or Harbingers (this typo is even included on one of the color inserts). I lost count of the misspellings, typos, and other errors - good hoop instead of gold hoop, Amada instead of Amanda, diffuse rather than defuse a bomb, and more.

Another irritating error, one that I've seen in other Buffy novels, is the constant use of "the Wicca" when referring to Willow. Close, but no cigar. Wicca is the religion, while a follower would be a Wiccan. Notice the "n" at the end. This would be like calling people from Rome "Romas" instead of "Romans," for example.

Overall, "Chosen" is a nice way to get a Season 7 fix, but I think I'll stick with my DVDs. The constant errors in the book are a distraction and an irritant. Too bad no one ran a spell-check on this thing before they printed it; they would have caught at least some of the grammatical and spelling errors.

I think season 7 was a disappointment for most Buffy fans. Don't get me wrong, the season had a very strong beginning. but ended with very little concern for the characters we have grown to love. Sadly, the show became plot driven, and introduced at least ten more characters, therefore not giving enough time to really get inside everyone's heads.

I bought "Chosen" with the mindset that I can finally know what the individuals are thinking, and I would again forge that connection with the show that I had lost in the final season. Not the case. I was even more disappointed than before! Yes there are certainly plenty of typos, but that is not even the most annoying aspect. The author (I could not find the author's name anywhere on the book) neglected to get inside everyone's heads. Even my favorite episodes from the season were boring! I felt like I was reading a "how-to" manual. There is very little emotion portrayed between everyone, and I finally quit reading it after only 8 chapters.

I am a huge fan of Whedon, and the show, but this book is an embarrassment to the Buffyverse. I would suggest spending your money on something more fulfilling, such as "The Lost Slayer," by Christopher Golden. That will meet any Buffy fan's expectations.

I was very excited when I heard this book was coming out. My best friend got it as a birthday present, and as I was looking through it- I too noticed many errors not only in quotage but in continuity and just general following of the last season of my beloved show. Now I never missed an episode in all 7 years, so I pride myself on knowing my Slayer stuff. I emailed Nancy Holder and asked her about it and she informed me that she had nothing to do with the book. True, she was going to write it, but had a prior commitment and had to back out of the project. Those who credit Nancy Holder with writing the book, should disregard the information because she didn't write it. In fact, if you look at the book itself, it has no author at all. I'm glad to be able to clear up this matter and hopefully, have restored a little confidence on N.H's behalf.

I am a huge BtVS fan. I was really looking forward to reading this book. I figured there would be things from the script that didn't make to actual footage because of airtime restrictions. There was minimal of that. It only really appeared in the last two chapters. Also, there were a ton of typos. It kind of ruined the experience of reading it, for me. For any BtVS fan, I think it's a great keepsake, but I think you should just be warned. All the typographical errors, just left a bad tast in my mouth.

On good note, it was as gripping as the series. I finished all 668 pages in 3 days. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I couldn't put it down. So, I recommend it, but with caution.