Customer Reviews

The Girl's Got Bite: The Original Unauthorized Guide to Buffy's World, Completely Revised and Updated

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

'The Girl's Got Bite' is the latest "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" guide to surface, but it's not all that great. First off, according to this site, the book is "Completely Revised and Updated Through Season Seven", which is not entirely true. The episode guide only goes through the ninth episode of the seventh season, "Never Leave Me", so anyone looking for anything beyond that should be warned that they're not going to get it.

This "Buffy" guide includes what most of the others do. There is an introduction that actually gives a history of the feature film that started it all. That is followed by descriptions of the series' characters, a history of the vampire, cast biographies and finally the episode guide. A majority of the 342 pages are the episode descriptions, which are okay except for one little thing that bothered me: season one's episode 11 is actually called "Out of Mind, Out of Sight", but they list it in this book as being called "Invisible Girl". Well, according to my season one DVD that is not correct.

As far as cast biographies go, they are the same here as they are everywhere else, so we don't learn anything new. This is the same with the character guide. As for the episode guide, since only 9 of the seventh season's episodes are featured, it is pretty pointless to even have them there. I would recommend the "Buffy" guide 'Bite Me', which contains an episode guide complete all the way through season six. I can guarantee that there will be another "Buffy" guide to come out in the future that will include all of season seven as well. Hopefully it will be a 'Watcher's Guide', which are the best of the "Buffy" guides in my opinion. The 'Watcher's Guides' and 'Bite Me' seem to contain more information to satisfy Buffy's biggest fans. So my advice is to just wait until another guide comes out. This is not a terrible book, but it just can't hold a candle to the other ones.

This is the first Buffy reference book that I have read and I have to say that I enjoyed it.I found it to be very detailed.The thing I enjoyed most was the complete listing of every song by every band that was played in every episode.It also provided the names of the cds the songs were on.I thought that was a nice touch. I discovered some good music from that.
I think all Buffy fans would find this book worthwhile.

This is not a horrible book, but it is kept from being a really good book by two major failings.

The first problem is that the writing is just not terribly engaging. You can tell that Ms. Tracy is a journalist rather than a creative writer as her prose generally has very little sparkle. This would be forgivable if the information in the book were anything new, but any real fan of the show already knows 99.9% of everything in this book. I would still recommend it for new fans or fans who haven't read any of the official books, but...

Problem #2 is that the actual information is sometimes suspect. There are occasional misquotes from episodes and frequent faulty analyses of events in the series. I cannot speak for the factual information about the behind the scenes aspect of the show, but the info about the show itself is often a bit off. For example (***Show Spoilers ahead***), the author states that Spike is tricked by the demon who restores his soul. That he was actually looking to have the chip removed from his head. This idea has been refuted by Joss Whedon and, more importantly, by Spike himself in season 7 of Buffy and season 5 of Angel. This is just sloppy scholarship.

In short, I would only recommend this book to Buffy completists or to fans so obsessive that they need to find that 0.1% of new information that might be gleaned from this volume. :)

This was the first Buffy behind the scenes type book that I ever bought. So when I read it, I thought that it was quite good. The biographies included info I hadnt know, such as Charisma Carpenter was a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers, and Sarah Michelle Gellar originally tried out for the role of Cordelia, but the history of vampires section is a little boring.

My favorite part of this book is the outtakes section in each episode. I loved watching the episodes with my book and seeing how something got screwed up. It was so much fun. It only goes through a little bit of 7th season which is deceiving from the cover.

I would recommend Bite Me before this book, but if you already have that, this would be a good one to buy.

It was good in the sense that, like the first edition, has sort of a biography of how "Buffy" came to be. It takes you step by step of the making of the original "Buffy" movie all the way to the seventh season. And like the first edition, it has a biography of the cast and characters - revised and updated - and the episode guide. It was good in the way that when you read various episodes, the author had included little notes and things about various demons and/or witches. It also has a brief history of the vampire, going from Anne Rice's version of the average vamp to Bram Stoker's vamps to even a few myths of them. That was what made it good.

It would've been great, however, if the author included all of Season Seven. The total episodes in the series is 144. The author only included 131 episodes. Whether or not she had a deadline, I don't know, but it would've been nice to see all the episodes included.

If you're looking for a well written, informative, insightful book on Buffy then keep looking. This book is extremely poorly written and poorly edited as well. The analysis is weak and juvenile. It reads like someone's poorly written high school review. There is also not enough focus on the actual plot of each episode. I would definitely not recommend it unless you're desperate to own every Buffy book out there. I was deeply disappointed.

The title says it all as this book provides the audience with a "guide to Buffy's World". For those who have been living in a cave for the past decade, Buffy is a typical teenager with the usual world shattering angst that confronts that super species. Except Buffy has a slight problem not involving hunks (that is normal human variety) as she is this age's Vampire Slayer forced to do her homework in between eradicating evil beings.

This tome provides fans with insight into the original movie, the TV series along with biographies of the key stars of the TV show, and a look at vampirism. The non-fiction is well written and "Buffyites" will enjoy biting into it. Perhaps the only setback is no references to the vast literature, especially the graphic novels that have added to the cult legend of Buffy.

Harriet Klausner

This book really does NOT stand up as a BtVS guide. Much of the commentary is biased, which readers do not like. State an opinion...yes, but don't tell us your opinion as if it is fact. Plus the book is very outdated, and does not contain much at all the average Slayer fan did not already know.

Most die hard fans like me are looking for things we can go back and watch that we probably missed...as well as really good trivia. For the true Buffy fan, those of us who have seen every episode at least 50 times or more, I strongly recommend The Big Book Of Buffy Bites 2008. This book is up to date (2008 and season 8), and contains everything you could possibly want to know about Buffy the Vampire Slayer...and more.

It is like taking everything contained in all the other guide and resource books and putting it all in one book (seriously). One feature I have not seen in any other book, is a detailed time line of all the slayers...from the First Slayer...all the way to Buffy. This was a pleasant surprise.

This is a good book and it give alost of intormation on the background of vampires, but the episode guide is a little short, and only covers the first 3rd of season 7.