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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thrilling Quartet for Hardcore 'Buffy' Fans, November 17, 2004
This review is from: The Lost Slayer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (Mass Market Paperback)
"Prophecies" - 5 stars - Vampire-slayer Buffy Summers is having an extremely hard time of adjusting to her life as a non-high school student, and new Freshman at UC Sunnydale. For one thing, she's made a bad impression on her teachers, turning things in late, and missing classes; and her relationship with Willow and Giles is slowly going down the tube. However, when a group of organized vampires covered in bat tattoos show-up in Sunnydale, Buffy knows that it's up to her to try and destroy them before they take over the entire town. But when Giles and her begin investigating, and run into danger, causing Giles to be captured by them, and held hostage, Buffy finds herself fleeing, and calls upon the now-dead slayer, Lucy Hanover to help her out. Lucy informs Buffy that she must find a Prophet, to show her what will happen in the future, so she can avoid danger. But instead of helping, this action catapults the now 19-year-old Buffy into the future, to what she'll be when she's 24-years-old.
"Dark Times" - 5 stars - Sunnydale has always been a marking-ground for vampires, and other creatures of the underworld. At nightfall, they prey upon the innocents that walk upon the Hellmouth, at daybreak they sleep, content with the blood consumed the night before. However, when Buffy Summers - the chosen one - awakens in the future, now a 24-year-old, she is shocked to see what has happened to Sunnydale. It is now overrun with vampires, and creatures of the night, who have claimed it as their own. Buffy soon finds that her friends, known as the Scooby gang, have now grown as well. The usually fun-loving Xander is now a humorless older man, Willow is a complete sorceress, and Oz possesses a tremendous split personality, living as both a human and werewolf. However, back in the present, Buffy's friends can't figure out why the 19-year-old is acting so strangely, and walking around in a trance-life state. They don't yet realize that the Prophet has taken-over her body. Now it's up to the Slayer's friends to draw her out of the future, and bring her back to the present before it's too late.
"King of the Dead" - 5 stars - Buffy has been launched five-years into the future, and is now inhabiting her 24-year-old body, while her 19-year-old mind reigns over all. She has been rescued by Willow and Xander, her two best friends, who, now, in their 24-year-old bodies, have begun working for the Watchers Council. No, they are not watchers, but protectors. The world is bleak five years later, for Buffy has found that her Mother is dead, and that Angel is missing. But that is not the worst of it, for a strange bit of information has found it's way to Buffy, and she now knows that Giles, her beloved Watcher for years, has switched sides, and is now the Vampire King. And Spike, who seemed pretty powerful in the past, is now nothing more than a minion to Giles. Now Buffy is forced to fight to take back Sunnydale, and soon, the rest of California back from the dead, or rather, undead, while her friends back home are struggling to bring her 19-year-old spirit back home.
"Original Sins" - 5 stars - The world is changing. At least inside the walls of the town of Sunnydale, California. Spike is dead, as are Faith, the slayer gone bad, and Joyce Summers, Buffy's beloved mother. All is not right due to the fact that Southern California is now being ruled by vampires. And Rupert Giles himself, is the king of them all. Buffy knows that all that is happening in the future was caused by her. The fact that she didn't want help from her friends in fighting the vampires, and Camazotz led to Giles' capture, and ultimately pushed him to become the King of Vampires. Now, Buffy must gather all of the strength that she has, and fight the demon that is inhabiting Giles' body to alter the future. Now, with the help of Willow, and the rest of the Scooby Gang, Buffy must kill Camazotz, save Giles, and bring her body back to her old self before it's too late.
As a fan of Christopher Golden's writing, both for the BUFFY series, and his side projects, I try to read everything that I can by him. THE LOST SLAYER QUARTET, I am happy to announce, is one of the best collections of novellas that has ever graced the BUFFY series. Each book is filled with immense, and intense action and fight scenes featuring Buffy and the Scooby Gang both as their 19-year-old selves, and 24-year-old selves. THE LOST SLAYER QUARTET is something that cannot be missed by BUFFY fans, as it is essential reading.
Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Good "What If" Story, November 24, 2003
This review is from: The Lost Slayer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (Mass Market Paperback)
As you've read in the other reviews, this book takes place mostly in the future. One wrong move, and Buffy is rocketed 5 years into the future, where vampires have taken over and she is imprisoned to keep another Slayer from being called. She escapes and learns that although most of her friends are still fighting the good fight, they've changed... I've read this omnibus at least four times, and as soon as I'm finished Monster Island, I plan on picking it up again. Another reviewer complained that the future characters have no sense of humour. I think that only underscores how dreary and dangerous their lives have become without Buffy to save the day. (Sounds trite, but she is the Slayer.) I'm one of the only adults I know who reads the Buffy books. I loved the show, and I enjoy the books. Golden knows the characters well; you can close your eyes and imagine Sarah, Alyson, and Nicholas acting this book out. I gave this book 5 stars. Read it.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Christopher Golden's fantastic "Lost Slayer" serial novel, June 6, 2004
This review is from: The Lost Slayer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (Mass Market Paperback)
Christopher Golden's "The Lost Slayer" is one of the very best of the original "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" stories, on the same level with "The Gatekeeper Trilogy" he wrote with Nancy Holder. Originally published as a four-part serial novel, "The Lost Slayer" takes us back to the early days of season four, when Buffy was after Angel but before Riley and trying to enjoy being a freshman at UC-Sunnydale while Willow was still dating Oz. This is a Buffy who is on edge, accidentally backhanding Willow, repeatedly snapping at Giles, and finding freedom not in the classroom as she desires but only in letting lose the full violence of the Slayer in combat. But then two troubling things happen to up the ante. First, the shade of the deceased Slayer Lucy Hanover appears in a dream and warns Buffy of a prophecy of impending danger that will somehow be caused by Buffy herself. Second, a new pack of vampires, with bats tattooed on their face and glowing orange eyes, and showing up in increasing numbers in Sunnydale. Of course, these two developments are related in the worst way possible. For most of the novel it seems pretty clear the title refers to Buffy as a Slayer who has lost sense of her true self. But then we come to the final chapter and a dramatic development that gives "The Lost Slayer" an entirely new and unforgettable meaning. This first book gets five stars because it achieves its highest goal, which is to make the reader desperate to read the next installment. Fortunately in this edition all four books are bound together. A single bad judgment as the result of a monstrous lie has catapulted Buffy into the future and a world where vampires rule Sunnydale and the Slayer has been held captive for six years. A horrified Buffy learns she is now known as "The Lost Slayer," forgotten by the Watcher's Council. The most dramatic scene in this book comes early, when Buffy stages a chilling escape from her cell after resolving the cliffhanger that ended Part One, when August, the recently imprisoned second Slayer called to replace Faith, decided to kill Buffy so that a new Slayer could be called. This is definitely one of those sequences that is too intense for small children. Meanwhile, in the present, Giles is still being held hostage while Willow and the Scoobies discover something is not right with Buffy. The other prominent figure in the series is Willow, because Buffy's best bud is a significant figure in both of the time periods in which this tale is told. Golden also sets up Willow's growth as a Wicca on the show. The once and future Willow gets to see almost as much action as the Slayer this time around. One of the things that made "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" one of the best shows on television is that there is a dark side, a world in which bad things happen to good people and the world just might come to an end as we know it. Golden creates such a world, which is as horrific as when Anyanka granted Cordelia's wish that Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale in "Dopplegangland." Halfway through "The Lost Slayer" Golden comes up with a shattering revelation, an dif you do not know what it is then I will leave it to you to be as stunned and shocked as the rest of us were when we read it for the first time. The third part of the story focuses on the alternative "BtVS" future, where the now 24-year-old Slayer has finally escaped captivity and has been reunited with the old Scoobey Gang. Whereas the first two parts of the tale ended with us dying to find out what happens next, "King of the Dead" ends with us wanting to know more about what happened to everyone while Buffy was lost. Unfrotunately all we really get are vauge references to the horrors that happened in Sunnydale while Buffy was imprisoned, and like Buffy we want to hear more of the details. The characterizations of Willow as the de facto leader of the Watchers Council forces, Xander as the grim death machine, and Oz as the unleashed werewolf, ring true and the most poignant scenes in this part have to do with the two friends trying to find themselves again, and the realization that Willow has remained true to Buffy, even at the expense of her relationship with Oz. It is character relationship that ultimately dominates this part of the tale and provides some of the novel's best moments. "Original Sins," the finale, offers not one, but two conclusions. In the future, Buffy and what remains of the Scooby Gang have their final showdown with the Vampire King and "returns" to the present to correct the fatal error from her first encounter with the demon Camazotz, who is an excellent villain to appropriate into the Buffy mythos. Golden gets extra credit for coming up with two first-rate bad guys in the same storyline, although I almost wished Golden have saved Camazotz and his estranged "wife" Zotzilaha for another story simply because they cannot compete with the Vampire King (nobody could). In the end the story comes full circle given that the story starts with Buffy trying to separate her life as the Slayer from her life as a college Freshman. In dividing that world she thinks that her friends belong with the later, which is somewhat surprising since I always thought one of the reasons Buffy has lasted so long as a Slayer is because she was not going it alone. You would think the Watchers Council would have figured out somewhere along the line that a Slayer with support in the field was going to last longer than one forced to go solo. So in addition to creating a great alternative Buffyverse, Golden has a morale to "The Lost Slayer" as well.
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