Customer Reviews

Predators and Prey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I actually thought the premise of Harmony getting her own reality-TV show was pretty hilarious. I think, rather than trying to cash in on the whole "vampires integrating into popular culture" thing like the True Blood series, Joss and Crew are generally poking fun at all the Twilight/True Blood fans who have suddenly gone... well.. vampire crazy! Everyone wants their own vampire, and everyone is sooo in love with Vampires that they fail to see that vampires would actually be dangerous. Harmony has always been a huge comic relief for me, she's absolutely silly and fails to feel like a threat, when in truth she totally is (well, okay mostly she's hilarious and ineffectual as a threat). I could totally believe that she took her Angel-certified recommendation, her former ties to W&H and her glowing/whacky personality and went straight to TV execs with her "woe is me! I'm a misunderstood vampire!" angle to cash in. What's even better is that they bring to light the damage that misrepresenting certain groups can do, and how easily people are swayed. I mean, vampires easily get people to turn against the "Slayer Threat" even though the Slayer "Threat" is their only real defense. I think it's more of Joss just poking at current pop-culture and maybe even the current political climate.

As for the rest of installment, I can see where this is setting up the plots for the next story arc, and that's fine. Just remember that exposition and pawn placement is always a little... dry.

Oh, and just for fun, "Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday." <-- Oh how I miss Tuesdays with Buffy <3

This collection has really proven that this can't possibly be how Joss Whedon saw the next season of the TV show because this is so all-over the place that viewers would have been disappearing super fast. I loved the Harmony Bites idea. Good stuff but threre was no follow through. Faith & Giles together is interesting but once again, not much happened. I hope the next trade amps up the story or I probably will stop reading this. :(

The issue is a mix of short stories that should have been deleted from the beginning, they're not even funny. the only bit that is interesting is the reappearance of Harm's character.... but that's it. The rest gets underwhelming and dull...

I have enjoyed season 8 so far but this volume is just awful. Really not worth the read apart from the fact that some significant things happen. Mainly that thanks to Harmony, vampires are out and adored by the public. (Way to channel The Southern Vampire Mysteries/True Blood - Except that in Harris' universe the outing of vampires is dealt with intelligently and in this story it's nonsense). And thanks to a renegade slayer, slayers are hated and feared. (Perhaps Wheadon spent too long on the X-Men.)

This is a bad, bad book and I don't recommend anyone waste their time or money on it. I would give it "no stars" if Amazon would let me.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 continues, and sadly in this fifth collected volume of the smash ongoing series finds things taking a bit of a step down for Buffy and her Scoobies. Things start out as the vampiric Harmony manages to become a beloved reality TV host, which leads to a nation-wide love of all things vampire, and hate for all things Slayer-related. After that, Buffy and her crew go into hiding and take on baddies all at once, Giles and Faith take down some themselves, and Buffy saves her sister Dawn. Yeah, Predators and Prey really doesn't offer what we haven't seen before. This may not be so bad, but considering that a majority of writers from the show are featured in Predators and Prey, including Jane Espenson, Steven S. DeKnight, Drew Z. Greenberg, and Doug Petrie, most of what you find here is just, well, for lack of a better word, meh. There's some somewhat humerous Harmony-featured shorts to end this TPB, but sadly compared to what came before with Buffy Season 8, Predators and Prey is sadly a step down.

This book was obviously from a library (stickers still on it) and it looked it. Very worn and some of the pages were bent or torn a little in places. I did get it very cheap though, like $4, so I got what I paid for.

i am so glad i got this. It was so interesting that i read it all in an hour and now i dont have another :( but it was still a good book.

Unlike previous volumes where all of the issues went together this one is each issue is standalone and without an overall arcing theme. Harmon's back...and this time she's got her own reality TV show. And she, along with the Twilight, are working at setting up the slayers as villains. In the second story kitty vampire toy's are being shipped, but they have a dark side to them. They're demons coming to kill they slayers, but when the slayer's have stopped them things take a nasty turn in the polls of public opinion. Faith and Giles make their return, still tracking down outcast slayers to help them out...only this time their journey leads them to another surviving Watcher and a demon watching over a town. And in the last story Dawn has suffered her 3rd transformation and is now a living doll, can Willow and Buffy help her out of this one?

Frankly I'm just not really sure what to say about this volume. If you examine each issue as its on TV episode it isn't bad...just a bit quirky. But taken as an entire volume it doesn't quite work together. There's no continuity between the issues and in some places the humor just falls flat. And it just isn't as interesting. It feels like the longer this series is going on the less coherence it has from the earlier issues where they're fighting the big bad guy. Lately it feels more like a slice of life comic and not even the most interesting parts of it. I get they maybe working towards something bigger with the branding of slayers as evil, but its just lacking a bit for me.

I really wasn't that thrilled by this installment in the series. There were a few moments to advance the plot i.e. Dawn, Simone etc.
But there was also a lot of random stuff that I just found irritating. I could see the point for the sections with Harmony as they sowed the seeds of discontend about the slayers, but they were also annoying, and as for those cat toys - well, I was just shaking my head in disbelief, wondering what on earth that decision was about.
I am hoping that the plot may make more of a reappearance in volume 6.

I received this as a free ebook ARC from NetGalley.

While I'm a firm believer that nothing in the Buffyverse can be awful, I'll admit Predators and Prey was kind of a mess. The overall story arc slows down a lot in this volume to make way for many just plain ludicrous subplots. A reality TV show featuring Harmony? Evil stuffed animal vampire cats? Dawn becoming a living porcelain doll? All in all, volume 5 was kind of a disappointment.

The lone highlight of Predators and Prey was the Faith and Giles story. The stuffed vampire cats are tied to the Twilight storyline, but they were, well, ridiculous. Faith and Giles visit to the supposed slayer sanctuary was completely in line with the the overall story and actually fit in with the feel of the later seasons of the show.

Much of this volume was monster-of-the-week, individual threats to Buffy and friends that didn't really touch the big bad that's been building all along. Porcelain dolls and stuffed cats are reminiscent of the first season of Buffy when the Scooby gang dealt with things like living ventriloquist dummy's. Inanimate objects becoming animate has been done. Multiple times. Look at the last season of Angel. Even he was turned into a puppet in an episode. The kitschy stories weren't bad exactly, but they felt kind of played out and I've really come to expect more originality from the Buffyverse in general and this series of graphic novels especially.

When things take a turn for the less than entertaining in the middle of a series, I usually wish they have a specific reason, like being necessary as a basis for future storylines. I don't wish that here. All I can hope is we can kind of forget volume 5 happened and get back to chasing the big bad in the next.