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Average Customer Rating: 
Blood and Fog (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) >
Customer Review #1:
 Enjoyable
The story was interesting, escapist fiction. It was a treat to read a book with Spike as a main force. Less depressing than Spark and Burn. I couldnt put it down. I should have put 5 stars. For some reason, when I edit my reviews the stars change.
Blood and Fog (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) >
Customer Review #2:
 Cool
Well the book was interesting and I liked how they used Jack the Ripper. I think that making the old slayer a coward was the most interesting part of it. I think that it wasnt Elizabeths fault that she was a coward and that she was smart for being scared. Most slayers are afraid but they just dont show it.
Blood and Fog (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) >
Customer Review #3:
This makes my teeth hurt
I confess. I only read the excerpts. Well, not all of it, my stomach wasnt up to it. I cant speak to plot (although I have dark suspicions), but the writing style is so bad that I would be ashamed of it if I had written it, and Im not a published author.
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lt;br /gt;I know I sound like a literary snob, but honestly, Im not. I mostly read science fiction, a genre not exactly known for its great literary merit (though I think people do undersell that aspect of it). The book -- make that the excerpts, suffer from three serious flaws.
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lt;br /gt;The first is the sheer quantity of "saidisms." Saidisms (prounounced said-is-emss) are modifying the word said. "she said, grumpily" or "he said, honestly" or "she said, wearily." Saidisms have two problems. In the first place, they make the prose clunky. In something like Buffy, the prose should be snappy, quick and funny. You cant get that effect if every sentence contains a saidism, it slows down the dialolg. The other problem is that is insults the reader -- or demonstrates a lack of skill on the part of the writer. In almost every case, the reader should know how the speaker is speaking. If a character is grumpy, its really not necessary to say, "she said, grumpily." There are rare cases where saidisms are useful, but just look at the sheer number of them in the Sunnydale section.
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lt;br /gt;As long as were dialog, allow me to mention the second issue which is just wrong. The writer does not have the characters voices. We know and love these characters, and one of the characteristics we know and treasure is their unique "voice," the way in which they speak. In a Buffy episode, you could read a script without attributions, and be able to pick out which characters speak which lines. One of the extras on the DVDs has an author talking about this issue of unique voices. She had a line that shed written for Willow, which she rewrote to give to Xander because she thought that Xander didnt have enough to do. When Joss saw he script. he pointed to that line and asked her if that line hadnt originally been for Willow. They put it back in Willows lines.
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lt;br /gt;The third problem is manifests is tthat the author has no gift for exposition. Exposition is explaining the back story, explaining the things that the characters already know but that the audience doesnt. Exposition is really hard. One of BtVS exceptional strengths, in fact, is the grace and economy with which they work exposition into episodes. Without ever feeling like youve been lectured, whole worlds have been laid out for you, credible and interesting, and you never get bored. That whole Whitechapel beginning is a vast lump of exposition that is indigestible. Theres no story for what seems like forever. Buffy episodes dont start slow, they start with action and move fast. Large expositional lumps are exactly contrary to the style of BtVS. Even if it werent, large expositional lumps are still a bad idea. They encourage the reader to put down the book. How many times do you really want Lonodon fog to be described? How necessary is it to describe the poverty of Whitechapel? At minimum, exposition should move the story forward, not cause it to break suddenly to clue you into something.
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lt;br /gt;in the end, I want to justify reviewing a book based on excerpts. The flaws I saw in the excerpts are so identifiable, and so basic, that it makes me want to stay a mile away. At best, this is extremely amateur prose. The plot might be very good, but the effort of reading that prose makes even the most brilliant plot uninteresting.
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