Unseen: The Burning

I must admit, the book started off slow, but got extremely good and exciting as you kept on reading. I must warn you though, before you read this book, make sure you have already bought the two sequels that follow this book. Don't be like me, and finish the first book, then had to wait a week to get the other two.

What a treat! No sooner did I finish "Book of the Fours" when yet another Buffy thriller by Nancy Holder appears. "Unseen: The Burning" is co-written with Jeff Mariotte, who has crafted several Angel novels. They have teamed up to write the exciting first volume of a trilogy where Buffy and Angel must work in tandem for the first time since Angel left for Los Angeles. The novels will be set in relatively recent Buffy history (just pre-Dawn).In Sunnydale: Salma de la Navidad's younger brother Nicky has disappeared, Leaving behind several books that the reader will recognized as seriously bad magic. Terrified that something horrible has happened she turns to Buffy and Willow for help. At the same time, Giles, pursuing his new hobby of listening to the police radio band, realizes that a fresh horror has moved into town, something that lurks in the shadows and can totally Cuisinart its victims. Buffy suspects the cases are related, but the solution eludes her. Following Nicky's trail leads her eventually to Los Angeles as the source of the mystery. Angel's territory.In Los Angeles: Cordelia discovers a group of runaway girls living under the library that are anxiously looking forward to becoming vampires and feels compelled to help. Meanwhile Angel is drawn into helping Isabel Flores and her son Carlos. The boy's father has been arrested for a crime he did not commit and suddenly a poltergeist is haunting the Flores family.The more Angel and Buffy press, the more all these strange cases seem to be interrelated. As the threads become entangled they find themselves and their friends headed on a collision course with a hungry evil that reaches out invisibly from the darkness. "The Burning" introduces enough complication to last for even more than a trilogy. Expect quite a bit of fun before the mysteries are resolved.The relationships between Willow and Tara, and between Buffy and Riley are dealt with in these novels for the first time. The writers don't yet seem totally comfortable with either of the new characters, but Tara is portrayed a bit more sympathetically than Riley. Holder and Mariotte overplay Riley and Tara's weaker character traits, though, which makes the relationships seem artificial. Hopefully this will take care of itself in later volumes. This detracts a bit from the book's overall rating, but not enough to cost it a star - yet.

Now this is what I like to see -read- in a Buffy book. Extra kudos for finally getting out of season three for one thing. More props for bringing Anya, Tara, -yes, even Riley, you nay-sayers! If you're going to fill a Buffy or Angel book with an overload of characters at least they're mostly cast regulars, though I didn't mind the few original characters in this book because they were only just enough pages dedicated to them to establish them for the story. Even with the multiple plots -which compliment each other better than all the goings-on in the Gatekeeper Trilogy- the story is always moving and there's really no time to get bored, and most of the characters are given things to do but these tasks do not lead them to do things that are out of character, which seems to happen more often than not in the Buffy books -- Re: Paleo, Return to Chaos, Power of Persuasion, in order of bad to really bad. And I loved how they were able to slip Gunn in there with a cameo without contradicting canon -that Wesley and Cordelia don't actually meet him until the 2nd season premiere. And since this is the first in a trilogy, I don't mind the fact that it ended in a cliffhanger -though I do mind the two months we have to wait for book 2! A promising start for the trilogy and hopefully it does better than the Gatekeepers trilogy, where book 1, OOTMH, turned out to be the only really good one.

this is the first book that has come out since the angel spinoff and i think it is about time that the books are more up to date with the shows. it starts out in sunnydale when a friend of willow's brother has been missing for a week and asks buffy to look into it. while doing this she comes across a mysterious shadow demon that puts the whole scooby gang into research mode. meanwhile in la cordelia stumbles across a group of teenage girls who are dying(literally) to be vampires. when buffy discovers that the missing boy has links to a powerful gang that has it's roots centered in LA, she takes willow's friend to LA and starts an investigation that inventually leads her to cross paths with angel.(of course) this book was well written and i really look forward to the next 2. anyone who liked the crossover with buffy angel last november(i will always remember you) will really enjoy this book.

It's the summer following Buffy's freshman year of college, and so far she hasn't run into any major demon or vampire-related incidents. She hopes she can just relax and enjoy the summer with Riley. When a wealthy girl named Salma, who attended a class with Willow, tells Buffy her missing brother's disappearance may have been related to the supernatural, Buffy's carefree summer is put on hold. She fears that a mysterious shadow monster is out to get Salma and her family - and that it may have been summoned by Salma's brother. Meanwhile in LA, Angel is trying to solve the mystery of a poltergeist in one of the local prisons, and Cordelia is trying to help a group of teenage girls who also happen to be vampire wannabes. When Buffy travels to LA to protect Salma, her path inevitably crosses with Angel's, and the two may have to work together to defeat the evil they both face. The first Buffy and Angel crossover books are off to a great start with this thrilling novel that I reccomend to all fans of both television series.