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A review by alexampersand
Coyote Moon by John Vornholt
4.0
Of the two Buffy novels thus far in the series, this is probably the better one, feeling slightly better paced than Halloween Rain, as well as avoiding the issue of having way too much cultural references crammed into every single page.
That's not to say this is a perfect addition to the Buffy canon - some of the dialogue feels clunky, and there are once again timeline issues around the fact that it seems to be set post-Season 1, even though we know Buffy was incommunicado in LA for the entire summer pre-Season 2. But giving these issues the benefit of the doubt, the story itself rolled along nicely and was fun to read.
Sure, there were still a couple of bits that didn't fully make sense: Was it ever really explained why the carnie-coyotes needed town folk to come along with them? Either it wasn't explained, or it was so briefly explained that I promptly forgot. Plus, when discussing the desecrated grave, Giles was pretty quick to guess "Maybe they're planning to raise him from the dead", and then they just roll with it and lo and behold that is indeed the plan. Maybe it would have been nice to get some actual deduction work instead of just Giles making an assumption.
So the more I'm writing here the more I'm realising the faults. But hey, it was very readable, and it was nice and quick, so I rolled through it as an average book. I'd probably give it 3.5 stars, but I'll round up to 4 because I'm feeling generous.
That's not to say this is a perfect addition to the Buffy canon - some of the dialogue feels clunky, and there are once again timeline issues around the fact that it seems to be set post-Season 1, even though we know Buffy was incommunicado in LA for the entire summer pre-Season 2. But giving these issues the benefit of the doubt, the story itself rolled along nicely and was fun to read.
Sure, there were still a couple of bits that didn't fully make sense: Was it ever really explained why the carnie-coyotes needed town folk to come along with them? Either it wasn't explained, or it was so briefly explained that I promptly forgot. Plus, when discussing the desecrated grave, Giles was pretty quick to guess "Maybe they're planning to raise him from the dead", and then they just roll with it and lo and behold that is indeed the plan. Maybe it would have been nice to get some actual deduction work instead of just Giles making an assumption.
So the more I'm writing here the more I'm realising the faults. But hey, it was very readable, and it was nice and quick, so I rolled through it as an average book. I'd probably give it 3.5 stars, but I'll round up to 4 because I'm feeling generous.