Night of the Living Rerun

After finishing Halloween Rain, which got the original novels off to an average start, I was hoping the next installment would feel more confident. Instead, Night of the Living Rerun left me wondering whether the author had watched much Buffy or, perhaps more correctly, really understood it.

And at first I actually blamed myself. I’d been reading the novel in short bursts right before going to sleep, pretty much a chapter at a time and sometimes not in the sharpest of mindsets, and assumed maybe I just wasn’t holding the threads together. But once I finished and looked back over the whole thing, it became clear the confusion wasn’t mine. The plot genuinely is muddled, with strange tonal swings and scenes that don’t feel remotely true to the characters or the world of the show.

Frustratingly, the core premise actually sounds promising on paper: our heroes experience flashbacks to characters from the era of the Salem witch trials. That’s pure Buffy territory. Good. But then Season 1’s Big Bad, the Master, is folded into the story in a way that raises more questions than tension. He’s neither especially menacing nor particularly witty and canon-wise, his involvement is awkward.

To not put too fine a point on things, Buffy flat-out references having died before, which places this after the TV episode, “Prophecy Girl,” yet the Master is somehow still alive and kicking and angling for a return by repeating the ascension of a demon called the Despised One in witch-hunt-era Salem. Sorry? What? The mechanics of this are hazy, and I never felt I had a good grasp on things.

The supporting cast doesn’t help. We get a kooky reporter, a paranormal-obsessed couple (with heavy hints that the woman had a very close relationship with Giles at university), and a late-night TV host who investigates the unexplained. It feels less like Sunnydale and more like a crossover with one of those random X-Files episodes that would be doing off-the-wall comedy. One of these characters alone would feel like a stretch for, “Could this have happened in a TV episode of Buffy?” but with three sets of them running around… no. Just no. I found them distracting and not really fitting into a Buffy story. I think a much smarter move would have been creating the possessed antagonists from other existing cast members. Have Buffy facing off against Cordelia, Joyce, Snyder and the like. Wow!

Meanwhile, the central magical artifact that will be needed for “reasons” at the end of the novel just happens to have been recently acquired by Buffy’s mother for her art gallery. Of course it was. Gosh, what a coincidence. This kind of thing is really basic, first-timer fan-fic sort of writing.

Reincarnation and possession drive much of the action. The Scoobies flashbacks gradually align them with Salem-era counterparts, while the comic side characters appear to become possessed outright. Why some characters retain awareness of both worlds and others don’t and simply turn into their “past selves” was never convincingly explained as far as I recall. The internal rules feel improvised from chapter to chapter. Whatever the story needs at any time and, boom, it happens.

Then there are the zombies — a horde of them for the second novel in a row no less — rampaging across Sunnydale in a way the TV show never would have never shown. They even attack the police station en masse and, at one point, access a cache of weapons. Yes, we get gun-wielding zombies. Although arming them with guns never becomes a major inconvenience. So why have it?

Other strangeness abounds. At one point Buffy has to travel through the sewers. Arriving at her destination — a kind of trucker’s diner — one of the waitresses allows this person she’s never met before to strip off and throw her clothes into a convenient washing machine and get dressed in a waitress uniform. Whether this is some fetish of the author (to imagine Sarah Michelle Gellar in a waitress outfit), or something else, it was a very strange detail to go into. Buffy could have simply faced the final fight of the story smelling a bit rank. It didn’t need the waitress thing. So why have it?

Anyway, after all the buildup, the climax is astonishingly anticlimactic. The Master finally manifests physically… and is stopped in what may be the quickest, least satisfying resolution imaginable.

Then, as a coda, we get a sentimental scene in which Xander and Willow’s Salem-era counterparts realise they’re destined to marry and be together forever – a moment that hasn’t exactly aged well given where the series ultimately takes them. That, at least, isn’t the author’s fault.

And you know what? All of this is frustrating because there are good ideas here. The Salem setting is rich territory. The introduction of past Slayer Samantha Kane — particularly her rejection of Puritan gender roles — is a strong concept and right in the show’s wheelhouse. But that idea goes absolutely nowhere and frankly, interesting ingredients aren’t enough anyway because the plotting is simply confusing, the pacing erratic, and the continuity with the television series shaky at best.

In the end, it’s like the author has heard a little about Buffy but doesn’t really get it. Looking at the list of authors coming up, I don’t see this guy’s name again so thank heavens for small mercies.

3/10 for the Salem concept and the historical Slayer thread. The rest is a total dumpster fire. Avoid.