A collection of twenty-two essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I got a big kick out of this! While there are certainly a few duds, (most of which take the form of good ideas presented in a haphazard, difficult fashion), most of the pieces are solid. They back up their conclusions with concrete examples from the show. They explain their points in enough detail that I can see exactly where they're coming from. And amidst all the scholarly jargon, there's a strong love of the subject under discussion.

They're basically my favourite sort of criticism. Fun, literate, and very easy to get wrapped up in. Even when I disagreed with the essayists, I could see where they were coming from. They provided me with an excellent starting point for my own critical response to the show, and really got me thinking about all the different ways people view this important piece of popular culture. I really believe that meaning lies with the viewer/reader/listener, and that the story I've experienced need not be the same as the one you've encountered. Anthologies like this prove how many different ways we can react to any given text, and they do so in a fascinating way.

Highly recommended to Buffy fans. ( )

Seven Seasons of Buffy is an anthology of essays about... duh... Buffy the Vampire Slayer, written by, it says, "science fiction and fantasy writers." Except that the reason I even knew about this book is that one contributor is Jennifer Crusie, and she's not by any stretch of the imagination a science fiction or fantasy writer. Unless you're one of those terminal cynics who classifies romance as fantasy.

I started reading this back in November, one essay at a time between other books, and I'd initially intended to write something about each of the essays, but there are 22 of them, so it didn't take me long to change my mind about that.

Like any anthology, there are good essays and bad ones. The good ones took some aspect of the show and drew conclusions, and made me think, whether I agreed with them or not. The bad ones rambled on, more or less summarizing the series without actually making a point. Fortunately, there were more good ones than bad.

Of course, the essays that left the biggest impression were the ones that were well-written, but that I disagreed with. Like the one praising Tara. In principle, I agreed, but in the show, she got on my last nerve--I really dislike sad-sack, pitiful, depressed, martyr characters. Worse was the one praising Riley. I could follow the author's reasoning, but she lost me when she claimed that anyone who didn't agree with her was stuck in high school, and that real, adult, mature love was by definition, dull.

The best thing about this anthology is that it provides a lot of food for thought, and springboards for conversation with other Buffy fan(atic)s. ( )

A bunch of other writers talk about the most excellent Buffy. These pieces range from a comedy test from the The Forces of Evil, through some critical articles, and one or two fanlike rants.

An interesting article by Jacqueline Lichtenberg looks at the rise in the 1990s of the type of television show that eventually led to Buffy. ( )

This book is a collection of essays from various writers, especially in the SF, Fantasy and Romance genres, on various ideas and themes portrayed in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What I read was brilliant and I only didn't finish it because my life is so busy and I needed to return the book to the owner so the long line of friends who want to read it get the chance. I'll get it back again when the queue is shorter.

I really hated this book. The essays were superficial, self-conscious attempts at snarky humor, and offered little insight. Most of them seemed to be written solely to bemoan the latter two seasons--which I happened to love, so I am clearly not the target audience. What really killed the book for me were the inaccuracies: if these people are truly all fans, as they claim, then mistakes such as referring to the AU portrayed in "The Wish" as "Vamp World" (with the parenthetical assurance that this is the accepted term in fandom) are quite perplexing.

I'm glad to be rid of it. ( )