What Would Buffy Do: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide

This is a surprisingly fun and insightful look at the spiritual themes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and what can be learned from them. It's a fast read, but there's a lot of good material here.

The book draws exmaples primarily from Buddhism and Christianity, but reflects the show's own lack of affiliation with a particular path. Still, what I considered to be the most pertinent passage draws a Jewish example: "Like the biblical heroine Esther, Buffy is a young woman who feels the burden of preserving her people. And just as God is never mentioned in the book of Esther, God is merely implicit in the Buffyverse, present every time the characters put their lives on the line to save others."

This is a set of well written and well thought out essays on moral lessons that can be extracted from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel episodes.

The essays gave me new critical lenses through with which to view already familiar characters and events.

The scope was wide, pulling examples from across all seasons of Buffy and occasionally Angel - for example, to talk about the redemptive journey of a character across many seasons - thinking about the narratives as a whole, rather than dealing with individual episodes.

Also, I enjoyed the comparisons the author made between ideas exemplified in Buffy, and idea expressed in a wide range of religious and philosophic texts. Readers for a diverse range of religious or non-religious backgrounds show more would be comfortable reading this collection. show less

A surprisingly insightful book tying a number of spiritual journeys to the fictional journey of Buffy and her friends in the "Buffy The Vampire Series" TV show. Riess makes a strong argument for each of her points; her writing is sharp, focused, and well-organized. There are quotes laced throughout the book, but they in no way make up the bulk of the text; most of it is devoted to Riess's original thoughts and arguments. A really good nonfiction/spirituality book -- and like "Buffy", it steers clear of endorsing specific religions and spiritual practices in favor of promoting common human experiences.

I was a huge fan of this show and appreciated the way that the author pulled the spiritual lessons together from across the whole series. This is an interesting and enlightening read.