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A review by nicolemhewitt
In Every Generation by Kendare Blake
5.0
This review (and a giveaway!) can be found on my blog: Feed Your Fiction Addiction
In Every Generation made my Buffy-obsessed heart so incredibly happy! I’m not even going to try to review the book without taking the original series into account because, for me, that’s impossible. Do I think that non-Buffy fans will enjoy the book on its own merits? Yes. But you’ll have to read other reviews for that perspective because I loved everything about the show. Anyway, this is my perspective as a fan.
This book has everything I’ve come to expect from the franchise: complicated family relationships and friendships, interesting demons, teen insecurities, an intriguing mystery, and—perhaps most of all—engaging banter. Honestly, reading this book was basically like watching an episode (or a season) of my favorite show. (And I can say that definitively because I actually ended up watching some of season 1 of the show while I was reading – Kendare gets it, there’s no doubt about that.) I was surprised how big of a role old familiar characters played in the book. Sure, the main MC is Frankie, Willow’s teen daughter. But Willow, Spike and Oz are all featured front-and-center and they feel just like the people I’ve come to know and love.
The new characters fit right into the Buffyverse as well, though. Frankie has a lot to live up to, being the daughter of a legendary witch and the “niece” of the greatest slayer of all time. And she isn’t at all confident that she can fill those shoes. Things are complicated by the fact that everyone is upset about the possible-deaths of all the slayers and watchers (but trying to think positively that they might still be alive—they don’t get to the point of actual mourning, which I kind of would have expected). So, Frankie also has a weird sort of guilt over becoming the slayer as well. Her personal Scooby gang is made up of Jake, Oz’s werewolf nephew, who is dealing with absentee parents; Hailey, who is fighting to find out what happened to her sister, one of the missing slayers; and Sigmund, a half Sage Demon who can turn on the charm (literally), but prefers his bookish side to his demon side. I’ll be happy to read more about this band of friends in future books!
Yes, this is definitely the start to a new series, so things don’t get wrapped up all neatly at the end of this first book. But, I’m excited to see what else Blake has in store for us!
***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via Rockstar Book Tours so I could provide an honest review. No compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***
In Every Generation made my Buffy-obsessed heart so incredibly happy! I’m not even going to try to review the book without taking the original series into account because, for me, that’s impossible. Do I think that non-Buffy fans will enjoy the book on its own merits? Yes. But you’ll have to read other reviews for that perspective because I loved everything about the show. Anyway, this is my perspective as a fan.
This book has everything I’ve come to expect from the franchise: complicated family relationships and friendships, interesting demons, teen insecurities, an intriguing mystery, and—perhaps most of all—engaging banter. Honestly, reading this book was basically like watching an episode (or a season) of my favorite show. (And I can say that definitively because I actually ended up watching some of season 1 of the show while I was reading – Kendare gets it, there’s no doubt about that.) I was surprised how big of a role old familiar characters played in the book. Sure, the main MC is Frankie, Willow’s teen daughter. But Willow, Spike and Oz are all featured front-and-center and they feel just like the people I’ve come to know and love.
The new characters fit right into the Buffyverse as well, though. Frankie has a lot to live up to, being the daughter of a legendary witch and the “niece” of the greatest slayer of all time. And she isn’t at all confident that she can fill those shoes. Things are complicated by the fact that everyone is upset about the possible-deaths of all the slayers and watchers (but trying to think positively that they might still be alive—they don’t get to the point of actual mourning, which I kind of would have expected). So, Frankie also has a weird sort of guilt over becoming the slayer as well. Her personal Scooby gang is made up of Jake, Oz’s werewolf nephew, who is dealing with absentee parents; Hailey, who is fighting to find out what happened to her sister, one of the missing slayers; and Sigmund, a half Sage Demon who can turn on the charm (literally), but prefers his bookish side to his demon side. I’ll be happy to read more about this band of friends in future books!
Yes, this is definitely the start to a new series, so things don’t get wrapped up all neatly at the end of this first book. But, I’m excited to see what else Blake has in store for us!
***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via Rockstar Book Tours so I could provide an honest review. No compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***