a mysterious person by the name of simon is telling buffy about demon attacks via phone right before they attack. buffy does not like having people tell her what to do but she knows she cannot let innocent people die either. among her problems, the people that she love start to act funny. dawn has a major crisis. she starts hanging out with a bad crowd and all of a sudden she is a changed girl who wont take orders from anyone least of all her sister.
as buffy looks into the problem with dawn, it seems that the whole town of sunnydale has lost their minds. willow and xander are not there when she needs them the most and if she does not figure out what is happening she will have a town full of dead people.
this forces her to make strange alliances and it makes for a long but rather interesting book. it is nice that dawn has a better part in the story and is not on the sidelines. i liked the book and hope the authors write more.
Season Seven must present some extraordinary difficulties to the scribes of the Buffyverse. While the names are the same, almost every character has no resemblance to their original appearances before Season 4. Problems of character development are complicated by having to ride shotgun on an underlying story that resembles a Chinese fire drill. That the Ciencins have managed to overcome the dangers of plot drift and produce a coherent and even original story is a compliment to their skills.Taking advantage of the frayed nerves of all the season 7 Scooby-ites a mysterious mage named Simon manages to trick Buffy into collecting the bits and pieces of a magical sword that, naturally, could bring about the end of life as we know it. As part of the scheme he unleashes a weird magical nanovirus that completely erases fear as well as any compunction to do good. The big victims are Xander, Willow and Dawn (not that Dawn ever needed an excuse to be obnoxious). These three become part of the overall scheme as well as a means to torment our humble Slayer.
Well written, and tightly plotted despite its length, Mortal Fear is one of the better Buffy books to appear in the past year or so. Even so, there are a few devices that stretch ones ability to believe. Especially what has happened to Willow. While the idea is not original to the Ciencins, I find the device of a split personality Willow a bit tedious. After all, the is only one Willow - one whose naturally sweet nature is unable to contain her anger when her world falls apart. This is a natural, human thing - only larger than life because of Willows powers. I find Willow-in-denial a bit hard to accept. On the other hand, Xanders anger at Buffy may be irrational, but it is appropriate to the character. And, as Ive mentions Dawn was already irritating, so her characterization here is exactly right.
Almost every other character puts in a spot appearance as Sunnydale once again starts to slip into chaos. Once again (for the umpteenth time) Buffy must handle the impossible and save the world. There is a part of me that misses the old Buffy, when the stories were mostly about finding an killing vampires. Yet we all know that Buffys attraction is that it is far more than hacking and staking. Mortal Fear manages to tread the same thin line between horror and comedy that the best of the TV show does. Certainly worth reading if you are a fan.
well written story
The New Age Of A Dawn
Average buffy book