Nancy Holders & Jeff Mariotte's
Unseen: The Burning
The First In A New Crossover Trilogy

I like Buffy The Vampire Slayer … that I reviewed the series 1 DVD box set so positively is evidence of that. I like Angel, admittedly nowhere near as much as Buffy, but I still like it as it, being a spin-off, is set in the same universe as Buffy and adds to the overall story and interest in the Buffy universe. I also like the idea of crossovers where a particular scenario is crossed with another one in what is usually, or should be I feel, an attempt to investigate what will happen when that is done … much like we have done with our Star Trek vs. Babylon 5 crossover series ("Enterprise In Babylon"). Certainly I feel a "crossover" should cross two different scenarios to even merit the title.

It was with that in mind that, when visiting a book store in Canterbury, I picked up this book and wondered exactly how a "crossover" could be written when there isn't a great deal to cross?

The book, as a story, seemed competently enough written but I nevertheless failed to enjoy it. Sure it had vampires, fights, some witticisms and a fairly cohesive story line but that, when writing something that has already been demonstrated as excellent is not enough. It needs to reflect the real characters in the series, their humour, their smart-aleck teenage quips, the insight into teenage angst the series (to my mind) so accurately portrays and unfortunately this book doesn't.

Quite why the authors decided to call this a "crossover" series is beyond me as, with Angel being a direct Buffy spin-off and set in the same "Buffyverse", there is very little of interest that can be explored … all the story does is bring two sets of characters that already know each other well into a single story line.

So the book is not really a crossover but is reasonably competently written … I say competently but it is not written excellently. I have read a fair number of fiction books in my life, most of them science fiction, some of them humorous, some of them horror and even a few that are spin-offs and I would be willing to recommend many of them for various reasons … unfortunately this book isn't one of them.

Not only does the story inadequately reflect the characters I have come to know and love in Buffy & Angel TV series but the author's also play a rather nasty trick on their readers.

By around a third of the way through the book I was becoming restless and losing interest, by halfway through I wanted to read something else, anything else and the only things that kept me going were the fact that I wanted to review the book and needed to complete it to do so fairly and that IK wanted to see the storylines, such as they were, brought to a conclusion, I wanted the 't's' crossed and the 'i's' dotted, I wanted the story bought to a reasonable conclusion.

But even that small mercy was denied me … as I started stubbornly into the final chapter I began to realise that there were simply too many different aspects of the story to bring together and I began, instead, to wonder which would be concluded and which wouldn't? The answer, I am sad to say, was none … the book is not a complete story and all of it's thread lines are apparently to be resolved later.

This both surprised and disappointed me … nothing was intimated on the cover to suggest this (though I realised it was part of a trilogy), it was a book and by rights it should have had some of its components brought to a conclusion. Sadly this was not to be so, the one possible saving for the book, the authors chose to deny its readers.

I'm sorry Nancy, I'm sorry Jeff but not only will I not be recommending this book (and by implication its sequels) but I would not be willing to part with any more of my hard earned monies to subject myself to more of your work.