Review: Slayer (Slayer #1) – Kiersten White
“So Slayer, at last we meet!” – Harmony (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5 episode 2)
I received a free ecopy of this book in return for an honest review. Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity.
I already had this book on pre-order when I spotted it on Netgalley so I can’t tell you how excited I was to get a pre-pub copy to read. I love Buffy and have followed the new seasons as they have come out in graphic book form. The chance of meeting a new slayer was just too good to pass up. Though I have to say, having seen some other recent reboots and remakes I was worried it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. Instead, it excelled them.
*****SPOILER ZONE RECAP: BUFFY SEASONS 7 & 8*****
Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: in Season 7, the First Evil blew up the Watcher’s Council, and tried to exterminate the slayer line by killing all the Potential Slayers, Willow helped Buffy to activate all the Potentials into Slayers and the hellmouth was destroyed. In Season 8, a mysterious entity called Twilight lead Buffy into being an Uber-Slayer, and a new dimension was created but this lead to an apocalyptic invasion of numerous huge demons into our world. Buffy destroyed the Seed of Wonder, which was the source of all magic in our world, sealing off the hell dimensions from us, but trapping many of the demons here. During the fight, the Slayer scythe was broken and Giles was killed by a possessed Angel.
******END SPOILERS*****
I thought this book would be set in a different time frame to Buffy so it felt a bit strange to find out that Buffy was still around with her slayer army, though our hero Athena Jamison-Smythe is not part of that army. If the name Jamison-Smythe sounds familiar to Buffsters with good memories, that is because Athena and her twin sister Artemis are the daughters of Buffy’s first Watcher, Merrick Jamison-Smythe and this not the only familiar name in the book by any means.
Athena (Nina) and her twin Artemis grew up with the Watcher’s Council, the remnants of whom are now in hiding. Nina hates Buffy, whom she blames for the death of her father, among other things, so she is less than happy with the realisation that she is a newly activated Slayer herself. She has been trained as a medic, not a fighter. She has issues with her mother who is keeping secrets and her activation as a Slayer causes a divide with her sister, Artemis. Nina must learn to be something that she hates, connect with the other Slayers and learn that being Chosen means making some heartbreaking choices. Like Buffy before her, she must eventually choose between someone she loves and the safety of the world.
The new Slayer is engaging and her ambivalent feelings are relatable, though I did get quite frustrated and her lack of assertiveness. It seemed to take far too long for her to begin standing up to people. At one point I actually flung my e-reader down in annoyance. There is a lot of scope there for character development.
This insight into the Watcher’s Council next generation is fascinating, unlikely as it was that almost all of the remaining Watchers have surnames we’ve already heard of. Cleverly, the absence of magic renders the previous generation of Watchers obsolete giving the newbies a chance to step up. Similarly Demons and zompires (vamps created after the link to hell was severed) have to be fought the old fashioned way, with weapons. Slayer strength, strategy and wisdom are suddenly so much more important. No magical shortcuts any more.
Buffyverse is a place where the internal history will always be important. Story threads will are often drawn from past events, but there is enough going on here to draw in a new generation of fans. Knowledge of the series is not a pre-requisite for reading this book. I feel, though, that existing fans will welcome the chance to revisit this world and few of them will be reaching for their box sets in a burst of nostalgia.
And my favourite part “Slayer #1” which indicates that there is more to come.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️