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Buffyverse Novels #54
Angel: Bruja
Even if it takes an eternity, he will make amends.... The Witching Hour Los Angeles is stunned when a priest is attacked by a woman who confesses to having murdered her own son. At the same time, Angel Investigations turns up reports of a madwoman floating in and out of gang fights, playgrounds, and flophouses populated by teen runaways...she's everywhere. She is a bruja -- a witch, and the embodiment of La Llorona -- the "Weeping Woman" of Spanish lore. In any place she alights, a trail of death lingers. The priest soon lapses into a coma, but Angel and company have their hands full with other Doyle is wracked with a vision of a young mother and her son in danger, out by the docks. Meanwhile, Cordy is busy searching for a big-shot producer's missing wife.The trio is running out of time. Angel has to find a possible connection between the wife who's gone MIA and the mother on the docks before he himself is stopped -- by a phantom whose mere touch brings death itself....
325 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 2001
256 people want to read
About the author
Mel Odom
281 books273 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
aka Jordan Gray
Mel Odom is a bestselling writer for hire for Wizards of the Coast's Forgotten Realms, Gold Eagle's Mack Bolan, and Pocket's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel book lines. His debut SF novel Lethal Interface made the Locus recommended list . The Rover was an Alyx Award winner. He has also written a scientific adventure of the high seas set in the 19th century entitled Hunters of the Dark Sea. He lives in Oklahoma.
aka Jordan Gray
Mel Odom is a bestselling writer for hire for Wizards of the Coast's Forgotten Realms, Gold Eagle's Mack Bolan, and Pocket's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel book lines. His debut SF novel Lethal Interface made the Locus recommended list . The Rover was an Alyx Award winner. He has also written a scientific adventure of the high seas set in the 19th century entitled Hunters of the Dark Sea. He lives in Oklahoma.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 20, 2025
Actual rating is 2.5 stars.
This is a media tie-in novel that takes place during the first season. In this one we have a demon that is going around claiming children because she has lost her own. Meanwhile Angel and his crew are hired by a wealthy producer to find his missing wife.
I was ready to give this a full three stars but I had a problem with some of the ending. I will get to that in a moment. When I am reading a book based on a television show one of my criteria is does it work within the confines of the established media. Could I picture the book as an episode? The answer to that question is yes for this offering. I thought the author did an accurate portrayal with the characters. I also thought he held true to the established lore of this universe. The highlight for me with this book is the message. It was a message about redemption and moving on. The author could not have picked a better message to tie in with Angel and his overall story arc. Where this book lost me was the ending. We had several story threads that all tied in together. All but one. And the problem with this is that we never concluded it either. Instead it gets a mention at the end that Angel still has to solve that issue. Why bother with it then? In my opinion it should have been just omitted from the story.
This book was meeting my expectations until the very end. I just want one more adventure with my beloved characters from a show I watched in the past. We get that here. There was just a minor flaw with it that did affect my rating. Besides that this is a nice read for fans of this universe.
This is a media tie-in novel that takes place during the first season. In this one we have a demon that is going around claiming children because she has lost her own. Meanwhile Angel and his crew are hired by a wealthy producer to find his missing wife.
I was ready to give this a full three stars but I had a problem with some of the ending. I will get to that in a moment. When I am reading a book based on a television show one of my criteria is does it work within the confines of the established media. Could I picture the book as an episode? The answer to that question is yes for this offering. I thought the author did an accurate portrayal with the characters. I also thought he held true to the established lore of this universe. The highlight for me with this book is the message. It was a message about redemption and moving on. The author could not have picked a better message to tie in with Angel and his overall story arc. Where this book lost me was the ending. We had several story threads that all tied in together. All but one. And the problem with this is that we never concluded it either. Instead it gets a mention at the end that Angel still has to solve that issue. Why bother with it then? In my opinion it should have been just omitted from the story.
This book was meeting my expectations until the very end. I just want one more adventure with my beloved characters from a show I watched in the past. We get that here. There was just a minor flaw with it that did affect my rating. Besides that this is a nice read for fans of this universe.
August 3, 2023
Bruja was the eighth original tie-in novel in Pocket's lengthy series that was based on Angel, the television series spun-off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It features the original trio of stars, Angel, Cordelia, and Doyle, so it falls in the first part of the first season of the show. It follows two storylines that eventually merge, one involving vampires harvesting children that's kind of run-of-the-mill and one centered around the Latino mythology of witchcraft that's quite different and engaging. Odom does a creditable job of portraying the characters realistically. It's a good, quick read for Buffyverse fans. Grrr...arrrgh...
July 1, 2025
Another media-tie in book based on the Buffy spin-off, Angel.
Set again in the first half of the show's first season with Angel, Cordelia and Doyle getting assistance from Detective Kate Lockley.
The element that will draw most people in is the sort of creature of the week theme that would later be a Supernatural trope and ironically, the focus of its pilot after the backstory.
La Llorona: The Weeping Woman, A Lady in White or A Woman in Black.
Each character has a plot that converges together and ties into of course the main theme of Angel making amends for all the evil he did as Angelus here in L.A.
Angel and Doyle are going after some tech-savvy vampires and demons and stumble upon a "delivery" service of blood being taken from the homeless off the streets by a vampire biker gang.
Cordelia is in a play and a television producer named Adrian Heath asks to see her when it is over.
He wants to hire Angel Investigations to find his missing wife, Marissa, so that he doesn't have to involve the police and cause a tabloid scandal.
Cordelia calls Angel to tell him about this job as he and Doyle head out to meet her. They come across a convivence store with police tape all around where Angel finds Kate on a new case, wanting to talk to her about the people who have gone missing.
Kate and Angel talk in private, and he learns from Kate that a group of teenage gang members were killed by a woman in black after shooting the store clerk, an eighteen-year-old, who is in critical condition. A police officer happened upon the crime and saw the woman attack the cashier's twelve-year-old brother killing him as well. The woman attacked the officer, but he is fine despite the horrors he witnessed.
The boy and the gang members had their bodies sucked dry.
Kate asks Angel to look into the weird and in return, she'll look into the people going missing.
Angel is reluctant to take on the Heath case but does so at Cordelia's insistence when Doyle has a vision of a woman and her young daughter in danger. He is sent to check out the piers as they are in the background of his vision while Cordelia does some Internet digging into Adrian Heath and his wife. In his office, Angel is visited by a nun looking for help of her own.
A local priest at her church was attacked and the witness, a parishioner who was there attending a child's funeral, says she saw a woman in black wanting to confess to the priest. The woman says she has sinned...by killing her own son. The priest was hit with a shovel to the face in the basement and has been in a coma.
He was protecting something in the basement and now a woman in black is making her way across the city, killing those who get in her way. Angel knows that she is after children, but the legends say that he can't stop La Llorona but only the person who set her free can.
Doyle, Angel and Cordelia are up to their ears in problems and have no way of knowing that all the paths are converging together. The Woman in Black will spare no one to get what she wants and a vampire with a soul, a human and demon half breed and a former spoiled rich girl have enough skeletons in their closets to make them targets for a witch...a bruja.
Doyle's plot is tinged with humor to tone down the very depressing and horrific things that Cordelia and Angel uncover on their own. Angel's past is touched on when one of the people he saves from the blood bank vampires is a Korean war veteran who has fallen to being homeless and loses one of his closest friends, a fellow vet, to the vampires.
It adds pathos to understanding Angel's character and why he is reluctant to take the case of Adrian Heath as he believes it is just a wife leaving her husband, not wanting to be found. Once he talks with Adrian, Angel agrees to take it but mostly puts Cordelia in charge of it.
Cordelia is surprisingly given a moment where we dive into her own motivations of not just wanting fame since Adrian is a TV producer and can pay them well for finding his wife but why it is so important to her. She still has her snarky comments but realizing what they are dealing with and children being involved shows us that Cordelia has grown.
Tying all of the threads together takes a long time to make a cohesive bow but once all of the pieces come together, it leads up to thrilling climax. The ending is left ambiguous to the characters we ae introduced to but as always, Angel has conquered another trial in his redemption and helped the hopeless.
Bruja is an Angel novel dealing with topics of forgiveness and regrets tinged with very dark subject matters of violence towards children and in general. One of the more heavy-handed books in what is a light first season in the show's canon, it finds its place with where the show would eventually reach by its second season.
Set again in the first half of the show's first season with Angel, Cordelia and Doyle getting assistance from Detective Kate Lockley.
The element that will draw most people in is the sort of creature of the week theme that would later be a Supernatural trope and ironically, the focus of its pilot after the backstory.
La Llorona: The Weeping Woman, A Lady in White or A Woman in Black.
Each character has a plot that converges together and ties into of course the main theme of Angel making amends for all the evil he did as Angelus here in L.A.
Angel and Doyle are going after some tech-savvy vampires and demons and stumble upon a "delivery" service of blood being taken from the homeless off the streets by a vampire biker gang.
Cordelia is in a play and a television producer named Adrian Heath asks to see her when it is over.
He wants to hire Angel Investigations to find his missing wife, Marissa, so that he doesn't have to involve the police and cause a tabloid scandal.
Cordelia calls Angel to tell him about this job as he and Doyle head out to meet her. They come across a convivence store with police tape all around where Angel finds Kate on a new case, wanting to talk to her about the people who have gone missing.
Kate and Angel talk in private, and he learns from Kate that a group of teenage gang members were killed by a woman in black after shooting the store clerk, an eighteen-year-old, who is in critical condition. A police officer happened upon the crime and saw the woman attack the cashier's twelve-year-old brother killing him as well. The woman attacked the officer, but he is fine despite the horrors he witnessed.
The boy and the gang members had their bodies sucked dry.
Kate asks Angel to look into the weird and in return, she'll look into the people going missing.
Angel is reluctant to take on the Heath case but does so at Cordelia's insistence when Doyle has a vision of a woman and her young daughter in danger. He is sent to check out the piers as they are in the background of his vision while Cordelia does some Internet digging into Adrian Heath and his wife. In his office, Angel is visited by a nun looking for help of her own.
A local priest at her church was attacked and the witness, a parishioner who was there attending a child's funeral, says she saw a woman in black wanting to confess to the priest. The woman says she has sinned...by killing her own son. The priest was hit with a shovel to the face in the basement and has been in a coma.
He was protecting something in the basement and now a woman in black is making her way across the city, killing those who get in her way. Angel knows that she is after children, but the legends say that he can't stop La Llorona but only the person who set her free can.
Doyle, Angel and Cordelia are up to their ears in problems and have no way of knowing that all the paths are converging together. The Woman in Black will spare no one to get what she wants and a vampire with a soul, a human and demon half breed and a former spoiled rich girl have enough skeletons in their closets to make them targets for a witch...a bruja.
Doyle's plot is tinged with humor to tone down the very depressing and horrific things that Cordelia and Angel uncover on their own. Angel's past is touched on when one of the people he saves from the blood bank vampires is a Korean war veteran who has fallen to being homeless and loses one of his closest friends, a fellow vet, to the vampires.
It adds pathos to understanding Angel's character and why he is reluctant to take the case of Adrian Heath as he believes it is just a wife leaving her husband, not wanting to be found. Once he talks with Adrian, Angel agrees to take it but mostly puts Cordelia in charge of it.
Cordelia is surprisingly given a moment where we dive into her own motivations of not just wanting fame since Adrian is a TV producer and can pay them well for finding his wife but why it is so important to her. She still has her snarky comments but realizing what they are dealing with and children being involved shows us that Cordelia has grown.
Tying all of the threads together takes a long time to make a cohesive bow but once all of the pieces come together, it leads up to thrilling climax. The ending is left ambiguous to the characters we ae introduced to but as always, Angel has conquered another trial in his redemption and helped the hopeless.
Bruja is an Angel novel dealing with topics of forgiveness and regrets tinged with very dark subject matters of violence towards children and in general. One of the more heavy-handed books in what is a light first season in the show's canon, it finds its place with where the show would eventually reach by its second season.
July 24, 2017
Angel, the TV show may be gone, but there are more exciting stories to had by reading the book series. And whether it's Buffy or Angel, Mr. Odom always does a great job presenting new stories in both of these series. In this story, Los Angeles faces two problems. First, homeless people are being used as a food supply for vampires. Secondly, an ancient witch, a bruja, is stealing children. Angel, along with Doyle and Cordelia, do their best to resolve both issues. As always, Mel Odom's writing is both exciting, and true to the TV series! This great read is a fine example of modern day pulp.
July 12, 2025
The La Llorona plot was good and just the right amount of creepy, and also I liked the investigation element. Unfortunately there was SO MUCH boring action, the entire opening third of the book had Angel and Doyle in quite uninteresting action in a subplot that by the end of the book is not even resolved, there's simply "a blood bank out there somewhere to deal with"
Had the book been 100 pages shorter and simply focused on Marisa, Adrian, and the investigation into La Llorona, it would have been great
Had the book been 100 pages shorter and simply focused on Marisa, Adrian, and the investigation into La Llorona, it would have been great
August 11, 2025
I am astounded at how much I liked this book. It was charming, insightful, and honestly just a great (long) episode of Angel.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews