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Buffyverse Novels #13
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Colony
Welcome to Sunnydale High, where midterms and peer pressure are the least of your worries. The Stake Your Destiny series returns Buffy Summers and the Scoobies to the glory days of high school. But this time you control the action and accept the full responsibility of being the Slayer. Interactive story lines advance by the choices you make, leading toward more than a dozen possible endings. Do you have what it takes to be the Slayer, or will you fail and summon a successor?
Because of the high incidence of death and violence, the Mayor of Sunnydale has invited a woman called Belakane to speak at Sunnydale High School. Her program, "Be the Ultimate You!" builds self-esteem in teenagers. But Belakane is a demon antlike queen, whose test -- and subsequent nurturing of the skills she discovers -- is simply part of ber plot to enlist workers to build her colony, and to find mates to help her populate it. Soon Sunnydale High is full of kids with only one trait aggressive Slayer, brainy Willow, helpful Oz...and Belakane has only just begun....
Because of the high incidence of death and violence, the Mayor of Sunnydale has invited a woman called Belakane to speak at Sunnydale High School. Her program, "Be the Ultimate You!" builds self-esteem in teenagers. But Belakane is a demon antlike queen, whose test -- and subsequent nurturing of the skills she discovers -- is simply part of ber plot to enlist workers to build her colony, and to find mates to help her populate it. Soon Sunnydale High is full of kids with only one trait aggressive Slayer, brainy Willow, helpful Oz...and Belakane has only just begun....
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
332 people want to read
About the author
Melinda Metz
118 books629 followersMelinda Metz grew up in San Jose, California. People sometimes ask if she knows the way there. She kinda does, but she has an off-kilter sense of direction, so to be confident of arriving, it's better to consult some kind of navigational device.
Her mother tried to teach her to read in kindergarten, but Melinda had no interest. She also had no interest in learning to write her name. (FYI, when Melinda was in kindergarten it was all about finger-painting, play time, and naps.) Eventually, she mastered both and even majored in English at San Jose State University.
After college, Melinda moved to Manhattan to seek her fortune, which involved learning to identify fruits and vegetables while working at a grocery store,
making $2.73 working backstage for an off-off Broadway play (her part of the box-office profits), and editing books.
Melinda and the lovely and talented Laura J. Burns pretty much became unofficial writing partners when they were editors at the same company. They teamed up to brainstorm story ideas, and at some point their brains fused in some key places. Later they worked on the Roswell High book series, Laura developing and editing the series, Melinda writing.
That series led to Melinda and Laura, now an official writing team, writing two TV pilots, moving to L.A. to work on the Roswell TV show, and briefly living in Toronto while on the writing staff of 1-800-Missing. They both continue to write books, together and separately.
Laura and Melinda's new book, Sanctuary Bay, a YA thriller, is coming out in January 2016. It's set at an ultra-exclusive private school on an island. Once a student is accepted to the school, they must stay until graduation. No visits home, no contact with the outside world at all. Find out why in January!
The first four books in Melinda's new middle-grade mystery series,S.M.A.R.T.S., are out now. The books involve a group of kids in a makerspace club and they all have lots of science info. For all the cool geeks out there!
Melinda lives in Concord, NC with her dog, Scully (yes, she loves the woo-woo so much she named her dog after a kickass X-Files character). She has never regretted learning to read and write her name.
Her mother tried to teach her to read in kindergarten, but Melinda had no interest. She also had no interest in learning to write her name. (FYI, when Melinda was in kindergarten it was all about finger-painting, play time, and naps.) Eventually, she mastered both and even majored in English at San Jose State University.
After college, Melinda moved to Manhattan to seek her fortune, which involved learning to identify fruits and vegetables while working at a grocery store,
making $2.73 working backstage for an off-off Broadway play (her part of the box-office profits), and editing books.
Melinda and the lovely and talented Laura J. Burns pretty much became unofficial writing partners when they were editors at the same company. They teamed up to brainstorm story ideas, and at some point their brains fused in some key places. Later they worked on the Roswell High book series, Laura developing and editing the series, Melinda writing.
That series led to Melinda and Laura, now an official writing team, writing two TV pilots, moving to L.A. to work on the Roswell TV show, and briefly living in Toronto while on the writing staff of 1-800-Missing. They both continue to write books, together and separately.
Laura and Melinda's new book, Sanctuary Bay, a YA thriller, is coming out in January 2016. It's set at an ultra-exclusive private school on an island. Once a student is accepted to the school, they must stay until graduation. No visits home, no contact with the outside world at all. Find out why in January!
The first four books in Melinda's new middle-grade mystery series,S.M.A.R.T.S., are out now. The books involve a group of kids in a makerspace club and they all have lots of science info. For all the cool geeks out there!
Melinda lives in Concord, NC with her dog, Scully (yes, she loves the woo-woo so much she named her dog after a kickass X-Files character). She has never regretted learning to read and write her name.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 30, 2020
Hey, Roswell High book series writers! I always get excited when I come across a Buffy work by Melinda Metz and Laura J. Burns. While RH may not be high literature or anything, it was one of my favorite book series once-upon-a-time, and I still find it easy to get swept away in Metz's writing style.
This one was fun, with three main versions of the story to go through (though with various endings for each of those three main lines.) All are funny, and Buffy in particular is written very well. Also, I have to give these two ladies props for being the first of the Stake Your Destiny books I've read that made all three stories so vastly different, even while keeping certain key story beats the same. It made the choices you could make feel as important as they should be in a series like this.
Also, the plot line of this is focused on bugs, specifically ants. And ew...I hate bugs. Any and all types, so I was cringing during this adventure even as I was enjoying it.
I had to subtract one star for a continuity error. One of the stories involves Willow doing magic, and in the visual canon she never started getting into magic until after Ms. Calendar died. Ms. Calendar is very much alive in this story, and that particular anachronism with the wider time line put huge "NOT VALID" signs over the rest of the story in that particular choice-line.
This one was fun, with three main versions of the story to go through (though with various endings for each of those three main lines.) All are funny, and Buffy in particular is written very well. Also, I have to give these two ladies props for being the first of the Stake Your Destiny books I've read that made all three stories so vastly different, even while keeping certain key story beats the same. It made the choices you could make feel as important as they should be in a series like this.
Also, the plot line of this is focused on bugs, specifically ants. And ew...I hate bugs. Any and all types, so I was cringing during this adventure even as I was enjoying it.
I had to subtract one star for a continuity error. One of the stories involves Willow doing magic, and in the visual canon she never started getting into magic until after Ms. Calendar died. Ms. Calendar is very much alive in this story, and that particular anachronism with the wider time line put huge "NOT VALID" signs over the rest of the story in that particular choice-line.
October 12, 2017
You don't come across books written in second person very often; but I guess it makes sense for this off-brand choose-your-own-adventure Buffy adventure. In it, you're Buffy, dealing with very strange behavior from your fellow students. The book does manage to get the characterizations pretty well (although Buffy seems a bit ditzier and more jealous than I would expect), and the overall story is par for the course for early Buffy (Season 2, I think), quirky and weird and a little disturbing in body horror concepts. Also, the choose-your-own-adventure structure is a little... lackadaisical. You can literally read straight through the first 65 pages of the book (ignoring the choices) and get a complete story. And some of the choices lead to exact same blocks of text in slightly different story locations, which I thought was a little wasteful. Still, it makes for a decent, if quirky, Buffy episode with a minor interactive element.
May 10, 2020
A fun read, but not as good as the others in the series. It's super easy to get the good ending in this one.
January 4, 2024
was way too enamored with the personality quiz plotline but then felt guilty about blowing off giles so long story short
December 12, 2009
Seri Stake Your Destiny ini setipe dengan seri Pilih Sendiri Petualanganmu, tapi kau harus berperan sebagai Buffy dan menentukan sendiri takdirmu saat menghadapi dua monster sekaligus: Belakane si Ratu Semut dan Sleaninhnam si Leprechaun raksasa.
Hasil akhir rangkaian keputusan yang kauambil adalah sbb.:
a. Kau membunuh kedua monster, dan everybody happy.
b. Kau membunuh Angel.
c. Kau membunuh Willow.
d. Monster Belakane membunuhmu.
e. Monster Belakane membunuh Angel.
f. Monster Belakane membunuh Willow.
g. Monster Sleninhnam membunuhmu.
h. Angel membunuhmu.
i... ini sudah semuanya belum ya...?
Eniwei, aku malas baca loncat-loncat, tapi kebetulan dari awal ada pilihan yang halamannya urut sampai tamat, eh, udah gitu hasilnya butir a di atas alias happy ending lagi (spoiler alert ;P). Berhenti baca di situ bisa saja sih, tapi karena penasaran dengan alternate-endingnya jadi kubaca semua deh...
Hasil akhir rangkaian keputusan yang kauambil adalah sbb.:
a. Kau membunuh kedua monster, dan everybody happy.
b. Kau membunuh Angel.
c. Kau membunuh Willow.
d. Monster Belakane membunuhmu.
e. Monster Belakane membunuh Angel.
f. Monster Belakane membunuh Willow.
g. Monster Sleninhnam membunuhmu.
h. Angel membunuhmu.
i... ini sudah semuanya belum ya...?
Eniwei, aku malas baca loncat-loncat, tapi kebetulan dari awal ada pilihan yang halamannya urut sampai tamat, eh, udah gitu hasilnya butir a di atas alias happy ending lagi (spoiler alert ;P). Berhenti baca di situ bisa saja sih, tapi karena penasaran dengan alternate-endingnya jadi kubaca semua deh...
January 18, 2013
I was highly surprised by this book. I bought it second hand from a library sale and had no idea it was a choose your own adventure book!!! I brought happy memories of when those type of books first came out, I loved that I could make the decisions and would keep reading until I got an ending I was happy with. This is basically set in about season 2 or 3 of the series and although similar to the episode about a praying mantis, I still liked it. Unlike when I was a kid, I got an ending I was happy with the first go and I don't plan on reading it again to get a different ending.
February 13, 2013
Well I must have what it takes to be a slayer because I finished my chosen path, killing the impending danger with minimum flipping and danger. The first one I read of this series took my much longer to conclude. But this one wasn't really a challenage. But what do you expect when your baddie was an oversized Ant, causing peoples more prodominat trait to over power them?
March 2, 2015
While this book was pretty terrible, I have to say it was very interesting to read a "choose your own adventure" style buffy book. Serious throw back to early middle school. It was strange adjusting to buffy being in 1st person. Quick easy read, made me smile, but pretty boring.
February 25, 2019
Another cool CYOA
July 17, 2013
Fun little book. Didn't even realize it was a choose your own adventure until I started flipping through it. I didn't eve realize they had those in the Buffy books.
Read
October 17, 2014stake your destiny.
April 11, 2017
The first season of Buffy features some ridiculous storylines and villains, including an episode (“Teacher’s Pet”) where Xander’s teacher is a beautiful woman who is actually a praying mantis looking to eat her mates. Colony takes place during season two of Buffy and features a very similar villain although with the added danger of mind control (similar to the episode “Bad Eggs”). With a plot reminiscent of two actual episodes, one would expect that this book nails the overall feel of the early episodes of the season. There were a few issues that keep that from being the case, starting with that recurring Buffy novelization problem of visions by the protagonist. One gets the feeling that a lot of these writers rewatched the movie before writing their books as Buffy’s dreams are constantly referenced in the books whereas they were totally disregarded in the show. The other biggest problem in this book was Buffy’s slow reaction to the danger her friends were in.
In Colony, the school is visited by a guest speaker who is actually an Ant Queen whose goal is to reproduce and build an Ant Colony. Buffy sees many of her friends and Watcher under mind control, and even suffering from body horror out of Cronenberg (Xander develops a giant thorax, other characters develop Ant mouths) but routinely takes no action or doesn’t acknowledge the seriousness of the situation. It’s difficult to criticize a book with a ridiculous plot (and a giant demon that resembles the Lucky Charms Leprechaun) for not taking things seriously enough, but the characters treating the situation as not serious removed any tension from this book.
This is a Stake Your Own Adventure book where the reader makes choices and tries to navigate through to a happy ending. In that regard this book did a better job that either of the previous two installments (although I preferred the story more in The Suicide King). The choices offered to the character were more in line with actual paths Buffy might take in the show, and I made it through with only one wrong choice. My one wrong choice involved whether Buffy should ask Xander about what was going on with him or go patrolling and look for Angel. It was one of those situations where Buffy made a few other decisions after the one I made which ended up killing her but overall it didn’t feel completely unfair. This book also didn’t have the same problem as Keep Me in Mind where the choices were obvious based on page numberings which one you should pick. Here I jumped back and forth across the book and reached the end so if there was a more direct path through it I missed out on it.
The cleverest part of this book involved the purpose of the personality test that the students were all required to take (determining what role they’d have in the ant colony). The twist felt like a well thought out reason for the villain assuming the identity that she was posing under. I still have another Stake Your Own Adventure to go and am hoping for one that feels accurate to the series and offers realistic choices laid out in a non-predictable manner. So far each of these books has been lacking in at least one of those areas, but I am still enjoying the general idea of reading these and navigating my own way through a Buffy episode.
In Colony, the school is visited by a guest speaker who is actually an Ant Queen whose goal is to reproduce and build an Ant Colony. Buffy sees many of her friends and Watcher under mind control, and even suffering from body horror out of Cronenberg (Xander develops a giant thorax, other characters develop Ant mouths) but routinely takes no action or doesn’t acknowledge the seriousness of the situation. It’s difficult to criticize a book with a ridiculous plot (and a giant demon that resembles the Lucky Charms Leprechaun) for not taking things seriously enough, but the characters treating the situation as not serious removed any tension from this book.
This is a Stake Your Own Adventure book where the reader makes choices and tries to navigate through to a happy ending. In that regard this book did a better job that either of the previous two installments (although I preferred the story more in The Suicide King). The choices offered to the character were more in line with actual paths Buffy might take in the show, and I made it through with only one wrong choice. My one wrong choice involved whether Buffy should ask Xander about what was going on with him or go patrolling and look for Angel. It was one of those situations where Buffy made a few other decisions after the one I made which ended up killing her but overall it didn’t feel completely unfair. This book also didn’t have the same problem as Keep Me in Mind where the choices were obvious based on page numberings which one you should pick. Here I jumped back and forth across the book and reached the end so if there was a more direct path through it I missed out on it.
The cleverest part of this book involved the purpose of the personality test that the students were all required to take (determining what role they’d have in the ant colony). The twist felt like a well thought out reason for the villain assuming the identity that she was posing under. I still have another Stake Your Own Adventure to go and am hoping for one that feels accurate to the series and offers realistic choices laid out in a non-predictable manner. So far each of these books has been lacking in at least one of those areas, but I am still enjoying the general idea of reading these and navigating my own way through a Buffy episode.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews