Slayers & Vampires: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Buffy & Angel

by Edward Gross, Mark A. Altman

Two decades after its groundbreaking debut, millions of fans worldwide remain enthralled with the incredible exploits of Joss Whedon's Buffy Summers, the slayer and feminist icon who saved the world . . . a lot; as well as Angel, the tortured vampire with a soul who fought against the apocalyptic forces of evil. Now, go behind-the-scenes of these legendary series that ushered in the new Golden Age of Television, with the candid recollections of writers, creators, executives, programmers, critics, and cast members. Together they unveil the oftentimes shocking true story of how a failed motion picture became an acclaimed cult television series, how that show became a pawn between two networks, and the spin-off series that was as engaging as everything that came before. This is the amazing true story of Buffy and the friends, vampires, slayers, and demons who changed television forever.

Genres: Nonfiction, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Audiobook, Tv, Horror, Vampires, Pop Culture

528 pages, Hardcover

Published September 26, 2017

About the author

Edward Gross is a veteran entertainment journalist who took his childhood passion for film and television and turned it into a career. As a student at Hofstra University, while most of the staff of The New Voice was interviewing the likes of student senators and faculty members, he was speaking to people like playwright Neil Simon (awarded an honorary degree by the school), Curtis Sliwa of New York’s Guardian Angels, Dr. Daniel Schwartz, the police psychiatrist who interviewed both David Berkowitz and Mark David Chapman; and James Bond director John Glen. Early on he sold pieces to New York Nightlife, Starlog and Filmfax magazines and was on his way.
Over the years he would not only become a correspondent for Starlog, but part of the editorial staff of Fangoria, Cinefantastique, SFX, Cinescape, Sci-Fi Now, Not of This Earth, RetroVision, Life Story, Movie Magic, Film Fantasy and TV Magic. Online he was Executive Editor, US for Empire Online, Film and TV Editor at Closer Weekly, Life & Style, and In Touch Weekly, and Nostalgia Editor for DoYouRemember? Currently he is senior editor at Geek magazine, and editor and podcast host for Voices from Krypton (devoted to the superhero genre), TV RetroVision (classic television) and Vampires and Slayers (the name says it all).
In addition to the oral history books he’s written with Mark A. Altman, Gross’ other titles include Secret File: The Making of a Wiseguy and The Unofficial 25th Anniversary Odd Couple Companion; X-Files Confidential; Spider-Man Confidential; Planet of the Apes Revisited with Joe Russo and Larry Landsman; Rocky: The Ultimate Guide; and Stargate: SG1 — In Their Own Words.

Reviews

[Bunny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sneak preview received via Netgalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

::taps fingers::

A disclaimer.

If there is ever a subject I am going to be extremely critical of, it will be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you don't know, the fandom feels I have are very strong, very deep, very emotional, very intense. I have bookshelves lined with books about Buffy, a container of memorabilia dating back to the early days of the show, and an encyclopedic knowledge of both the show, the spin-off, Whedon's other projects, the actors themselves, down to one off bit players, their post-Whedon acting projects, as well as the writers, producers, and costumers who made this show what it was.

I read Joss Whedon: The Biography three years ago, and enjoyed it immensely. It perfectly captured the feeling of what it was like to watch the show as it aired, as well as how it is to be a fan 20 years later*. It did brush over some of the darker sides of that experience, which was not surprising, all things considered.

You put the word "uncensored" and "unauthorized" in front of me, I'm going to expect a bit more from you. I am certainly not going to expect an incorrect quote within the first ten pages.



Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe the properly edited, non ARC version corrects that glaring error of a pretty iconic moment.

I don't get the feeling this is going to be what I wanted from this book. Again, it is a sneak preview, you don't get into the guts of the thing. But this feels like...yeah.

Also, it's painfully repetitive. I enjoy the format, interviews by the actors, the writers, producers, and some people who I'm pretty sure didn't work on Buffy but are still major Hollywood players? At least, I don't recognize their names. Maybe they were the little people, I say jokingly.

But these are interviews C&P'ed together to fit the format of each chapter. Which means I read two separate Charisma Carpenter interviews, separated by other interview blurbs, about how she wore flip flops and overalls to her audition.

I don't believe that will be the only time through the book this occurs. And that's not a style that lends itself to enjoyment. The anecdote is great! The first time.

This feels like fanboying lip service. And again, I have bookshelves already dedicated to that. Christopher Golden's Buffy the Vampire Slayer 20 Years of Slaying: The Watcher’s Guide Authorized comes out next week, I'll be saving my money for that one.

* JFC I'M SO OLD.

[robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

even before the recent statements made by charisma carpenter and other buffy actors, the glorification of joss whedon in this book was overbearing to read. there are entire sections that just describe his writing career and detail information about his previous works, which is irrelevant considering the premise is focused on the history of buffy and angel. certain quotes from charisma and james marsters hint at whedon's abusive and unprofessional behaviour on set, but this is completely undercut by the relentless drove of quotes from writers, directors, producers etc. who herald whedon as a "god" of writing, in that exact phrasing. regarding angel, there are quotes from charisma stating she didn't like what they were doing with her character, implying it was a response to her personal life, and this is sandwiched between quotes from male writers saying how much they loved the plot. not to mention the hypocrisy of whedon being considered a "feminist icon" for creating a show about empowering women when in fact he treated his female actors disgustingly on set. it's about time industry top dogs, especially men, stop giving people like whedon a pass for being abusers in both their personal and professional lives simply because they're considered to be talented at their jobs. the actors who have suffered at his hands deserve to be heard, respected, and supported.

[Kirsty ❤️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with unauthorised books is they never really give the greatest version of a story as everything is gained second hand. This is no exception. Made up from anecdotes and interviews that can be found elsewhere it's quite a comprehensive book that will save a casual fan hours of trawling through the internet for information.

However i suspect the more ardent fans will know it already or have the information stored somewhere themselves. It's probably not the greatest book for the die hard fan but for those with slightly more of a passing interesting it's not a bad read.

Free arc from netgalley

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book in a goodreads drawing.

An oral history about the Whedon-verse. Some good stories here, but we now know a little more about Joss Whedon than we did when this book was written.

Informative, but takes itself rather too seriously for a book about a couple of television shows.

[Dawnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly i can't say that this was particularly great for me.
I LOVE the idea. I LOVED Buffy. I grew up with her, i still love watching the show and i love what it offered for me as well as any other generation be it a girl, woman, boy or man watching the show -everyone can find someone they can relate to and love.
So when ever i see a Buffy book? I HAVE to give it a try. What is better than combining the two loves of my life? Buffy and Books?

Sadly this book feels very unfinished and choppy.
I have nothing against books that are completely made up out of what people said in some where before and simply put all those quotes together. Actually one of my all time favourite books "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk" is exactly that - a book completely made up of previous given interview of different people.

But sadly this book is not anywhere near the level that is "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk".
In this book we get all those people talking about buffy, including the actors and the creators BUT we get a lot of the same things said over and over in the same chapter by the same person from different quotes.
Which i just don't understand.
Give me a quote from Joss Whendon about what he wanted to create by creating buffy, or give me two as long as he is NOT saying the exact same thing. But don't give me three or four quotes that more or less say the EXACT same thing about what he wanted to create by creating Buffy. Why would i need the same thing be said so often? I get it the first time!

So sadly... this book is not one that worked for me even though i wish it did because i LOVE the idea. I think its wonderful to have all those things people said about buffy and Angel influcend their lives in a book would be great. But this book, and how it is done sadly wasn't that for me.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read opus for fans of Buffy and/or Angel.

[Adam Whitehead · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer started airing. Over the course of seven seasons, it became a pop culture phenomenon and one of the most critically-acclaimed network TV shows of all time. It spawned a hit spin-off show, Angel, which ran for five seasons and did almost as well. The shows introduced a mixture of comedy, horror and character drama that became a template for many series and movies that followed them, but creator Joss Whedon would become an increasingly polarising and controversial figure.

The story of the development of Buffy and Angel has been told before, but Mark Altman and Edward Gross take a slightly difference tack with this 2017 volume by leaning heavily on oral accounts provided by the writing staff and some of the actors. This is a similar format to their earlier two Star Trek books and subsequent volume on Battlestar Galactica (and they have since produced similar volumes on James Bond, Star Wars and John Wick).

Reading in 2024, the book has a slightly different feel due to the well-publicised allegations from 2021 that Whedon created a toxic working atmosphere on Buffy and Angel before he departed both shows (the final two seasons of Buffy were helmed by Marti Noxon and Angel was overseen by a succession of different showrunners, including David Greenwalt, Tim Minear and Jeffrey Bell). These allegations followed earlier complaints that Whedon had bullied castmembers on the 2017 film Justice League, which he'd overseen reshoots on. This book, which just predates those allegations, is surprisingly candid on the fact that working conditions, particularly on Buffy, were often difficult and sometimes unprofessional.

Compared to the authors' other book on Battlestar, this tome is a little more disappointing. This is partially because it tries to cram much more in: twelve seasons of Buffy and Angel, not to mention some bleed-over into discussions about Firefly (the production and abrupt cancellation of which had consequences for Whedon's other shows), as opposed to six seasons of Battlestar (the four for the newer version of the show, the original and Galactica 1980). This means there is less time for discussion of individual episodes, with only the most prominent episodes getting a lot of coverage. Unfortunately there's a lot of repetition here for anyone who's familiar with coverage of the show from web articles and magazine articles back in the day.

There's also an issue in that actors seem much less willing to take part in the projet: there's a much greater reliance here on stock interviews rather than new interviews undertaken just for this book. Only Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters get a lot of new discussion time, Nicholas Brendon gets almost none and stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz are primarily quoted from pre-existing interviews. This absence sees some Buffy critics called in to discuss the show's meaning and accomplishments, and no offence to their expertise, but there's dozens of books out there which have the space to do that a lot better.

The book does do better with the writers' contributions, with the likes of Tim Minear and Dave Greenwalt having a lot to say about television writing and production. Whedon himself gets quoted a fair bit but did not give new interviews for the book, unlike Ron Moore for the Battlestar tome, which makes for a less compelling read. There is some interesting stuff about the mythologising of Whedon, though, and even his most ardent friends and supporters in the book acknowledge he could be mercurial and difficult to work with.

The most fascinating material comes from interviews with Carpenter, who acknowledges her own faults on-set (getting a new haircut or tattoo mid-filming of an episode) and struggling with self-confidence issues, whilst struggling with her treatment by Whedon, who could be kind and generous to her one moment (like giving her a lead role on Angel in the first place) and harsh and judgemental the next.

There is much in the book that is interesting: Minear's journey in adapting to the writing of the show and driving it forwards, and his take-no-prisoners attitude which fascinated Whedon as much as it could annoy other people, is particularly noteworthy. The book also has a genuine emotional moment as it recounts Glenn Quinn's difficulties working on the show and the attempts by co-stars David Boreanaz and Christian Kane to help him out which ultimately did not pan out, with Quinn dying of an accidental drug overdose in 2002.

Compared to the Battlestar tome, Slayers & Vampires: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized, Oral History of Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel (***½) falls a little flat as it has nowhere near as many cast and crew contributing new material to it, forcing it to fall back on well-known anecdotes and interviews, as well as critical analyses that doesn't feel entirely appropriate to the book. There's also too many seasons and episodes to cover even in the generous 520 pages of material here (the Battlestar book gets 200 pages more, and it feels like the two franchises maybe should have inverted that). But there is enough new material, especially on the writing and production process of both shows, to make it worthwhile to established fans.

[Hrmcginty · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Makes we want to go back and rewatch both series from the beginning.

[Iza Brekilien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and the editor for sending me this book in exchange of an honest review.

In case you didn't know, I'm a huge Buffy/Angel fan. The first time I saw that title on a TV program : "Buffy the vampire slayer", I thought it was completely ridiculous and I would never watch it. Then I happened upon it one cold, rainy saturday evening and I got hooked. Now I have all the DVDs and Spike will be one of my favorite TV characters for ever ! So of course, when I saw this book on Negalley, I jumped on my seat and requested it.

It wasn't exactly what I could have been hoping for. In fact, reading it felt like watching a bonus on a DVD. I even wondered at some point if that wasn't the original purpose of this book - a script for a bonus. There is an introduction by the authors, then just bits of interviews pieced together, often repetitive. And at the end, no conclusion, which felt odd.

All the seasons are not explored, neither is the Angel series. You read mainly about how the series came to be born, then how some of the actors were chosen, then there are a few anecdotes about the first season and a little less about the second. And then it ends abruptly. Nothing much about the other seasons, nothing very deep about Angel, so the word "complete" in the title was misleading.

I knew most of what had been said, being an "old" Buffy fan and a hardcore Joss Whedon fan, I'd already read and watched everything I could find for years. I guess the "uncensored" part of the title refers to a few criticisms here and there, but it was mostly praise.

However, it was a very quick and agreeable read, it made me want to watch the shows again.

[Keith Chawgo · Rating 4 out of 5]

TV experts Edward Gross and Mark Altman talked to almost 100 writers, producers, directors, filmmakers, sociologists and stars from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel in new and vintage interviews from their personal archives
Edward Gross and Mark A Altman have lovingly put together a very detailed book consisting of interviews from Joss Whedon, Guillermo del Toro, Felicia Day, Anthony Stewart Head, Charisma Carpenter, James Marsters, David Boreanaz, Amy Acker, J. August Richards, Eliza Dushku, Christian Kane, Julie Benz just to name a few.

If you are a fan of the two series, then you certainly can not go wrong with this extremely in depth but this does create a difficulty with its overall style. The book feels like a panel show at Comic-Con and though this is not necessarily a bad thing, it just tends to jump from scenario to scenario and sometimes the thread gets lost within the text.

This is not a bad thing but if you are a casual fan of Buffy and Angel, this may not be the book for you as there is a lot lost within the detail. If you are a massive fan and love everything Buffy and Angel then you will relish this book and its many nuances.

There is a lot of history on Joss Whedon himself which does make sense as he is the God of the Buffy universe and it is the product of his brain that we were given this gift. I think it is important to note that Buffy did change the face of television as we know it that merged soap opera and episodic television that had a season story arch with individual storylines that kept the characters and their relationships changing. These story arcs would carry through the entirety of the series. Using this format, many shows would adopt this structure and this has now become the template for television shows today.

The book is excellent though as stated it does get bogged down with detail and other information that sometimes doesn’t fit in with the overall context of the book. Recommended for the die hard fans.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learned a lot about some of my favorite television from this book. Really fascinating to learn about how the seasons and episodes were crafted and to learn about writing in general: have always been a big fan of Joss Whedon and loved learning about his method.

I have to say though, for such a feminist show which created a feminist movement and had so many male writers who proclaim to be feminists, there was a section about Charisma Carpenter’s pregnancy during the Angel series that was extremely disappointing. Their reactions to her pregnancy were not only unnecessary, but unacceptable. Maybe they wouldn’t say the same things in an interview today, but they colored what should have been one of the most beautiful moments of her life with sadness. They made her feel (and certainly they seemed to feel) like she was ruining the series... (Joss was actually angry apparently) the planned storyline because of what she chose to do with her body. So then they made her pregnant on the show and as soon as she gave birth, they put her in a coma and then killed her. What does that tell us about the truth of women in Whedonverse?

[Shashank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buffy being my favorite show, and also being a fan of Angel this book was a lot of fun for me. 80% is composed of interviews with the MANY writers who worked on the shows. I was familiar with most of them [a lot went on to write/produce other great shows]. I came to the realization no one writer got the whole show, each had particular aspects[the comedy, certain metaphors or arcs] that they were completely in tune with while other aspects didn’t click with them. Buffy is one of those rare shows where the sum is greater than the parts, and the shows power, depth and fun is greater than any one writer’s vision….which is pretty cool.

Two things kept me from giving the book five stars. One, I wished they had been able to get interviews with more of the actors. Second my views on both shows are different then the authors/editors who made some very generalized assessments which I found to be crazy and occasionally they were wrong about small details.

Still looking forward to reading their oral histories of Star Trek.

[Parker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Buffy and oral histories so this should be a banger, but it's compiled so poorly. So many anecdotes are told by multiple people and sometimes the same people twice or three times. Also, there's a flow that these kinds of books need to keep the story going forward and this book feels random at times, with one story not leading into the next. They seem haphazardly placed. However, this book does focus on the writers' room, and that's exactly what I would have wanted out of it, so it's not all bad.

[Linds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thorough telling of Buffy and Angel from the cast, crew, writers, and producers. This books has deep cuts and is not really for casual fans. If the names Martin Noxon and David Greenwaldt mean nothing this book’s not for you.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty interesting read, even if there wasn't a whole bunch of new information that I didn't already know.

It's filled with a lot of insight from noteworthy people, including Joss, various writers, directors, producers, and actors from both Buffy and Angel.

The book is split up pretty logically; it opens talking about the movie, and then how they transitioned the movie into a show. From then on, there's pretty much a chapter per season of Buffy, a chapter per season of Angel, and then a quick note at the end about the cultural influence.

The first few seasons of Buffy talked more about the emotional depth of the storylines, which I'm already way familiar with and it was fine to just read about Buffy because I love it. But for me it got more interesting as they reached Season 6/7, and then into Angel, because here it started talking more about the logistics behind the show; how they came up with certain storylines, how certain characters were cast or removed, the network dramas, scriptwriting dramas, etc.

Also, I was left cringing pretty bad when reading Charisma Carpenter talking about her exit from the show........

My main gripe with the book is that due to the nature of it, sometimes it is a bit repetitive; there are a couple of occasions where the same quote is used in a couple of different places, and there are also times where several people all say essentially the same, or tell the same kind of anecdote.

Some of the sections also flow a little better than others; while it's split up into chapters by season, there are times where it will have a bunch of people talking about one aspect of the season, and then suddenly it'll mention something else that happened way earlier in the season, and have people talk about that. So the chronology could be a little better.

I would also say it would be nice to have some reference point for where all of the interviews came from; whether they were exclusively done in preparation for the book, or had been taken from another public interview/talk/panel.

But overall, a good read, it had interesting insight into the making of the show, and any time I can read about how excellent Buffy is is always gonna be a good time for me.

[Danielle Long · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I thought it was going to be. Since it is a unauthorized history of the Buffy and Angel. This book was more "interviews" from the cast and creator than actual background.

[Kerstin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not actually that great but I could never give a low score to anything that celebrates Buffy

[Indah Threez Lestari · Rating 3 out of 5]

444 - 2020

[Alex Linschoten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable but ultimately didn't deliver enough for me, especially for a book that is as long as S&V is. Buffy is consistently evaluated as being one of the great TV series of my lifetime. I enjoyed it when it first released and have returned to it at various points since. This book lets you into some of the production challenges, what the writers were thinking as each season developed its own momentum and a little bit from the actors as well.

[William Dury · Rating 3 out of 5]

My all time favorite show is “Buffy.” It never quite gets mentioned with “The Wire,” “The Sopranos “ or “Breaking Bad” so it has a place in my heart. Intrigued by the title I saw the movie back in the day after renting a video tape from a video store. Unimpressive. Watched an early episode about exploding cheerleaders. Passed again. Then, in the second year during “Monday Night Football” I began to switch to “Buffy” during the commercials. I realized after a while that I liked the vampires more than the football. “Halloween” hooked me. “Honey I’m home” is right up there with “Carm, after seventeen years of marriage I’m not going to make you an accessory after the fact.” My wife and I rewatched the entire series a couple of years ago when it was still on Netflix, watching only one show a week. It took three years to get through. Holds up well, has not aged drastically, or at all, really.

“Slayers and Vampires” is an oral history of the production of “Buffy” and “Angel.” The stories you’ve heard of the long hours involved in television production are true. Sounds like 14-16 hours a day, probably six days a week, likely six months out of the year. Very good salaries, though, compared to the rest of us.

Interesting stories. It is startling to me that the powers that be at “Angel” were upset when Charisma Carpenter became pregnant. The pregnancy was written into the show, her character was put into a coma and killed off the next year. Sounds like a Title 7 violation. The rest of the stories are much happier. Good read.
——-
Checked out “Angel” Season 3 from the library. I watched the first two seasons when they originally aired, and again on Netflix recently before they were pulled. I never got hooked, convinced there was an issue with the Los Angeles backdrop, not persuaded by the villainous law firm, maybe the high school backdrop was the only way to make it this kind of thing work.

Jeeze. Was I ever wrong. Darla staking herself to give birth with Angel and Fred kneeling in an alley with rain pouring down on them, Angel’s jacket over Fred’s head giving her the full Virgin Mary, OMG we’re looking at a Nativity scene? Holy smokes. This just in: Whedon and Company made some good TV back in the 2000’s.

Oh, the humor. Relentless. Continual, but the drama remains intact, if not heightened. As Quentin Tarantino re: “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” “The funny parts were really funny and the scary parts were really scary.” Yeah. Neat trick.

[Jenny GB · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Buffy and Angel so I was hoping I would love this book. I was disappointed and I think the problem mostly came down to editing. The book is roughly organized into chapters that follow all the seasons of Buffy and Angel. However, the content in each chapter doesn't necessarily follow the "theme" of the chapter and inside of each chapter you will frequently read several pages of similar comments from various people. Even more baffling, you'll sometimes get the same comment from the same person multiple times over in the span of a few pages. Why? I think this really needed to be edited for flow and clarity to make it an enjoyable read. I raced through it because I wasn't enjoying the repetition and wanted to get through to the end. There's also not a lot of content here that fans wouldn't already know about through other interviews that this content is culled from. I feel like I've read or watched some of the comments printed here verbatim elsewhere, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly where. There's some drama with Charisma Carpenter that they try to drag out and some drama about whether or not David Boreanaz is a nice guy or a jerk, and a few cast or crew members that felt ill-served by the show, but beyond that it's everyone loving the show and calling Whedon a god which gets really boring by page 500 (again, this needs some editing!). I could have gotten into this if the authors had spent some time cutting to the essential comments, eliminating repetition, and in general trying to make this more of a story. Instead, it seemed like a massive dump of any interview they could find into one place and as the reader, we're left to sort it out for ourselves. It's a shame because if this was better made I would buy it to read because these shows are my favorite guilty pleasures, but as it turns out I'm glad I checked it out from the library to check it out first.

[Carolina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. I loved Buffy for its witty dialogue, pop culture references and the originality -- for the time -- of its kick-ass hero. I picked this up hoping to be reminded of what I liked about the show and to get a sense of of what it was like to be part of the creative process. This book disappointed on several levels. First, the interviews were not very clearly organized; it is frequently confusing to trace the roles, especially, of various crew members and writers since they were not always identified. The fact that some of the interviews consisted of one or two sentences without much background explanation suggested that people's words were being pulled out of context. The biggest, problem, however, was the writing style. One intro essay begins with "no mistake, Joss Whedon is a god...." Fine to like your subject, there is much to admire, but also acknowledging some of the challenges would be helpful. The info-tainment(?) writing style -- "Whedon was a script doctor during Hollywood's go go 90s..." just set my teeth on edge. The overall effect read like a fawning attempt to curry favor with a powerful Hollywood person.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've tried for a week to get into this book. I'm 30% through it, and so far it's chapter after chapter of various people fellating Joss Whedon endlessly. Every third paragraph someone is mentioning what a genius the man is. The entire book (at least so far) is a collection of interviews, cut and pasted to kind of follow a theme by chapter. Sort of. I'm a big Buffy fan, but I'm getting nothing out of the book aside from occasional titilation of some guy saying "Oh, but THIS person was an asshole." - it's boring. I don't need to hear for the umpteenth time that Joss is a genius. I don't need to see 400 exerpts from the lone feminist writer they got to agree to be involved in which she validates and glorifies everything Joss did without critical examination. I was hoping for real stories about times they all had together, but for every anecdote from James Marsters there are ten paragraphs that, once again, climb into Joss' lap and tell him they love him best.

[Emma Dargue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay collection of snippets of interviews from the production team behind Buffy and Angel and the cast including Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz. However the very structure of the book I found jarring as it was quite episodic and not a whole interview it meant that I struggled to get into it quickly. My other complaint about this book is that it is overlong and should have maybe been split in to two books focusing on each individual programme rather than creating a book of nearly 600 pages in length which I felt in places dragged either due to the structure or indeed just the sheer length. However saying this I did enjoy the little snippets of behind the scenes stuff like all the controversy going on behind the scenes at Angel. Nevertheless definitely not one of my favourite books I have read about this particular subject 2.5 stars to 3 stars.

[Jonathan Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weirdly, the Angel section is fairly interesting and full of the behind the scenes detail and gossip you'd want from one of these, but the Buffy section, the majority of the book, is full of the same talk about the philosophy and themes of the show that fans have been reading about for nearly twenty years.

Oh, and PLENTY of praise for Joss Whedon which is poorly timed given recent accusations and suspect given the personal connections the authors outline in their introductions. It comes off as cherry picking stories to support a friend.

[Richard Guion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is satisfying for the hardcore Buffy & Angel geeks who watched every episode. All the inside gossip about the creation of both shows, mostly from the writers perspective. I was actually more interested in certain things that didn’t work for me when these shows were broadcast. I really didn’t like Buffy Season 6, where she had a weird relationship with Spike. I also thought many Angel episodes were uneven, and I hated season 4 with what happened to Cordelia. They authors interview numerous people on all of these subjects.

[Terri-Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! It brought back many good memories of both shows and made me want to watch them again from the beginning.

[Karena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for all Buffy/ Angel fans.

[Jöse Sénder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesante colección de entrevistas a los guionistas, directores y parte del cast de Buffy Cazavampiros, con un montón de datos curiosos sobre la serie.

[☘Tara Sheehan☘ · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I saw this was coming out I had to jump in and check it out. I was a teenager when Buffy exploded onto the scene giving young girls like me our first real modern female that kicked butt instead of getting killed. She slayed the ditzy blonde, weak girl trope that was so beloved by cinema and showed us you could be strong and beautiful.

Along with her we got a cast of wonderful characters you could sink your teeth into and lessons about love, loss, family, and loyalty. Who can forget some of the iconic moments like: her mother’s death, her & Angel finally giving into that spark, her killing Angel, Willow falling in love with Tara so we had LGBTQ representation, the musical, Buffy’s death and resurrection, and I could go on because Whedon gave us a show that allowed us to look at our teen lives a whole new way.

Gross & Altman’s book is essentially like sitting down in front of a fan panel and getting to hear producers, actors, writers and directors all take turns talking and not necessarily just about Buffy & Angel. You also hear from people who seemed to have nothing to do with either show but were included because they seemed to have an opinion on the show, Joss Whedon or maybe they worked on a different project with him.

There’s a good chunk of those involved with the original 90s campy movie talking about why it sucked or why it didn’t and whose fault it was that critics hated it. Because Whedon is not just the god of Buffyverse there is a lot of discussion between ‘panelists’ regarding his other projects such as Alien Resurrection, Toy Story, Roseanne, etc.

Admittedly I was thrown a bit by the style, I don’t know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t this so despite my permanent devotion to a show that shaped my teen years I don't think I'm the right audience for this. I worship Whedon and all that he creates, I'm on the Team who agrees he's God's gift to cinema. Maybe I was expecting something with more focus on Buffy & Angel so all the rest of the stuff whether it was talking about his other projects or the sniping that seemed to come through about why things didn't work out because someone changed what the original project was meant to be just annoyed me.

You learn A LOT about the actors and people involved with the show behind the scenes; how they started out, how they ended up on Buffy, what they thought of each other and the characters they played. You also get to learn about how the show came to be, where Whedon got the concept from, why the style of the show and movie are so different, and how their lives were impacted by being involved with something so iconic.

I’ve never read anything by them before although they’ve created histories of Star Trek and J.J. Abrams so if you’re familiar with their style you’ll probably not have a “WTH is going on here?” reaction like I did with the ‘panel’ like format. For me it felt too much like they just sat down and transcribed a bunch of interviews and the way they laid them out didn’t necessarily flow as the topics being discussed would jump around.

On a positive side you get to learn a whole lot about people in Hollywood who may or may not have been involved with an iconic television show.