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The Xander Years #1
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Xander Years, Vol. 1
Xander Harris finds himself torn between his unrequited love for Buffy, his feelings toward his best friend Willow, and his tumultuous romance with Cordelia. Original.
240 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
June 24, 2022
This is a prose adaptation of three Xander-centric early episodes of Buffy, Teacher's Pet by David Greenwalt, Inca Mummy Girl by Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer, and Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered by Marti Noxon. DeCandido did an excellent job with the stories, telling them from Xander's perspective and adding a bit of back-story and dialog that added a lot to the impact, but with subtlety. Xander always has Buffy in the back of his mind, but his relationship with Cordelia is both bittersweet and touching. This is one of the best of the Buffy adaptation books.
April 12, 2018
5 🌟
Nice to see Xander's experiences with love. Glad he was finally able to get a girlfriend. Hope he will be fine in the future.
Nice to see Xander's experiences with love. Glad he was finally able to get a girlfriend. Hope he will be fine in the future.
December 10, 2009
This book consists of three stories about Xander Harris, and for any Buffy fan you will recall the episodes, "Teachers Pet", "Inca Mummy Girl" and "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered". Reading this was like watching the episodes all over again except for being in the Head of Xander Harris and hearing some of his thought process.
I would have preferred something new or the author to go a little more in depth within each story, but it was a nice reminder of the show.
I would have preferred something new or the author to go a little more in depth within each story, but it was a nice reminder of the show.
April 6, 2025
What couldn't be more old school for someone my age as Buffy the Vampire Slayer the series?
My favorite show through my high school years at the end of the 1990s where I developed two television crushes. One of course was for the vampire with a soul, Angel, and the next was for Xander Harris.
Total opposites but how could you not find Xander crush worthy?
Even in the years that have followed with the downfall of Whedon and the very downward spiral of tragedy that has tarnished Nicholas Brendon's person health...I still have a fondness in my heart for Xander.
At times, he could be seen as a bit of an insensitive jerk but what high school boy wasn't?
Xander was funny in his snarky way and his adorable way, but he was loyal to Willow if not anyone else a complete 100%. He sometimes lacked confidence, had a very dysfunctional home life and needed a muzzle at times because he could never think before he spoke.
Getting a novelization written of three episodes that were more centered around Xander also could provide a little bit of depth for other characters such as Buffy, Giles, Cordelia, Oz, etc. "Teacher's Pet" written by David Greenwalt for the first season, "Inca Mummy Girl" written by Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer and "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" by Marti Noxon from season two are adapted by author Keith R.A. DeCandido.
The first of the three tackles Xander's infatuation with Buffy, Willow's obviously romantic feelings for her childhood friend and Xander developing a crush for the substitute biology teacher.
The second has Xander falling for an exchange student who just happens to be a beautiful girl with a deadly secret but the title...kind of spoils that for you. It introduces the concept that Xander could be given the benefit of the doubt in the romance department as long as he hasn't grown up with all the women available.
Willow is his friend, and Buffy is with Angel by this point so Xander could have happiness but living on a Hellmouth doesn't work fair for anyone.
The third one has a shift in the show's dynamic because now Angel has become Angelus, Willow is dating Oz and Xander has started to date Cordelia. What comes from this is finally reaching a last straw when Cordelia decides to break things off with Xander just because her friends think Xander is a loser.
Doing this on Valentine's Day is salt in the wounds for poor Xander so he decides to try a hand at dabbling in the dark arts which he should know by now is bad...and dumb.
Oddly enough, we get to see Cordelia get some focus on her more becoming personality traits which is a plus. DeCandido states in his acknowledgements that he could not do justice to the "Got the Love" scene from the episode so as a Buffy fan...IYKYK. For those not familiar with the show, it has to be watched to understand such regret.
The Xander Years Volume 1 is an excellent start to understanding the character of Xander Harris, yet I wish that it had gone in a more of chronological order the way The Angel Chronicles did.
To understand what I mean...tune in next review.
My favorite show through my high school years at the end of the 1990s where I developed two television crushes. One of course was for the vampire with a soul, Angel, and the next was for Xander Harris.
Total opposites but how could you not find Xander crush worthy?
Even in the years that have followed with the downfall of Whedon and the very downward spiral of tragedy that has tarnished Nicholas Brendon's person health...I still have a fondness in my heart for Xander.
At times, he could be seen as a bit of an insensitive jerk but what high school boy wasn't?
Xander was funny in his snarky way and his adorable way, but he was loyal to Willow if not anyone else a complete 100%. He sometimes lacked confidence, had a very dysfunctional home life and needed a muzzle at times because he could never think before he spoke.
Getting a novelization written of three episodes that were more centered around Xander also could provide a little bit of depth for other characters such as Buffy, Giles, Cordelia, Oz, etc. "Teacher's Pet" written by David Greenwalt for the first season, "Inca Mummy Girl" written by Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer and "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" by Marti Noxon from season two are adapted by author Keith R.A. DeCandido.
The first of the three tackles Xander's infatuation with Buffy, Willow's obviously romantic feelings for her childhood friend and Xander developing a crush for the substitute biology teacher.
The second has Xander falling for an exchange student who just happens to be a beautiful girl with a deadly secret but the title...kind of spoils that for you. It introduces the concept that Xander could be given the benefit of the doubt in the romance department as long as he hasn't grown up with all the women available.
Willow is his friend, and Buffy is with Angel by this point so Xander could have happiness but living on a Hellmouth doesn't work fair for anyone.
The third one has a shift in the show's dynamic because now Angel has become Angelus, Willow is dating Oz and Xander has started to date Cordelia. What comes from this is finally reaching a last straw when Cordelia decides to break things off with Xander just because her friends think Xander is a loser.
Doing this on Valentine's Day is salt in the wounds for poor Xander so he decides to try a hand at dabbling in the dark arts which he should know by now is bad...and dumb.
Oddly enough, we get to see Cordelia get some focus on her more becoming personality traits which is a plus. DeCandido states in his acknowledgements that he could not do justice to the "Got the Love" scene from the episode so as a Buffy fan...IYKYK. For those not familiar with the show, it has to be watched to understand such regret.
The Xander Years Volume 1 is an excellent start to understanding the character of Xander Harris, yet I wish that it had gone in a more of chronological order the way The Angel Chronicles did.
To understand what I mean...tune in next review.
July 18, 2018
The next installment of the Buffy novelization series is The Xander Years, Vol. 1 focusing on Xander Harris, the comic relief and every man of the Scooby Gang. The episodes revisited in prose from begin with "Teacher's Pet" (Season One, Episode Four), followed by "Inca Mummy Girl" (Season Two, Episode Four) and finally "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (Season Two, Episode Sixteen), Each episode is certainly very Xander focused, and the large gap in between episodes is handled fairly well by interludes told from Xander's perspective recapping the major events that happened in between the episodes. So why wasn't this a better read?
The main reason is the strength of the episodes recapped. Even die hard Buffy fans have to admit the first season is not exactly peak tv. "Teacher's Pet" is a very standard monster of the weak episode where there's no character growth or advancement of the characters. A science teacher at Buffy's school is decapitated and the replacement is a sexy woman who has the hots for Xander (and other virgin students). Based on that dubious info, as well as that a vampire is scared of whatever the creature is and that the topic in science class was insects, Buffy correctly guesses that the substitute teacher is a Praying Mantis woman. The whole thing is flimsy and conflicts with later Buffy lore about vampires being cowards around many other demons.
The second episode, "Inca Mummy Girl" is a stronger episode, but it suffers because it is essentially the exact same plot as "Teacher's Pet" but instead of a teacher it's a foreign exchange student who's actually a mummy. Xander has to laugh at one point that he has the world's worst taste in women, which is funny when there's several episodes between the two but back to back it just feels like writers out of ideas. At least in "Inca Mummy Girl" there is more of a character arc involving Xander choosing his friendship with Willow over the opportunity for love with Ampata, but a slog of a story followed by the exact same thing slightly better executed had me ready to put this book down.
Thankfully the last story, "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" is great. Coming from the end of Season Two, when one of the best shows in tv history was at its peak, everything is clicking. By this point Angel is evil, Cordelia and Xander have a relationship, and Oz is a regular cast members. In this episode, Xander and Cordelia break up. Heartbroken, Xander approaches witch Amy and asks her to cast a love spell that makes Cordelia fall in love with him so that he can instead break up with her. The spell goes wrong, affecting every other woman except for Cordelia. The setup allows great moments for Buffy, Joyce, Jenny Calendar and even Drucilla, and even features fun moments from Spike, Angel and Oz as well.
The basic problem with these character specific novelization installments is that if you want to read them all it jumbles up the chronology between the books. If you don't want to read them all, you're left with huge gaps in the storylines that, although summed up fine in between stories, leave you missing many of the best moments for the characters. The third story in this book is great, but for Xander fans you're missing out on the great Cordelia/Xander get together, all of their initial secrecy and jumping in right as they are breaking up.
The main reason is the strength of the episodes recapped. Even die hard Buffy fans have to admit the first season is not exactly peak tv. "Teacher's Pet" is a very standard monster of the weak episode where there's no character growth or advancement of the characters. A science teacher at Buffy's school is decapitated and the replacement is a sexy woman who has the hots for Xander (and other virgin students). Based on that dubious info, as well as that a vampire is scared of whatever the creature is and that the topic in science class was insects, Buffy correctly guesses that the substitute teacher is a Praying Mantis woman. The whole thing is flimsy and conflicts with later Buffy lore about vampires being cowards around many other demons.
The second episode, "Inca Mummy Girl" is a stronger episode, but it suffers because it is essentially the exact same plot as "Teacher's Pet" but instead of a teacher it's a foreign exchange student who's actually a mummy. Xander has to laugh at one point that he has the world's worst taste in women, which is funny when there's several episodes between the two but back to back it just feels like writers out of ideas. At least in "Inca Mummy Girl" there is more of a character arc involving Xander choosing his friendship with Willow over the opportunity for love with Ampata, but a slog of a story followed by the exact same thing slightly better executed had me ready to put this book down.
Thankfully the last story, "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" is great. Coming from the end of Season Two, when one of the best shows in tv history was at its peak, everything is clicking. By this point Angel is evil, Cordelia and Xander have a relationship, and Oz is a regular cast members. In this episode, Xander and Cordelia break up. Heartbroken, Xander approaches witch Amy and asks her to cast a love spell that makes Cordelia fall in love with him so that he can instead break up with her. The spell goes wrong, affecting every other woman except for Cordelia. The setup allows great moments for Buffy, Joyce, Jenny Calendar and even Drucilla, and even features fun moments from Spike, Angel and Oz as well.
The basic problem with these character specific novelization installments is that if you want to read them all it jumbles up the chronology between the books. If you don't want to read them all, you're left with huge gaps in the storylines that, although summed up fine in between stories, leave you missing many of the best moments for the characters. The third story in this book is great, but for Xander fans you're missing out on the great Cordelia/Xander get together, all of their initial secrecy and jumping in right as they are breaking up.
September 1, 2022
Another quick little novelisation of 3 episodes, this time centred around Xander - arguably the least interesting of the core Scoobies. But the episodes covered here are fun episodes (Teachers Pet, Inca Mummy Girl (apart from the racist aspects...) Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered)
I find Xander as a character troublesome, but I felt like there was just enough self deprecation throughout the inner monologue here that for the most part I didn't want to throw him out of the window.
I will give this one credit for the fact that the "between-episode" narrative (ie Xander sitting wistfully and reminiscing on each episode) actually did feel realistic, had a minor plot to it, and worked with the episodes functioning as "flashbacks". Especially compared with The Angel Chronicles, which felt like the interludes were there purely for page filling.
There were also a few times where it felt like the author took the tiniest bit of creative liberty to make the book read better than it would as a direct-from-screen novelisation - filling in some minor blanks where the episode sometimes threw us into the middle of a scene, or occasionally switching up the order of things when the episode cut between two different locations, the book instead just followed one location, then followed the other. So I enjoyed that.
My one critique of the writing would be that especially in Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered there were a few times (too many times) when the author just shoehorned in a quote from a different episode of the series, and had a character think "As this person once said..." which just felt a little too much like the author wanted to add in some wit and humour from the show.
Anyway, overall it was a fun read, especially one that only took me about 3 hours to read.
I find Xander as a character troublesome, but I felt like there was just enough self deprecation throughout the inner monologue here that for the most part I didn't want to throw him out of the window.
I will give this one credit for the fact that the "between-episode" narrative (ie Xander sitting wistfully and reminiscing on each episode) actually did feel realistic, had a minor plot to it, and worked with the episodes functioning as "flashbacks". Especially compared with The Angel Chronicles, which felt like the interludes were there purely for page filling.
There were also a few times where it felt like the author took the tiniest bit of creative liberty to make the book read better than it would as a direct-from-screen novelisation - filling in some minor blanks where the episode sometimes threw us into the middle of a scene, or occasionally switching up the order of things when the episode cut between two different locations, the book instead just followed one location, then followed the other. So I enjoyed that.
My one critique of the writing would be that especially in Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered there were a few times (too many times) when the author just shoehorned in a quote from a different episode of the series, and had a character think "As this person once said..." which just felt a little too much like the author wanted to add in some wit and humour from the show.
Anyway, overall it was a fun read, especially one that only took me about 3 hours to read.
April 29, 2020
One thing DeCandido has done in his write ups of these three episodes is that he adds memories and extra dialogue to the scenes. I LOVE IT. It makes it worthwhile to read the novelization in addition to watching the episode.
Xander gets a lot of hate among the fandom these days (probably because he is the character that Whedon has admitted was the most like himself in high school and it's popular to hate Joss Whedon now.) Personally, Xander has always been one of my top 3 fave characters on the show, and it's because he's an amalgamation of different guys I know in real life. Slightly sexist? Yes, in the way that even my feminist guy friends are without meaning to be. Feels stepped on by the opposite sex for no reason? Yes, in the way that all people do when their crushes turn them down, no matter what their sexual orientation. Obsessed with sex at 16? Yes. Man, my guy friends told me more about what goes on in a teenage boy's mind than I ever wanted to know.
These three stories always serve to remind me what I love about Xander. The cluelessness, the adorable dorky moments, and the witty one liners he throws out at inappropriate times. But also that he never has a problem admitting when he was wrong about something, he is equally as brave as the others even without special powers or notable intelligence, and he loves his friends completely. The narrative on these stories captured the flawed, but believable personality so well and managed to enhance the episodes without detracting from them.
Xander gets a lot of hate among the fandom these days (probably because he is the character that Whedon has admitted was the most like himself in high school and it's popular to hate Joss Whedon now.) Personally, Xander has always been one of my top 3 fave characters on the show, and it's because he's an amalgamation of different guys I know in real life. Slightly sexist? Yes, in the way that even my feminist guy friends are without meaning to be. Feels stepped on by the opposite sex for no reason? Yes, in the way that all people do when their crushes turn them down, no matter what their sexual orientation. Obsessed with sex at 16? Yes. Man, my guy friends told me more about what goes on in a teenage boy's mind than I ever wanted to know.
These three stories always serve to remind me what I love about Xander. The cluelessness, the adorable dorky moments, and the witty one liners he throws out at inappropriate times. But also that he never has a problem admitting when he was wrong about something, he is equally as brave as the others even without special powers or notable intelligence, and he loves his friends completely. The narrative on these stories captured the flawed, but believable personality so well and managed to enhance the episodes without detracting from them.
August 26, 2020
Blast from the past reading the novelisation version of the episodes "Teacher's Pet", "Inca Mummy Girl" and "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" through Xander's perspective.
Just wish there was more - well more of Xander's thoughts throughout the book
Inca Mummy Girl - i would love to read a prequel about Ampata - her real name, what happened to her - how she was chosen and her fate and then ends to her being awoken in the episode "Inca Mummy Girl" as I found Ampata a very interesting character.
Just wish there was more - well more of Xander's thoughts throughout the book
Inca Mummy Girl - i would love to read a prequel about Ampata - her real name, what happened to her - how she was chosen and her fate and then ends to her being awoken in the episode "Inca Mummy Girl" as I found Ampata a very interesting character.
October 20, 2020
This is a pretty straightforward novelisation of three episodes from the TV show: Teacher's Pet, Inca Mummy Girl and Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered. Three fun episodes made for three fun stories to read. Unfortunately, the book doesn't add anything that's not already on screen, but is well written that they did feel a lot like the episodes. Frankly, if you've time to read this, you might was well watch the show. The three stories are loosely tied together with short interval pieces featuring Xander as he thinks back over his failed love life.
January 20, 2021
This reads better than most of the novelization books that I have been working my way through. The author did a decent job fleshing out the story with more inner dialogue and throwbacks to previous episodes.
Xander was never my favorite member of the Scooby gang but most of his mishaps make for good episodes.
Xander was never my favorite member of the Scooby gang but most of his mishaps make for good episodes.
December 16, 2021
It was fun, stan cordelia chase <3 wish it didnt have the last line tho, although i think it was just for comedic affect lol xx i will also say i liked how this book made me feel for some of the side characters that show up just to get killed in the show x
June 6, 2018
Adaptation en livre de 3 épisodes de la série TV.
October 27, 2020
Three stories about Xander that follow three of the tv series. Silly Xander, always trying to find love. He does have some of the best one-liners, though.
October 24, 2022
A good look down memory lane from the TV series.
March 5, 2024
Episode recaps from seasons 1-2. I recommend reading before the ‘Angel Chronicles Volume 3’ though.
November 30, 2021
Re-read 11/16/2021 - I have more appreciation for these play-by-play novelizations than I used to. Maybe I'm just getting old.
*************
Original-
I know, ok? A novelization of 3 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: one star. WTF did I expect right?
I just didn't know novelizing a teleplay meant copying the dialogue directly and in between lines describing exactly what happened on screen with no alteration whatever. You'd think he'd add SOME original material. Is this even legal?
Anyway it was a gift.
*************
Original-
I know, ok? A novelization of 3 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: one star. WTF did I expect right?
I just didn't know novelizing a teleplay meant copying the dialogue directly and in between lines describing exactly what happened on screen with no alteration whatever. You'd think he'd add SOME original material. Is this even legal?
Anyway it was a gift.
December 14, 2011
Great fun! This recaps some of the best Xander episodes from the TV series. Poor Xander doesn't have too much luck in his love life, first he's the victim of a giant praying mantis. Then falls for an Incan mummy princess. And last, but not least, learns you should never use magic when it comes to love.
November 25, 2012
At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted to read stories based on a television show, even a show I like. But as I continued reading, I started to enjoy reading about Xander's misadventures and finding out how he saw things and what he thought.
August 2, 2013
This is another great novelisation of three classic Buffy episodes, this time with Xander's chaotic love life as the theme. As one of my favourite characters, I loved reading his adventures in this way, reminded me of why I loved the series so much.
October 24, 2009
I use to own this a long time ago. I loved Xander and I remember liking this.
February 25, 2019
Xander novelizations
Read
August 22, 2008The Xander Years; Volume 1 by Keith R. A. DeCandido
January 8, 2010
Buffyverse according to Xander's POV.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews