Review: Slayer

Slayer by Kiersten White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've been waiting for this book pretty eagerly for a while, it being a spinoff-slash-sequel to one of my all-time favorite series. And it's good to know that like many in the YA community, Kiersten White is a fan too, and it shows in her work. That said, though, I read this book and couldn't help but feel a certain sense of disappointment, which I think stems from the fact that it's a Kiersten White book and, for some reason, she's always been one of those authors I'm not super able to get into, for whatever reason.


White does nail the tone of Buffy pretty well, and especially does a good job of writing a world after the main series, after the comics, where Buffy isn't looked up at with nearly the same degree of respect. That deconstruction, especially from the point of view of a most reluctant Slayer (Nina having been trained as a medic), is White's real stroke of genius, as is her often accurate replication of Whedon's signature dialogue style ("stabby stabby kill girl," anyone?) That said, though, this book suffers from a bit of overlength, like it's trying to cram two or three Buffy episodes into one, and has a very muddled and confusing storyline, especially in the second half. Though the ending is an intriguing cliffhanger, it left me scratching my head more than anything else.

Where White shines the most, though, is her cast of characters. Nina is a very engaging narrator, who, to me, combines aspects of personality from both Buffy and Dawn. And a little bit Willow - I swear, there are a couple of scenes where it's implied that Nina's queer. Maybe White will write her as bi going forward? I'd hope so, because as groundbreaking as Willow was for gay rep twenty years ago, I still feel that Whedon dropped the ball by presenting sexuality as more binary than spectrum. In any case, the way White writes Cillian - a gay boy who's very gentle but more than capable too - shows that her handling of gay characters is leaps and bounds ahead of And I Darken, where I felt that she relied way too much on stereotypes to characterize Radu.

I'm guessing that the upcoming second book is going to be the conclusion of a duology, since that's been the trend in YA for a while. Though while most of the time I'm not into duologies, I'm down for this being one, because I hope that White doesn't take too long to wrap up this story.

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