War of the Sons

[zannes]

Has anyone read this book? I've read War of the Sons, and it left me with mixed feelings.

I suppose part of the problem is that the books tend to be larger in scope, and I'm always left frustrated that we, as viewers, can't see time traveling adventures in 50's New York, huge kick-ass demon battles leaving dead littered behind them like crushed beer cans, and The Boys dressed as bellhops in an episode. So much happens off-screen (in these books), that it makes what happens in the episodes seem like they are telling a weaker story, if that makes sense. I know it's a budgetary thing, but it rankles a little.

Plus, the complete disconnect between book-verse and TV-verse can be off-putting. Dean meets the love of his life, but we never hear about her show-wise, even in passing. (Hint: it's not Lisa or Cassie.) I'm not sure whether that makes the Lisa retreat at the end of the season make more or less sense. Ruby has been rewrittten as a bad dating escapade that Sam still has wet dreams about. The Boys meet Abaddon and Lucifer's first wife Eisheth, who spent the whole book looking for her husband and who they bring back with them and dump in modern day to wander about at will, and none of that comes up?

I think reading these tie-ins frustrates me more than they are meant to, but the comics made me flip out completely (vampires?! REALLY? They didn't know they existed until late season 1!), so I'm not surprised. If I pretend I'm utterly blind to continuity or common-sense, then they aren't bad reading.

Comments

[mangacat201.livejournal.com]

Wow, they completely fucked up the timeline and canon and ALL? OHhhh I HATE THAT... I mean, I haven't actually bought any tie-ins since the official race for buffy ended (though I have a nice shiny little whole shelf of those) and I'm really glad that while most of those where not exactly dated to any story-arc or season really, they didn't mesh with canon (except maybe to pull a JR. in that OH THAT WAS ALL A DREAMTHINGAU) I mean, there's soooo many stories in that canon that haven't ever been told, is it so difficult to manage something that fits?
Cat

[zannes.livejournal.com]

The stories would be pretty great if I could reconcile them with what's going on on-screen. But so much stuff happens in these pages that never gets even an idle mention on the show - things that should be brought up because they could mean the difference between winning and losing the Apocalypse.

[babelmira.livejournal.com]

I tend to look on tie-ins the same why I do fic - it's all AU. Which given the quality of the books and the clear fact that most of the authors never seem to have laid eyes on the show, isn't far off the mark

[zannes.livejournal.com]

You pretty much have to look at it as AU. I had the same problem with the Buffy tie-ins. I read a few of thse one summer, and they had a ghost slayer that Buffy and friends communed with regularly to answer their slayer questions. She was never mentioned in the show.

[vampslayer04.livejournal.com]

Lucy Hanover, by chance? Because, iirc, she was mentioned once, briefly. Darned if I remember what episode, though.

I liked the Buffy tie-ins, once they got over the pointless rehashing of episodes they did early on.

[zannes.livejournal.com]

They mentioned Lucy Hanover in the voiceover once, when they went over the history of the Slayer in a commercial before the very first episode. I remember that because the commercial was awesome and I never saw it again. They may have mentioned her as a previous Slayer in some episode, but not in the context of, "Hey, I just walked the Ghost Roads with her last night and asked about that pesky Arjkejt demon. She said you need to impale it with charred hickory and cut off its hands to kill it." I think she may have even possessed Cordelia in one of the books to come to the living world to help defeat some apocalyptic something-or-other.

Some of the tie-ins were pretty entertaining, but the lack of connection between them and the series annoyed me.