Holder

Set during season 3, Buffy and the Scobbie Gang are asked to help the Gatekeeper, an ailing protector of a gate to and from portels to hell worlds and savage plains. The Gatekeepers enemys, sensing his weakness, attack his house, which is an impossably strutered landscape working as the gate. I don't want to give away too much, but it is one of the better Buffy books (well, it's really a triligy). Everyone gets a chance to shine; Willow is a good sorcerer trying to keep the demons at bay; Buffy, of course, is the hero; Giles has a new love; Cordelia gets a chance to be brave and fight for her man; Angel proves he's trust worthy after the Angelus disaster; Oz has more to say and is more proactive than usual; and as for Xander, his is too good to get into. This series is the first attempt of the book series to be epic, and it works well. It has a very cool plot, which is a premise that is expanded on all the time. The enemies are truely threatening and not just something thrown in for Buffy to fight. The good guys grow and learn form their adventures. Plus, they travel a lot; from Sunnydale to Boston, London, Paris, Italy and back. Plus the Ghost Roads are very cool, I loved how their this empty void that is really spooky. This is an excellent set of books, and I recomend it to any fan of Buffy, or even your average fan of fantasy.

Brooks/Cole should keep this text in their catalog for ages! It is well-written, examples are generally quite clear, vocabulary is introduced well, and the exercises develop real skills, rather than simply be busy-work. One of the best calculus books ever!

Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder write the best Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels, not just because they are good writers but because they completely understand both the characters and the mythos of the Slayer. Even though the stories are set in Sunnydale, Golden and Holder have a keen appreciation for the Old World-ness of the Slayer's world. This is not just a question of Giles coming from England, Angel from Ireland and Jenny from the land of the gypsies, but rather a recognition that when you are talking about ancient evil you have to skip across the ocean because that is where our sense of vampires, demons and things that go bump in the night originates. "Child of the Hunt" represents this sensibility quite nicely.

Buffy and her cohorts are enjoying a traveling Renaissance fair that has come to Sunnydale, but while they enjoy most of what they see they do not like the way the visitors treat Roland, their court jester. That is not the only significant development in town, for roaming the countryside are the minions of the Wild Hunt, in the service of the Erl King and with a taste for flesh. Of course there is a strange and terrible secret that links Roland to the eerie visitors. The Slayer wants to get involved, but Buffy must beware the awful curse, which dictates that no one can see the face of the leader of the Wild Hunt and live. Unless, that is, they join the hunt and take an oath to serve the Erl King.

This is not a story about the end of life as we know it, like a Buffy season finale or Golden and Holder's justly celebrated Gatekeeper Trilogy, but then that is not the point. This is a more intimate story, where Buffy is fighting to save Roland more so than she is to stop the Erl King. Consequently, there is a complexity here that she just do not find in your average Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel. This is a serious story, with less of the humorous lines and cultural allusions than you find in most Buffy novels (usually to excess, I must add), that captures the spirit of ancient, Old World evil that provides such a provocative counterpoint to the essentially Post-Modern Slayer (there's a dissertation topic if ever I heard one). Actually, all you need to know is that if you are like Buffy then you should just read all of Golden and Holders novels. There is ample reason to believe they are genetically incapable of writing anything less than a great one. When you go to download a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" book, make it easier on yourself and look for anything they have written, either in tandem or individually.

Cortona is an ancient hilltown whose winding stone streets mount up and up until you can see out over the valley. A world apart, this medieval town enclosed by its original walls has changed little in several centuries: a church built by St. Francis's good friend Brother Elias still stands with Francis's own tunic preserved under glass and you can wander through the very piazzas walked by great men from long ago. The present day charm of Cortona which is intimate enough to see in a day has been praised by the writer Frances Mayes who lives within walking distance outside the walls, but historian Philancy Holder tells us how it got that way in a tour of the very streets and structures: the gates, the convents, the churches and their saints, the rows of medieval houses and crests of long gone, noble Italian families embedded in a civic wall. Illustrated with many evocative pictures from the stone arching city gates to the palazzos, it is a book to carry around with you as you walk back in history. A must have for anyone who wants to understand Tuscany history, and how one intimate town grew over the centuries.

It's a good book because Eddie finds dogs and his friend Annie Pat paints them for 50 cents. This was the first book I ever read with over 100 pages in it. I read it when I was 7 and now I'm almost 9. I've read 6 Eddie books, almost 7.

The simple red, black and white animal pictures capture my two months old attention. The book is wonderful to use in the crib, car or even while your baby sits on your lap.

I found this to be a very well written reference on neuro-pharmacology. For every major drug and many minor ones, I found a physiological and biochemical review of the drugs, along with its effect on the street. I would recomend this book to anyone working in the field of neoropharmacology that needs a quick reference to an unfamiliar drug.

R.W. Hodderfs dictionary is very helpful for those of us who want to say and write to be helpful without ambiguity, and who rail against the subversion of political correctness.

How Not To Say What You Mean is the updated guide to probity, candor, earthiness, and straightforwardness. The dictionary provides definitions with example sentences as well as explanations where appropriate. Thematically indexed the entries are wide-ranging: work, sexuality, bankruptcy, clothing, education, politics and aircraft, provide the real meaning for phrases well-known and obscure we come across daily in speech and writing such as liquidity crisis, coronary inefficiency, four-letter man, normalization, investigative journalism, governmental relations, ethically challenged and year of progress.

Itfs a dictionary to browse, to be entertained by and take courage from. Highly recommended for all who have the courage to say and write what we mean.

While teaching my young daughter about prayer, I found this book to be very helpful. While some of the concepts will come later (like confessing), she understands that the girl in the book likes to pray, can do it anywhere, anytime, and in lots of ways. The book explains the different parts to prayer (praise, confession, gratitude, asking for help, and listening for answers) and shows a simple, good example of a happy girl who makes prayer part of her life.

Actually, Volume 1 of "Le Jouranl de Rupert Giles" ("The Journals of Rupert Giles") is one of the better novelizations of "Buffy contres les vampires" ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). The difference is the framing device created by Nancy Holder, which is not altogether surprising given she is one of the best writers of Buffy books with or without her frequent tag-team partner. In the wake of Buffy's 20th birthday part Giles, Buffy's l'ancien Observateur, summons the demon Krathalal to make a blood pact to ensure the survival of the Slayer. We all now how traumatic Buffy's birthdays have been starting with her 17th and Giles is no fool. Besides, he senses his time as Buffy's Watcher is coming to a close and he has long since accepted the word's Quentin Travers meant as a rebuke: "You have a father's love for the child."

In negotiating the deal Krathalal makes Giles look back at Buffy's last three birthdays: "Helpless" (teleplay by David Fury), when Giles let the Watcher's Council do their incredibly stupid test of the Slayer without her powers, the Cruciamentum (yes, a dramatic episode, but, sheesh, what a stupid ritual for people with a supposedly vested interest in keeping Slayers alive'I really think they were tired of her and were trying to take her out); "A New Man" (teleplay by Jane Esperson) when Giles turns into Fyral demon, which is worse than being a fifth wheel in Buffy's life, especially since he has to turn to Spike for help; and "Blood Ties" (teleplay by Steven S. DeKnight), the events of earlier in the day when Dawn discovered the truth about herself and Glory almost killed them all. Ironically, it is the actual Watcher's journal that Giles keeps which reveals the truth to Dawn.

Will Krathalal protect Buffy and keep her alive until her 21st birthday? Well, we watched Season Five so we know the answer to that one, but that is not the point here. This book has to do with the departure of Rupert Giles (and Anthony Stewart Head) from Buffy. Holder makes these novelizations not simply retellings of the episodes but re-examinations of Giles and his relationship with the Slayer. After all, in "Helpless" he is fired, in "A New Man" he feels useless, while in "Blood Ties" he fails her. Usually I give novelizations four stars as a matter of course, but this framing device bumps it up one more. We should not have been surprised that Holder put some effort into this job. Of course, we cannot help but wonder how there will be a Volume 2 of "Le Journal de Ruperts," since the Watcher split time between Sunnydale and England during the show's last two seasons.