An interesting read for any fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. (I'm not entirely sure the DRC I received was the full text, though - maybe it was damaged, who knows.) I'm a big fan of behind-the-scenes content about shows and movies that I enjoy. This one contains some interesting tidbits.

I'd be interested in reading an authorized/official oral history of the show.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was my most favourite television show of all time. I highly recommend this book to all fans.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book; it was not to my taste, however, and I will not be completing it. I have not rated or reviewed this book. (The rating below is because a star rating is required by Netgalley, and is not reflective of an opinion.)

An interesting book full of facts about two series of cult: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, told by the people that make the stories come to life. A must for fans of the series! Of course I'll recommend this book!

Great book for die hard Buffy and Angel enthusiasts. Made me feel sad realising a whole generation won't even know what these progs were!

I loved getting a kind of "insider" view into one of my favorite series. On the heels of Buffy's 20th anniversary this book is very appropriate. I look forward to reading the full-length book, but the preview excerpt was great. I really liked that we got some of the cast and crew's thoughts on episodes and characters, etc. It kind of added a personal touch. It wasn't just facts that were put together, but actual stories from people who were there.

It took a moment for me to understand what was meant by “oral history.” Rather than it being an audiobook or a Homer epic, this takes interviews and puts snippets into a chronological order that eventually makes sense.
In the end it works pretty well, even when you don’t recognize the speaker. A lot of them are recognizable, though, staring from Joss Whedon and including most of the actors and writers/producers. Especially fascinating was the chapter right before the show aired, when everyone was wondering if Buffy would be a hit or bomb.
3.5 pushed up to 4/5

::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.

Great idea in theory but unfortunately this wasn't for me. I am a HUGE Buffy & Angel fan to the point I have actually named a human after a character and twenty years after it first aired I have the theme tune as my ringtone. I am a bonefied geek.

I was really looking forward to reading this but found it quite choppy and very repetitive. Within the first three chapters the same quote from Joss Whedon was used , at one point I even questioned whether or not I'd accidentally gone back a bit in the book.

I really wanted to like this but it didn't grab my attention and drag me in as I wish it would.

I received a free copy from netgally for am honest review.

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.

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" 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".
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.

Decent excerpt preview. I think if you are a bit fan of Buffy you might enjoy this book.

Princess Fuzzypants here::
Both Buffy and Angel were on before I was born. I am a five year old kitty. But I knew my family were hooked on both series and when my brother started to watch them again, I could see why. It had everything. It was funny, hip and very, very good. Perhaps that is why I had hoped for more in this book.
That is not to say it is not interesting or good. It is. It is filled with memories of the various people involved both in front and behind the camera. Much of it revolves around Joss Whedon who became a "god" to many. It was his vision and the vision of the talented people around him who made both series so memorable.
I had hoped for a bit more about the actual phenomenon too and that was in short supply. However, it is still a book I would recommend to any fan of either or both shows.
I give it four purrs and two paws up.

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.

I have been a huge Buffy fan from the very beginning. I don't even hate the 1992 movie. Over the years I have read a lot of books and articles on the background of the show and cast/crew/creator, Angel too, and I was therefore super excited to see this excerpt of a new book on NetGalley. Unfortunately there is very little new information in this book, and not even a single photograph or illustration (not in the Kindle version I read at least). Maybe the finished book holds some exciting insights but this excerpt is very disappointing :(. Grr... Argh...