DonSample
"With A Star" (Buffy/Vorkosiverse)
Reviewed by Kathryn A on 29th June 2004 (3)
(28K)
Miles discovers a thousand-year-old mystery on his honeymoon.
In one sense, this didn't even have to be a story with Miles in it,
as the heart of the story is a post-Buffy-series thing; but there's
something about the way Miles acts when he gets his teeth into
something, which drags you along with it, and which made it doubly
poignant that he never finds out the real truth of the mystery --
yet the reader knows, and that's part of what makes it poignant.
Key of Dagon
(1) "Harry Potter and the Key of Dagon" (Buffy/Harry Potter)
Reviewed by Kathryn A on 29th June 2004 (1)
(1100K)
This crossover is set after the end of "Buffy" and after "The
Order of the Phoenix", a crossover in which the author wanted to
avoid some of the more obvious cliches like long lost relatives or
Giles secretly being a Wizard, and these were, indeed, avoided. The
author shows a good grasp of the feel of the Potterverse, with the
focus being on the school and the kids more than on Grand Happenings
or on the world outside Hogwarts. Not that there aren't Grand Happenings, but they occur in the climax.
Because I didn't follow the last season of Buffy that well, I don't
know how in-character the Buffy characters are, Dawn in particular.
This could be a problem in my assessment, since the star of the
story is undoubtedly Dawn. This is a more able, more mature Dawn,
which could be plausible considering how much one has to live
through if one survives living on the Hellmouth. Some people might
still think that Dawn here is too good to be true, because, while her
Sunnydale upbringing would explain why she's so good at
hand-to-hand, and her being the Key would explain why she's taken to
be a Wizard, none of these would explain why she's good at Potions
(except that maybe for some unknown reason she pulled up her socks
on her studies and ended up being good at Muggle Chemistry).
However, in a world where most of the characters are extraordinary,
she doesn't stand out like a sore thumb, and one of the reasons for
that is that the other characters get their fair share of screen
time too. Most importantly, Dawn isn't the one who saves the day.
This is a good solid novel (absorbing enough to keep me up far too
late) with lots of little fun bits, like what Dawn's wand is made
of, her first encounter with Snape, her first encounter with Draco
(and what came of it), the Guest Lecture in Defence Against the Dark
Arts, the solution to the Picture Problem, and a quite interesting
new Magical Creature...
(2) "Chasing Severus" (Buffy/Harry Potter)
Reviewed by Kathryn A on 29th June 2004 (2)
(28K)
This isn't a sequel so much as an afterthought, a little
piece in which Harry & Co are still as much busybodies as ever.
What they find... well, I'm not sure I believe it either.
But I wouldn't mind seeing how it happened, if only to persuade
me that such a thing is plausible.
Misunderstandings
(3) "To Be, Or Not To Be" (Stargate/Buffy)
Reviewed by Kathryn A on 18th December 2005 (4)
(229K)
This is a sequel to "Misunderstandings": Dawn gets a job offer from
the SGC.
This one isn't as strong as the other two in this series; there isn't that
much action, it's slower-paced and Dawn-centric. But it has some
interesting theories about the Key.