Love it love it love it! ( )

Can't wait for next installment. ( )

4 and a half stars. completely charming. Christos Gage does a fabulous job: nicely paced, spritely written, plenty of quippage, knows and uses every little detail of the whole backstory. collects all the core characters into one house, snapshots the current state of Buffy & Spike, gives everyone plenty to do that furthers the whole story in this season. plus: Harmony, Clem, ghost Anya, D'Hoffryn (all with actual roles to play), a trip to the Sunnydale Hellmouth, a lovely chapter of just Xander and Spike roommating again, and Giles as a grownup kid gets played just right. Richard Corben draws a lovely little segment in his own style detailing the backstory of the current bigbad demon here introduced. Steve Morris draws them all perfectly in Jo Chen style. my only quibble is Rebekah Isaacs' panel art: she's fine with drawing monsters, panel blocking, action, but she cannot seem to make any of the characters look even recognizable, let alone right (their noses in particular are so wrong. it's a mite distracting). but this is actually a very minor quibble in a book that brings the whole canon to life in the proper spirit: older, but indomitable, loving, kickassed, and busy reshaping the magic of the Vampyres book in a world where magic is back and coexistence becomes possible. ( )