While we have all expected Buffy the Vampire Slayer to trot out a special Halloween episode each season like Roseanne used to do, it has been pretty much an every other year proposition ("Halloween" from Season 2 and "Fear Itself" from Season 4). Fortunately, to help fill in the gap while we see what is in store for Season 6 we have Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder's first Buffy novel, "Halloween Rain." By now this pair has clearly established themselves as far and away the best writers working on the Buffy novels, with The Gatekeeper Trilogy being their masterpiece. Their respect for and understanding of the Buffy mythos is second to none. After all, they were the two main compilers of "The Watcher's Guide" and its follow-up works. So, what we have here is a well-written Buffy novel that will suffice as the Halloween episode from the first season.

Anyhow, it seems that there is a legend in Sunnydale about a scarecrow that comes alive when saturated with Halloween rain and slaughters everyone in sight. Of course Giles uncovers the logical explanation for such things. This is really the demon Samhain (Remember the name from the movie "Halloween"? We are talking classic homage here, boys and girls), and just to make things even more fun the demon has dealt with a Slayer in the past. Add to this the fact that it is Halloween and it is Sunnydale, which means mondo party time for all the vampires and zombies this side of the Hellmouth. Golden and Holder have Buffy speak down solid, but the key to the novel is coming up with a fairly sophisticated villain for the Slayer to take down. Make it easy on yourself and just download every Buffy book this pair writes.

It has been a couple of years since it was written but "The Gatekeeper Trilogy" is still far and away the best of the Buffy books. It is not surprising that Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder are the best writers working on these books since they are also the main authors of the Watcher Guides and certainly have the requisite knowledge of the characters and the Buffy mythos. In retrospect I ended up feeling about these three books pretty much the way I did about the original Star Wars trilogy where the second one is the best and the finale has a bit of trouble living up to your expectations because what has gone before has been so great. However, put them together and they simply set the bar higher for everyone who comes in their wake.

Ironically, in this particular book Buffy has less to do that most of the other characters. It was certainly nice to see that Xander have a bright shinning moment as the substitute Gatekeeper. His character has been the comic relief for the Scooby Gang for so long that you forget he brought Buffy back from the dead at the end of season one. They also do a nice job of getting to what Cordelia is thinking behind her tactless remarks, but Oz is back to quipping a bit too much as he was in Book One and Willow is much more of a successful little spellcaster than she has yet to be in the television episodes. Still, I feel they are on the right track with most of these character developments. However, the character who really shines in this volume is Joyce Summers, dealing with being the mother of the Slayer as best she can.

After including Spike and Drusilla in the previous volume as a minor plot complication (I really was expecting more from them), the authors have Ethan Rayne makes a much more substantive guest appearance in this concluding volume, although he is really nothing more than a plot contrivance. The truly tragic figure that emerges from this trilogy is Jacques Regnier, the young boy who has to become the Gatekeeper following the death of his father. His fate is different from that of Buffy as the Slayer, but he is also a Chosen One and there is a certain pathos to his having too grow up too quickly. The creation of the Gatekeeper and the Gatehouse are the best ideas I have come across in the Buffy books so far, and are worthy of being included in the mythos of the television series. I was surprised to see that the historical flashbacks on the story of Giacomo Fulcanelli, Il Maestro, were substantially less than in the previous volumes, although his back story is concluded.

The resolution to the Gatekeeper storyline in "Sons of Entropy" works pretty well, more so with the Gatekeeper's part of the battle than with Buffy's final battle with the demon Belphegor. I have never really liked the idea that the Achilles heel of the bad guys is that they all lie to their stupid minions who tend to betray them at the right moment. I would much rather see the good guys rise to the occasion and do so without the old chestnut of figuring out the meaning of the key clue at the last moment. The idea of the Gatekeeper and the Gatehouse merging in a new way was a very credible solution. Again, I know that my expectations were so high that Joss Whedon himself would have problems coming up with a conclusion that would truly top the marvelous set up. If you have read and enjoyed any of the original Buffy novels, you have to treat yourself by downloading the Gatekeeper Trilogy.

"The Gatekeeper Trilogy" does one thing that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series has been unable to do, namely get the Slayer and the Scooby Gang to hit the road. The Hellmouth is a convenient excuse for all sorts of vampires, demons and big evils to come visit Buffy and the gang in Sunnydale, but a road trip has long been in order. Unbound by considerations of stage space and shooting budgets, "Out of the Madhouse" manages to get the Slayer and most of her cohorts to Boston, with the promise of even bigger trips down the road.

The plot has to do with the Sons of Entropy trying to unleash chaos on the world at the behest of Il Maestro, who works mainly behind the scenes in Book One. Suddenly all sorts of wicked things come to Sunnydale and it turns out that there have been released from the Gatehouse where the Gatekeeper is dying, leading up to an initial showdown in Boston. The other recurring concern throughout the book is more personal, dealing with what Buffy, Xander, Willow and the gang are going to do when they get finally graduate high school, so there is a concern for the entropy of the group along with the potential destruction of all human life on the planet. Implicit in their concerns is the unspoken knowledge that Buffy is fated to die young as a slayer and their realization that whatever hopes and aspirations they might have seem somewhat secondary to saving the world from big evil.

Authors Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder are perfectly suited to the task of constructing a literary epic for Buffy. Not only because they are far and away the best writers working on the Buffy books but also because they have researched the characters and the attendant mythos of the series, having written/edited the Watcher's Guides and Monster reference books for the show. They have come up with a plot line well suited to a three volume tale and you only have to read a couple of chapters to acknowledge this book is so far above the vast majority of the Buffy books. Furthermore, they get beyond the surface level with all of the characters, although admittedly they are guilty of putting too many quips into dialogue. Oz sure talks a lot more than he ever did on the television series, but Golden and Holder do have an especially nice feel for the emotional attachments of these characters to one another. They get the important stuff right. It has been several years since "The Gatekeeper Trilogy" first came out and you still will not find a better Buffy the Vampire Slayer story to download. "Out of the Madhouse" is where the fun begins.

Fascinating Trivia Note: In flashbacks early on in this novel we meet Catherine de' Medici, wife of Prince Henri the Dauphin of France in the year 1539. You might not have heard of her, but you might recognize the name of her husband, seeing as how he is the prince in the movie "Ever After" from a few years back. However, neither Henri, King Francis, Leonardo di Vinci, or Danielle appear in the flashbacks. Ever notice how history is never like the fairy tales?

"The Ghost Roads," the second book in The Gatekeeper Trilogy, is even better than the first volume in this epic Buffy the Vampire Slayer story. The Ghost Roads of the title are a network of inter-dimensional shortcuts that allow Buffy, Angel and Oz to travel quickly to Europe to search for the son of the dying Gatekeeper. What they do not know is that Spike and Drusilla have the boy and are looking to make a deal with the Sons of Entropy. Meanwhile, back in Sunnydale, the Flying Dutchman has appeared off shore causing problems for Giles and the rest of the Scooby Gang. Even worse, the Sons of Entropy have kidnapped Joyce Summers in an effort to force the Slayer to return so Buffy can be sacrificed by Il Maestro to the greater glory of his demon overlord and the end of the world as we know it.

Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder really hit their stride in this original novel. The tendency to work too many quips and one-liners in the first volume, a perpetual problem in these Buffy novels, is reduced to the perfect level. This is due in large part to the fact that the writers have clearly upped the ante on the serious side of the scale. What makes "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" one of the best shows on television is that in addition to the clever quips and innovative fight sequences there is drama acted out on an operatic level (the highpoint of which was Buffy having to slay Angel). Golden and Holder are clearly working on that higher level in this book: Giles has to leave behind students to die during an escape, Angel tortures a wounded man to get vital information, and Joyce deals with the idea of sacrificing herself so that Buffy can save the world. Consequently, this is NOT a Buffy book FOR YOUNGER READERS. Things get pretty heavy here and the characters have to deal with these issues.

Now that several television seasons have passed since this trilogy was first written it is worthwhile to note that Golden and Holder accurately predicted some significant character developments regarding the Scobby Gang. Certainly Willow is now as powerful a wicca at the end of Season 5 as she was in this novel, Xander is finally getting past his comic relief stage, Joyce certainly accepted Buffy being the Slayer before her untimely death, and Cordelia is much more accepting of her role in the scheme of things (albiet on "Angel" instead of "Buffy"). So in retrospect the authors deserve credit for seeing where Joss Whedon was going with these characters on the two shows.

Of all the people writing Buffy books, Golden and Holder are the two I would love to see take a stab at writing an actual episode of the show. Many of the Buffy books read like rejected scripts, storylines they would never bother to film that add little to the characters or the mythos of the series. The Gatekeeper Trilogy provides two ideas completely worthy of being included in the show. The first is the role of the Gatekeeper, a magical being who is responsible for binding up various monsters and demons, which is to say a Champion for Good, similar to the Slayer but certainly a unique idea. The second is the Ghost Roads, not just as a rationale for getting the characters out of Sunnydale to find the big bad evil but also as a way for the characters to confront the past, as in the first volume when Angel sees the shade of Jenny Calendar. Holder has successfully incorporated elements on the Ghost Roads in other Buffy novels she has written, which I judge to be a good thing. Again, this is just testimony to the quality of both the conception and the execution of this trilogy. So hurry up and read "The Ghost Roads" so you can download the final installment of "The Gatekeeper Trilogy."

A single bad judgment as the result of a monstrous lie has catapulted Buffy into the future and a world where vampires rule Sunnydale and the Slayer has been held captive for six years. A horrified Buffy learns she is now known as "The Lost Slayer," forgotten by the Watcher's Council. The most dramatic scene in this book comes early, when Buffy stages a chilling escape from her cell after resolving the cliffhanger that ended Part One, when August, the recently imprisoned second Slayer called to replace Faith, decided to kill Buffy so that a new Slayer could be called. This is definitely one of those sequences that is too intense for small children. Meanwhile, in the present, Giles is still being held hostage while Willow and the Scoobys discover something is not right with Buffy.

A photograph of Willow appears prominently on the cover of "Dark Times," because Buffy's best bud is a significant figure in both of the time periods in which this tale is told. Christopher Golden might have gone back to the start of Buffy's freshman year at UC-Sunnydale (i.e., the beginning of Season 4 of "Buffy"), but he is obviously setting up Willow's growth as a Wicca on the show. The once and future Willow gets to see almost as much action as the Slayer this time around, which is one of the strengths of "Dark Times." Certainly there are some flaws in the story, having mainly to do with the fact the vampires actually put a door into Buffy's cell (without which, escape would be totally impossible), but such things are easily forgivable when Golden has constructed a storyline that is trying to work on the same sort of operatic level as the best Buffy episodes (e.g., "Becoming"). I can still nitpick the details and thoroughly enjoy the novel.

One of the things that makes "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" one of the best shows on television is that there is a dark side, a world in which bad things happen to good people and the world just might come to an end as we know it. In "Dark Times" we get to see such a world, which is as horrific as when Anyanka granted Cordelia's wish that Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale in "Dopplegangland." Unlike "Prophecies," where the book ended with a dramatic cliffhanger that made you rush to pick up the next installment in the series, "Dark Times" ends with a shattering revelation as Buffy receives some unbelievably bad news. Thus, Golden again achieves the main goal when writing a serial novel: to leave the reader dying to find out what happens next and eager to download Part Three.

Bugs Bunny has been my favorite cartoon character my whole life and he still is. Bugs Bunny and the Health Hog deals like the name tells you with health. Bugs Bunny starts to exercise and he wants his friend Porky to exercise with him. But Porky gets soon to involved and Bugs Bunny misses his friend. So he uses a little trick to convince Porky that he is already strong enough. The book is great for every Bugs Bunny fan from 2-99.

This book is about all the glamorous things that baby bunny could be when he grows up, but he knows what he wants to be! A daddy rabbit who loves and takes care of all his little baby bunnies!

I had this wonderful, giant-size book many years ago, from a friend. It reprints the sunday pages about in the size they appeared in the '40s: in full color, not retouched, using the best scanner tecniques they had at that time. The art of Hogarth is in all his glory. If you have a chanche to buy this giant book, don't esitate! Great also for the introductory essays.

I purchased this book 2 years ago from a street vendor and I thought it would be a good book because my grandson is African American, and I thought it would be something he could relate to. He was 3 at the time. I didn't realize how much he would come to love this book. It has beautiful pictures, the faces are so gentle and it seems so real that it's hard to believe it's a story. He's going on 5 and this book has been through all his rough and tumbling yet at bed time it's still his favorite book to go to sleep to. I would recommend this book for anyone.

One of the best books ever written on boxing, specifically amature boxing. The author definately got into the fighter's interior as to why they do what they do. Describes details about the complex relationship between trainer and boxer. William Plummer tries himself a go at the ring by sparring with the best fighter in the gym only to find out that a key ingredient needed to fight is the animal instinct of defeating your opponent and inflicting pain (something he found he did not have, which is something that cannot be said about writing since this man can definately write!). If you want to find out about the inner workings of young men raised in urban areas with little escape from their surroundins except by jail, death or by entering the ring, this book will provide that and much more! Also recomended on boxing are "The Sweet Science" by A.J. Liebling, "On Boxing" by Joyce Carol Oates, "To Swallow a Toad" by Robert Preston Wood.