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Post by Eric on Mar 9, 2010 11:05:58 GMT -5
This is thread is for Tales of the Slayer, a four volume series of short stories. It shouldn't be confused with Tales of the Slayers, a graphic novel of a similar subject.
The reason I started this thread is to ask people's opinions of the book, as I am considering buying it, but it can also serve as a general discussion if other people have things to say about it.
So, is it any good?
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Post by Wyndam on Mar 9, 2010 12:04:32 GMT -5
I added the (short stories) to the title so there'd be less confusion. I haven't read them myself, so I'm no help there.
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Post by Eric on Mar 9, 2010 12:19:42 GMT -5
I added the (short stories) to the title so there'd be less confusion. I haven't read them myself, so I'm no help there. Good idea. (:
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Post by PJ on Mar 9, 2010 16:22:51 GMT -5
well actually, this was one of my first buffy comics i read! it is really awesome, and i highly recommend it! I just love how it really shows you basicly the origins of the slayer, and i love the variety of writers too. Even Amber Benson wrote one! so i say go for it!
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Post by Eric on Mar 9, 2010 16:26:55 GMT -5
well actually, this was one of my first buffy comics i read! it is really awesome, and i highly recommend it! I just love how it really shows you basicly the origins of the slayer, and i love the variety of writers too. Even Amber Benson wrote one! so i say go for it! PJ, you've confused Tales of the Slayer s with Tales of the Slayer. Personally, I love TOTSs, but I was asking about the book.
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Post by PJ on Mar 9, 2010 19:42:16 GMT -5
well actually, this was one of my first buffy comics i read! it is really awesome, and i highly recommend it! I just love how it really shows you basicly the origins of the slayer, and i love the variety of writers too. Even Amber Benson wrote one! so i say go for it! PJ, you've confused Tales of the Slayer s with Tales of the Slayer. Personally, I love TOTSs, but I was asking about the book. oops! sorry.
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Post by wenxina on Mar 10, 2010 13:56:16 GMT -5
Can't remember how many of these I had... pretty sure I had the first three, not sure about the fourth. Honestly, nothing entirely memorable in them; some decent stories, some rather bad ones. It's a mixed bag of sorts... almost like a compilation of fanfiction about various Slayers over the course of history. Though, there's that one story about the Slayer who got turned into a vampire her first time in active duty, and she comes back for her Watcher who abandoned her to her death... it was amusing. Not great, not terrible.
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Post by Eric on Mar 11, 2010 13:54:49 GMT -5
I think I'm going to hold off on buying then. Maybe I'll get around to picking them up later. Thanks, wenxina.
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Post by wenxina on Mar 11, 2010 19:04:36 GMT -5
You're welcome. Check out your local library... they may have it. Or, they may be able to do an interlibrary loan or something to get it. Read one, and if you like the general flavor, you can perhaps invest in them. If I knew that people actually wanted these books, I'd just have saved them and either sent them off, or sold them. I think I told my mom to just donate them (I had a LOT of those non-canon novels, mostly the thick ones) or something last year, when she moved. I wasn't home to sort through them, so I figured, "eh, what the heck... most of those Buffy books were crap anyway..." Shoulda known... *sigh*
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Post by Eric on Mar 11, 2010 19:29:49 GMT -5
Thanks for the advice. *karma* I haven't been to my library for ages, so it didn't even occur to me to check there. I looked online and they have both the first and second volumes available, which I'll hopefully be picking up in the next few days along with some other Buffy books they have.
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TC
Novice Witch
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When I was like, 10...[Mo0:37]
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Post by TC on Mar 11, 2010 20:41:37 GMT -5
Bah! No! Get them! I love Tales of the Slayer! I have the first 3, and while, yes, some of the stories may be rather lackluster, as a whole the books are realllly interesting! Then again, I find the entire Slayer mythos realllly interesting.
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Post by Eric on Mar 11, 2010 20:48:29 GMT -5
Bah! No! Get them! I love Tales of the Slayer! I have the first 3, and while, yes, some of the stories may be rather lackluster, as a whole the books are realllly interesting! Then again, I find the entire Slayer mythos realllly interesting. Maybe I will based on your recommendation... And the fact that paying off my library fines would cost more than picking up the first two volumes used online...
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Post by midwesternwatcher on Mar 13, 2010 21:16:33 GMT -5
I'm reading vol. 3 right now. "Code of the Samurai" by Nancy Holder is OK, more action than character development. I'm generally lukewarm of Nancy Holder, but India Cohen is an interesting character.
I'm in the middle of Ch'ang Shih by Mel Odom. Pretty good so far, I'll say more later. His vampires are more monstrous, less human than the vamps on the TV series.
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Post by midwesternwatcher on Mar 14, 2010 21:26:11 GMT -5
To continue my last post ... I finished that story by Mel Odom, "Ch'ing Shih," It's one of the better stories in this series, and it serves to illustrate how to Slayer legend might play out against a different cultural and economic background. Of course, it was written by an American. I do not know what a Chinese writer would've done with this story.
Odom introduces a new kind of monster called a "draumach." I don't know where he got that word, or exactly what a "draumach" is. It seems to be a disembodied specter, a form of light, that can't attack but can see things that humans and vampires can't. It was very useful to the vampire Fang Chou in gathering intelligence on his enemies, including the Slayer Xiao Qin.
As far as I can tell from his biography, Mel Odom does not know the Chinese language. It happens I do; I worked as a freelance translator for four years, and I do much of my reading in Chinese. I confess I can't make sense out of the syllables "ch'ing shih." There are many possibilities for the characters, but none of them seems an obvious choice.
It seems to be the name of a monster. The Chinese do have monsters (in fact they are very smug about their monsters, they think their monsters are much better than ours), but I don't know of one by that name. If you ask any Chinese what's the word for "vampire," s/he will say "xi xue gui," which means "ghost that sucks blood." It's an expression they invented to translate our word.
Still a pretty good story.
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Post by wenxina on Mar 15, 2010 10:22:24 GMT -5
"Ch'ing shih" is the name given to the hoppy vampires in Chinese mythology. And I mean, they literally hop around, silently. They're usually dressed in imperial servant garb (blue robes, funny hat, long queue aka the long braid that's usually used to depict Chinese men in old movies). The "ch'ing shih" reference, I got from watching old Cantonese action serials of vampire hunters. And that's about as much Chinese as I know... and hell, I'm of Chinese descent. But from my limited communication with a colleague from China (limited because of the language barrier), "ch'ing shih" exists in regular Mandarin too, so perhaps you just didn't recognize the Anglicized attempt of spelling the word?
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The Girl In Question
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Post by The Girl In Question on Mar 20, 2010 0:26:27 GMT -5
"Ch'ing shih" is the name given to the hoppy vampires in Chinese mythology. And I mean, they literally hop around, silently. They're usually dressed in imperial servant garb (blue robes, funny hat, long queue aka the long braid that's usually used to depict Chinese men in old movies). The "ch'ing shih" reference, I got from watching old Cantonese action serials of vampire hunters. And that's about as much Chinese as I know... and hell, I'm of Chinese descent. But from my limited communication with a colleague from China (limited because of the language barrier), "ch'ing shih" exists in regular Mandarin too, so perhaps you just didn't recognize the Anglicized attempt of spelling the word? Hopping vampires? o.o Now that's interesting.
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Post by wenxina on Mar 20, 2010 2:45:49 GMT -5
They literally hop about in robes. Not even kidding.
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