Caroline's Reviews > Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Ghost Roads

Unlike in the first book, I struggled to get through the second for several reasons:

- partly due to the pacing and overall story arc which was pretty much filler before the third and final book. I feel that the storyline could've been all tied up in two books.

- Was anyone else annoyed with Xander's attitude and behaviour in this book? He's always been abit rash in his decisions and actions, especially when they put his friends' safety at risk and do not listen to Giles' advice and he goes and gets himself seriously injured ... I know he won't die, but, meh, not a huge Xander fan.

In the previous book, he carried on like a pork chop when Buffy saved his life against spring-heeled jack when his life is in jeopardy and berates Buffy for it that he had everything under control, no dude, you clearly didn't since she intervened, and saved your sorry ass and you still haven't learned your lesson by the events that unfolded here. Idiot.

- Don't get me wrong, I love back stories but when there is too much of it overall it doesn't leave much room to feel empathy about these new characters.

- Spike and Dru's presence in this book as mainly prison guards to the 11 year old heir (Jacques) to the Gatehouse as leverage by aligning with the Sons of Entropy in order to obtain the power-laden by means of a trade, you hold onto the heir for the SoE until such time they destroy everything by waiting for Jacques' dad to kick the bucket before his son can restore order therefore opening the gatehouses' doors to hell open loose upon Earth.

What bothered me is the wasted potential of Spike and Dru in this book and I felt very underused, even to the point of recycling a similar motive for Spike to flip sides to Buffy again to help as the SoE had duped Spike and Dru (no surprise there), yeah ok it was great seeing Buffy work alongside Spike, but it all felt underwhelming and then ... they disappeared from the story, where did they go?

One thing I did like: was a rare team-up between Buffy, Oz and Angel as they travel the ghost roads to locate the heir to the Gatekeeper, Jacques Regnier Jacques as he's the sole heir of the dying Gatekeeper whose Boston mansion is the supernatural barrier restraining thousands of the world's monsters.

Overall, it just boring and underwhelming compared to the first book, which is a shame, let's hope the final books makes up for it in the climax.