Not Forgotten by Nancy Holder (2000)
A while back, I purchased a pro Angel novel at Half-Price Books: Not Forgotten by Nancy Holder (2000). I was poking around that section in the first place hoping for HL novels, but I was also in the mood for first-season AtS gen, and what really caught my eye was that this volume has no price anywhere on it, and no ISBN number, just a UPC code. My guess was that it was a promotional copy of some sort, or had been packaged with some non-book item.
At any rate, although, in my limited experience, pro TV novels are generally mediocre to wretched -- I'm looking at you, Element of Fire, you waste of trees' lives -- I bought and read this one. And while it is spelled and punctuated and paragraphed correctly, putting it far above the last pro "TV tie-in" novel I read, I eventually got the feeling that it had been written before the series even premiered. The author has a fine grasp of Cordelia, but she seems barely acquainted with Angel, and she's so completely at a loss with Doyle that she seems to think he's Scottish on page 213 -- unless that's a joke I'm not getting. Additionally, the novel spends perhaps 70% of its time with its original characters, with the canonical characters off the page entirely. Surely that kind of guest-star domination is not recommended for this genre? One of the original characters is supposed to be a double for Cordelia, but casting Ms. Carpenter in two roles doesn't get you much on the printed page; I'd rather just have more of the canonical characters than an original character I'm told looks like a canonical character.
The book is not incompetent, and it has some enjoyable passages -- mostly with Cordy. But it's going straight to the hospital book cart, no stop on my shelves.
At any rate, although, in my limited experience, pro TV novels are generally mediocre to wretched -- I'm looking at you, Element of Fire, you waste of trees' lives -- I bought and read this one. And while it is spelled and punctuated and paragraphed correctly, putting it far above the last pro "TV tie-in" novel I read, I eventually got the feeling that it had been written before the series even premiered. The author has a fine grasp of Cordelia, but she seems barely acquainted with Angel, and she's so completely at a loss with Doyle that she seems to think he's Scottish on page 213 -- unless that's a joke I'm not getting. Additionally, the novel spends perhaps 70% of its time with its original characters, with the canonical characters off the page entirely. Surely that kind of guest-star domination is not recommended for this genre? One of the original characters is supposed to be a double for Cordelia, but casting Ms. Carpenter in two roles doesn't get you much on the printed page; I'd rather just have more of the canonical characters than an original character I'm told looks like a canonical character.
The book is not incompetent, and it has some enjoyable passages -- mostly with Cordy. But it's going straight to the hospital book cart, no stop on my shelves.