Kendare Blake’s “Frankie the Vampire Slayer” trilogy – about Willow’s immaculate witch-Slayer daughter and her Gen-Z Scooby Gang – wraps with “Against the Darkness” (2024). Though there was a certain amount of intrigue after two books – including the question of whether this fits into the official “Buffy” canon (it doesn’t, remaining a “what if” story) – it falls rather flat in the conclusion.
Reading like well-written fan fiction, “Against the Darkness” has a one-note (maybe one-and-a-half-notes) villain: Aspen, one of the many Slayers activated thanks to Buffy’s and Willow’s actions in “Chosen,” the TV series’ final episode. (Blake’s books then skip over the Season 8-12 continuity, replacing it with the idea that Willow became pregnant with Frankie due to that magic. They are set in the 2020s in a New Sunnydale built in the Spikesplosion crater.)
Aspen holds an intriguing philosophical position: She did not consent to acquiring Slayer powers, so she wants to give them back and be a normal human. She finds some other Slayers – collectively they call themselves the Darkness, not the best branding – who agree with her and who loathe the Slayer army, specifically Buffy.
“Against the Darkness” (2024)
Author: Kendare Blake
Series: “Frankie the Vampire Slayer” trilogy No. 3
Genre: Young adult fantasy action
Setting: 2020s, New Sunnydale (alternate Buffyverse timeline)
All well and good, but there’s an obvious flaw in Aspen’s argument. Buffy never forced anyone to join her Slayer forces; it was always voluntary. She just gave them super strength and agility. If Aspen wants to return hers, Buffy has no desire to stop her. Such an argument never plays out in dialog, because Buffy is temporarily in a prison dimension, which is Blake’s path for focusing on Willow and the new Scoobies.
Frankie & Co. immediately suspect Aspen secretly wants to absorb all the Slayer powers for herself and become a SuperSlayer. Sort of like SuperShredder in “TMNT II,” although this is an “old” movie reference Blake passes on. (Probably accidentally, Blake does reference the film with a crucial pre-fight pastry, though there’s no trickery. Frankie simply stuffs it into Aspen’s mouth.)
Aspen? California … nice
Aspen’s rather transparent scheme is the prime example of a flaw in “Against the Darkness”: There are no surprises, no twists. No Whedon flavor, aside from an occasional play on language that’s not up to the level of the TV series. It’s about on par with an average YA “Buffy” book from the late 1990s.
That having been said, “Darkness” is an easy read. I’d dip in for a chapter but end up breezing through several. Each chapter is like a snack, and Blake somewhat achieves her intent to make each novel like a TV season. For instance, Jake (the younger brother of Jordy, who bit Oz back in the day) is attempting to corral his inner werewolf so he can change on his own, outside of the influence of the full moon. This makes up a subplot within the larger arc of an impending Slayers-vs.-Slayers epic.
Another strength: It’s engaging to see Spike as Frankie’s Watcher; his personality remains on point even as he can’t help but become a lot like Giles. In terms of character creation, Blake has something good with Sage demon Sigmund, who is more of a thinker than a fighter; and Grimloch, an ancient being who has a thing with Frankie.
Interestingly, this repeats the Buffy-Angel age-gap issue that is even more controversial today than it was in the 1990s. Generally, “Darkness” is fine with the age gap; it doesn’t really bring it up except in the broadest romance-story sense of two people from different walks of life.
The tameness and cautiousness are my biggest takeaways from “Against the Darkness” and the trilogy; appropriately but sadly, it doesn’t even feature art of Frankie or any character on the covers, just a generic design. I like Frankie and the new Scoobies well enough, and the legacy characters are broadly in character. To be fair, if Blake had written something bats*** insane, I might criticize that too. As it stands, the “Frankie the Vampire Slayer” trilogy is a harmlessly forgettable “what if” branch of the Buffyverse.
Click here for an index of all of John’s “Buffy” and “Angel” reviews.