Someone if trying to resurrect Koschei the Deathless, and they need to sacrifice an awful lot of people to accomplish the feat. Sunnydale High School is providing them just the means, with most of their senior class buying class rings for Ring Day.

Yulia Dryanushkina is a Russian sorceress, the Baba Yaga from history, and she is determined to stop this happening. Something that seems to make her a natural ally for Buffy and the Scoobies.

Generally what I am looking for when I read a TV tie-in novel is something more than I could get in the show itself, something unfilmable within the budgetary constraints of a television episode. In recent times this has been exactly what I got, the author taking full advantage of the infinite production budget my brain gives his story.

This book however does not. This could have easily been filmed, and would have fit in well into the shows third season. Now, normally I would have felt a little cheated by this. Oddly enough, this time I didn't overly. Yes, it may be fairly grounded in terms of content and action. Yes, the supernaturally bits are not too far out there. But the topic is fairly original – I've never read any fiction about Baba Yaga – and the author has a complete grasp of the characters and mood of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The thing about a Hellmouth is, I guess, that things are going to come to you. It leaves the writers a full world of myths and legends to play with, without it feeling too much a stretch to have characters from, say, Russian mythos turn up in sunny California.

I've read a number of Buffy novels. I was hooked on the TV series and read these to get a new fix now the series is over. The direction of the book series seems to have changed in recent times. Previously there were two types of novels, adult and children's.

Now it seems the focus is very much on teenagers. The action is scaled down from the earlier Buffy books I've read, as is the tone. It's made the books very easy to read and a comfort to tired reading muscles – definite mind-candy. I just hope they keep releasing these.