DATE WITH DEATH

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 100TH EPISODE SPECIAL

GARDEN OF EVIL

CHARMED AGAIN

SPIRIT OF THE WOLF

Pocket Books' first piece of Charmed fiction is, appropriately enough, a novelisation of the series' first episode, Something Wicca This Way Comes.

And it's a fairly promising start.  With 180 pages to adapt a single 45 minute episode, Eliza Willard is able to do slightly more than the usual straightforward rerun of the script with the occasional "he said"/"she said".

Consequently there's a bit more background information that given out in the actual episode, although some of this does seem slightly as odds with The Witch is Back and That 70s Episode, although the latter in particular seems to contradict Something Wicca... it's perhaps not surprising.

The book is aimed squarely at the same "young adult" market that Pocket Books aims the Buffy novelisations at, so there's a toning down of some lines.  Piper's question when Phoebe is fooling around with the spirit board now asks if Prue will sleep with anyone else rather than have sex with anyone else, and the exchange between Roger and Prue at the museum omits the reference to them sleeping together.  Bizarrely, at least for those of us in the UK, it is apparently okay to describe Prue as "pissed".

There are also a number of differences between the book and the actual episode, notably concerning Phoebe and Andy, but I'm not going to give away any spoilers!  For anyone who has already seen the episode it's fun spotting the differences, and if you haven't seen it yet reading the book won't spoil everything when you do see it.

Overall this is a good start to the Charmed fiction range, and definitely one of the better novelisations I've read.  Let's hope the rest of the series is this good. BACK TO THE TOP

Written by
ELIZA WILLARD

POCKET BOOKS

$4.99


RATING: 8/10