Well, better late than never. The character of Cordelia Chase has now been on "Angel" longer than she was on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Here we are in the seventh season of "BtVS" and one of the three television episodes novelized by Nancy Krulik in "The Cordelia Collection, Volume 1" is all the way back from the first season. Actually, this collection offers up one episode from each of the show's first seasons. First, we have "Out of Mind, Out of Sight," where we learning that if you ignore people, the way Cordelia and her groupies ignore Marcie Ross, such people tend to disappear--literally. Second, in "Some Assembly Required," a couple of high school mad scientists decide that Cordelia's head would be the perfect topping for their own little Bride of Frankenstein. Third, "Homecoming" has Cordelia and Buffy caught up in Slayerfest when they should be on their way to the big dance.
The theme of these three episodes is obviously Cordelia as victim as she is the prime target in all of these stories. Ironically, in the last one she is endanger because she is mistaken for Faith and this is the one episode where Cordy actually fights back instead of relying on Buffy to save her. The scope these episodes makes it difficult to come up with a good framing device and Krulik ends up introducing each story with Cordelia seeing Buffy, Xander and Willow at the Bronze, albeit at three different points in time. At least this does give us something of a sense of how the character grew over those three seasons. Of course, now she is a higher being, which is pretty impressive when you look at how conceited she was in the early days.
The framing problems aside, Krulik does an above average job of fleshing out the episodes in terms of what the characters are thinking, but she is not as strong on giving us details about where each story comes in the history of the Buffy universe. Of course, true fans already know such things (or can grab their Watcher's Guides, DVS, and/or trading cards to refresh their memories). However, the rules are that novelizations can only earn four stars, which this one certainly deserves (five stars are reserved for the best original novels). Now I just need to go back and see if they have novelized all of the episodes from the first season yet or not, because if there are still some stories left to do, I have some spare time on my hands...
