Title: Edge of Sorrow, Heart of Truth
Author: feliciacraft
Rating: M
Genre: Drama/Romance/Adventure
Status: WIP
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairings: Spike/Buffy
Summary: Buffy leaps from Glory’s Tower to her death, but not before consummating her burgeoning relationship with Spike, unbeknown to others. What happens now that she’s dead? A rewrite from the end of Season 5 to a more Spuffy-friendly Season 6, this resurrected Buffy will come back to a different group dynamic, face different challenges, and eventually, learn to love and fight again with a Scooby-accepted vampire lover by her side.
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3625725/chapters/8005827

So I've been on a btvs fanatic kick the last week. Trying to find some good fics or even guilty pleasures and found this little gem.

The writing is good and the characterization is even better, that or I've been reading to many fanfics trying to find some good shit.

It's only 15 chapters so far (55k words) and the plot has been done multi-times but usually with shitty writing. The interactions and dialogue between characters are great. The interaction between Buffy/Dawn when Buffy is brought back to life in chapter 14 was golden. Sweet and cute.

I don't know why it's rated M there is no sex scenes or anything thankfully. At least not yet.

I'd rate it a 4/5 So far

 

You sweet summer child ...

In all seriousness from the summary this looks like the most basic of uninventive Buffy/Spike romdrama without even really having much of an interesting new gimmick to sell it somehow. I'd be surprised if it was something special, though I'll probably give it a whirl sometime because the BTVS fandom is practically the Deeper Well these days.

 

Yes I know... But I'm a sucker for some romance and hey 16 chapters in and no sex scene. I just skip over them completely now when I do see one.

And yes btvs fan fiction plots have been done a million times over but there is bound to be a tiny bit of good mixed in with the bad.

 

This gets Spike's voice really well: that duality of demonic savagery and inner Romance poet. Other characters are fairly well done, too, although none stand out quite so much as his. My biggest issue is that there are too many PoVs and the switches between them are too rapid. How is a reader supposed to get engrossed in a story when there's an interruption literally every 500 words?

Bah. That's a pet peeve of mine. Still, I liked this quite a bit, and it was about as good as the actual show was in places, with less cheesy filler to cringe me out of my immersion.

It doesn't ever venture into new territory, but what's here is relatively well done.

Rating this was a bit awkward. I'd say there's nothing new here, so it's not really worth the time of a long-standing Buffy fan. But with a point of entry several seasons deep into Buffy, it's not too friendly to newcomers either. I'm not sure I'd ever end up suggesting someone read this. There's probably an audience somewhere. But that audience came and went ten years ago.

3/5

 

As someone who has watched this show through once when it aired, and didn't keep up with the fandom or read fanfiction in this domain would you recommend it?

I really have a soft spot of nostalgia for this show, but never really felt the need to continue the story.

 

Well I don't know if you were asking me but I would recommend it (obviously) but to keep up with the fanfiction is tough, most of it is pure garbage and trust me I've been digging through it all. You get through the heavy-on-angst first chapter and the rest is pretty good imo.