I liked the idea too (in a sort of literary equivalent of slumming it)....but I think I might have been cured had I watched more Buffy.

I always wonder when I read books with a alright premise but poor execution if there is some author out there crying into their lentil soup and cursing the day they allowed themselves to be talked into the changes by pushy editor...

Still one hopes that it will guide young tweens into developing an appetite for the genre and thereafter consuming bigger and better things. I mean it has to be better than Huisgenoot!

Then again that is only a possibility if they haven't been blinded by vampires in the sun :-)