Tales of the Slayer, Volume 4 (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

At eighteen, each Slayer must face a terrifying trial: the Tento di Cruciamentum. This time-honored, albeit cruel, rite of passage forces each Watcher to drain the Slayer of all her physical powers and then send her to vanquish a powerful vampire using only her wits. When Buffy Summers underwent her Cruciamentum, she managed to defeat Kralik, a vampire who had been committed to a sanitarium as a human for torturing and murdering more than a dozen young women before he was turned. However, not all Slayers have been so cunning.

Tales of the Slayer, Vol. 4 chronicles the Cruciamentum of eight earlier Slayers. From Prohibition Chicago to beatnik New York City, from the sideshows of a traveling carnival to a small Irish farm, from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, the Cruciamentum has tested the prowess of Slayers throughout history. Each of them has had to fight: for her job, for the lives of those she loved, and for her own existence....

Customer reviews:

Just Like the others a 5 star review, 2005-09-11
I love the Tales of The Slayer books they are great this one is no different.

Interesting stories, doesn't quite track with Buffy series, 2004-12-06
I've collected all four of the Tales volumes now and once again found some interesting stories to read. This time around all 8 stories are set around the Cruciamentum which all slayers are put through on reaching 18.
I found that these writers (some of whom also wrote for the series) each had their own style and usually didn't tell their Cruciamentum stories anything like what we saw Buffy go through in the TV version, in some the girl's parents even knew she was a slayer. I haven't read the whole book yet but found, as before, stories running through the centuries- from Nikki in 1973 back to Esperanza in 1481. I didn't care for the beatnik story but thought the Spanish Inquisition story was interesting. I kind of liked Survivors and Sideshow Slayer. Jane Espenson's "Two teenage girls at the Mall" was one of the more interesting stories, and told mostly from the viewpoint of the vampire girl.