The Blood Series

Fanfiction
Title:	The Blood Series a.k.a. The Old Blood Series, The Blood'verse
Author(s):	Nan Dibble
Date(s):	2002 or earlier - 2006
Length:	524298
Genre:
Fandom:	Buffy the Vampire Slayer
External Links:	Soulful Spike (archived link), All About Spike (archived link)
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The Blood Series is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic series by Nan Dibble. It is a series of four books; Old Blood, Blood Kin, The Blood Is the Life and Blood Rites. Nan began a fifth book in the series, Blood Price but sadly passed away following a short illness in 2006 before she could finish this story.

The Blood Series pairs Buffy/Spike but also examines the gen relationship between Spike and Dawn.

Summary

While controlled by the First, Spike sired a number of fledgling vampires, something he'd specifically refused to do ever before. Recovered by Buffy from the First, Spike sets out, with Dawn's help, to assassinate those fledges, while assisting Buffy with training the SITs and trying to avoid resuming their destructive sexual patterns of Season 6.

Reactions and Reviews

If you haven't had the pleasure, you owe it to yourself to read the late, lamented Nan Dibble's epic Blood Series. It starts up just after the events of Showtime, and goes AU from there. It's a rich, textured look at all the complex relationships in S7 Sunnydale — with a focus on the Spike and Dawn sibling/friendship — as well as a taut, plotty supernatural thriller with cosmic repercussions. Best of all, you'll come to appreciate characters that were never fully fleshed-out on the show. Even (and especially) the Potentials.

The first book begins post-Showtime when Buffy brought Spike back to the house on Revello Drive and the series goes AU from there. Other characters like Xander, Willow and the Potentials are also present and get their due. The stories are beautifully written, well plotted, with great insight into the characters and laced with subtle bits of humor. In the second volume, Blood Kin, Nan added her own original take on the whole Key thing and her view of the nature of vampires came into play when she created the horrifying Supplice d’Allégance. Through her wonderful OC Mike the vampire she was able to explore aspects of the vampire culture that Spike had only been on the periphery of due to his involvement with Buffy and company and the fact that he was turrned long before the series began.

Much of the first story is told from Dawn’s POV as she deals with her feelings about Spike and her sister, as well her essential Keyness. The relationship between Dawn and Spike is intense, believable and incredibly deep. This is love in its fiercest and truest form. The initial story sets the stage, provides some backstory, adds to our store of vampire lore, and sorts out some relationships. It ends with no resolution to the problem of the First and its threat to release hell on earth, but with some closure for the personal issues of many of the main characters. I could probably point to this story as the beginning of my love for the Spike/Dawn friendship/brother-sister dynamic. All the stories are heavily Spike-centric; he is the central character around which the others revolve. If you love Spike, you must read him here.

Summarizing these stories would just be too difficult and time consuming – let me just say that you will fall into this world and not want to come out until you know all there is to know about it. Everyone is here, and everyone gets his or her own chance to be the focus, even if only briefly. The author can and does write every character, no matter how minor, with depth and care. You know these people, you care about them, you believe in them and their complicated relationships. You feel the powerful and passionate relationship between Spike and Buffy – with nary an NC17 scene to be seen – in a way that few authors have been able to provide.

I suspect that much of what is presented in these stories in terms of vampire customs, rituals, what have you, has been borrowed by other authors to the point that much of what we call “fanon” lore can be traced back to Nan Dibble and the universe she created for her characters. That’s just a feeling on my part, not based on my having gone through the stories to make note of instances of invented lore. I could be wrong, but that’s the feeling they leave me – that they have become a bible of BtVS/AtS facts. Certainly she has created her own universe and a complete set of rules by which the inhabitants live…and unlive.