Finally read this a while back and though I found it a bit of a mixed bag i'd have to concede that it probably fits the market she talks about in the interview pretty well (i'm one of the 'other guys' i.e. white, male and science-ish educated ;).

She makes some pretty unconvincing 'logical' leaps as well as a few outright mistakes. There were quite a few places where she'd have something like "and so, therefore, Willow must be doing yada, yada ..." to which i'd be thinking, "Err, why must she ?" (as she says, even magical universes need 'rules' but they don't need to be physics based or even consistent - the stuff on souls particularly seemed a real reach in this regard. Just because, probably for purely cinematic reasons, Angel's soul looks like a gas doesn't mean it actually is one or that our universe's rules about diffusion or combustion apply to it). The drawings were pretty good but seemed purely for entertainment (which is fine) rather than to actually make the text any clearer. Sometimes the focus seemed to wander a bit and there were some (in fairness probably necessary) simplifications and (unstated) assumptions.

That said, it was written in a very readable, breezy style, had some pretty good sections (plasmons make an unexpected appearance and the bits on entropy as well as the basics of the physics of martial arts were pretty good) and, to its great credit, the book was actually about the physics of the Buffyverse (i.e. she took numerous examples from the shows and explained the physics behind them rather than just using tiny snippets as jumping off points into more or less unrelated areas as many 'Science of ..." books do - she did that too in my view but not often).

Not at all bad for people that have had almost no science education as a first step towards more rigorous books (even pop. ones like 'The Elegant Universe' which to my mind is very clearly written anyway but is, apparently, off-putting to some). It really is written for English graduates, my slight problem with it being, it was very clearly written by one too (i.e. she thinks like a communicator rather than a scientist which meant, for me, a bit less precision and accuracy on the detail than might be ideal).

Saje | June 21, 16:35 CET