Spark and Burn (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) 
What is the true measure of a champion?
In the nineteenth century a boy named William was born. A sweet, gentle boy -- no one could have guessed the suffering he'd cause, the pain he'd inflict. When, as a young man, he meets a woman called Drusilla -- a strange woman, a woman unlike anyone William has ever known -- he is fundamentally changed. She has turned him. There will be no more William. He is Spike now.
As Spike, he travels Europe with a band of vagabond vampires. Dru, Darla, and Angelus instruct him on his new nature, and from them he learns about that greatest of vampiric enemies, the girl who is chosen to stand up against them, trained to kill them, endowed with the strength it takes to defeat them: the Slayer. Then and there, Spike decides he'll hunt down those slayers. He'll see how many he can find.
Who would have thought then that he'd fight on the Slayer's side? Who would have guessed that Spike, once William, would go out and seek his soul for a slayer? Who would have dared dream he'd fall in love with one?
Reviews
If you watched the series and read the books (or even the comic books) you have a pretty good idea of Spike's history. First a bad poet, and then a really bad vampire. Drusilla's lover, and then, by an odd twist Buffy's. Villain, tormented soul, and finally, a hero. What Gallagher has done is recap all of this in 240 pages or so, during which you never learn anything very new. Instead we start out in the school basement during Spike's madness after regaining his soul and travel from flashback to even further flashback until this cruel biography is done.
The story, jumping from one frame to another never gels. The truth is, that there really isn't a story here, just an interior monologue and a series of pastiches. Just Simon & Schuster so intent in capitalizing on Spike's draw as a character that they forgot that Spike is interesting because his part in the Buffyverse. Mooning over The Slayer and enduring The Other's attempt to destroy his mind really isn't what Spike is about, and the book has all the fire of a collection of postage stamps from a country you don't care about.
The best I can say is avoid this book, which is a flat effort at best, but keep an eye out for Diana Gallagher's books. Somewhere inside of her is a good book trying to get out. Unfortunately, Spark and Burn isn't it.