The Great Snape Debate

#47Title: The Great Snape DebateAuthors: Orson Scott Card, Joyce Millman, & Amy Berner
Publisher: BenBella (for Borders)
Year: 2007
Genre: Literary Criticism
175 pages (plus 9 inexplicable blank pages in the middle--surely in this day and age we're not still stuck with the number of pages in a signature, are we?)

Note that this is a Borders exclusive, so buy your copy now if you're at all interested. It's enjoyable enough, but not a work for the ages. There's a snappy tone throughout that's meant to be hip but is quite off-putting. This includes numerous transient pop-culture references and little boxed riffs that don't contribute to the discussion and seem very out of place.

Like all Harry Potter exegesis, it's fun, particularly since the authors use many of the same data to support both Snape's innocence and his evil. However, their hearts aren't really on the side of "evil," which is a shorter section with more unsupported generalizations. Orson Scott Card's section is the best written and most interesting, and addresses the Snape question by appealing to literary conventions.

Two nitpicks:
1. This is not, as it claims, a "flipbook." A flipbook uses a series of similar static images to provide the illusion of motion hen flipped. This is a "double" or "double title," a format used by ACE and other publishers to offer two novellas in the same binding in the heyday of science fiction.

2. If you're going to quote and cite, give a reference page or at least footnotes.