Amy Berner did a good job in collecting evidence and presenting it in an objectionable fashion about Severus Snape's loyalties. ( )

Well, the first essay on each side was what I was after, but the others were not really worth reading. I finished the book not knowing whether Snape was good or bad, so I think each side did it's job pretty well. ( )

The concept of the book is great. One side of the book is the case for Snape's innocence--flip it over and it's the case for Snape's guilt.

Be warned, despite what the cover says, Orson Scott Card is NOT an author this book-- he has a 30 page essage on Snape, but the rest of the book is by Berner and Millman.

They make a lot of assumptions without any textual evidence--I can understand why people would assume that Lucius Malfoy took a young Severus Snape under his wing at school, but there is nothing in the "cannon" about this, yet the author's take it as fact and base their arguements on it. They say that Dumbledore isn't entirely trustworthy because he's made bad decisions in the past, such as letting Tom Riddle attend Hogwarts-- completely misisng the fact that Dumbledore wasn't headmaster at the time, so it really wasn't his decision.

In addition to faulty assumptions for which we have no evidence, they also use such things as the movies as evidence for what might happen in Book 7. Despite the fact that J. K. Rowling approved the movie scripts doesn't mean they can be taken as evidence because it's not like she wrote the scripts. Plus, they use the film career of Alan Rickman as evidence. I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with anything.

There are lots of sidebars that are supposed to be humorous-- like what's on Snape's iPod, or the fact that Snape's secret vice is really Dancing With the Stars. Where I appreciated the inclusion of The Best of the Smiths, Vol. 1 on Snape's iPod, the rest of it was just lame.

I bought the book because Orson Scott Card's name was on it. His essay is really good, but the rest of the book is just a crappy thing quickly churned out to make a fast buck.

See all my reviews at Biblio File ( )