Monday 15 June 2015

Book Review 19: Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them by J.K.Rowling

Actually, I am reading "The Scorch Trials" at the moment, but a couple of days ago I received this book, and as it's really short, I thought I'd read it in between.


Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them (Hogwarts Library) by J.K.Rowling

Things to know:
  • I read the original English version
  • It was published July 2009
  • It has 123 pages
  • Set in the World of Harry Potter and is supposed to a replica of the school book Ron and Harry shared
  • I read this on 15th June 2015
  • This is one of 3 books of the Hogwarts Library published for Muggles 


As mentioned above, this book is supposed to be a replica of the school book shared by Ron and Harry. The foreword was written by Dumbledore and the Introduction by Newt Scamander. 
This book gives a short definition of the term "beast" and a brief history how this definition came into existing.
The largest part of it is an A-Z of magical beasts and where they live. 


~~~~~~~~~~


To start with, I want to be honest and say, this book will only be enjoyed by people who really love the Harry Potter World. It reminded my of "The Shadowhunter's Codex", though of course the Hogwarts Library was published before. But both of them are supposed to be school books used by the heroes of the series, with some notes in the margins.
Fantastic Beasts is way shorter than the Codex though, which is great, as it wasn't overfilled with information. On the other side, I would have wished for more sketches of the beasts and a cover which looks nice and old. Those points clearly go to the Codex!
(BTW you can find my review of "The Shadowhunter's Codex" on the right under "January)
Also I would have wished for a few more notes written by Harry and co. Most of them were non-sense. And I have the feeling some "beasts" where missing, the Giants for example. Others, which played a bigger role in HP had only tiny descriptions, e.g. the  Thestral.
Maybe just a bit more detail, would have made it way more interesting!
On the plus side, this is a charity book (at least the UK version is), it's a good cause, so if you want to buy it anyways, get a new UK version on Amazon or something like that :D

I'd say this book is best read after you finished the whole Harry Potter series, but this isn't a must. The notes written by Harry and Ron aren't spoilers, but they do mention what happened throughout books 1 to 6.

I hope this was a little help. If you have any questions, just ask :)

Lisa~

No comments:

Post a Comment