A Tale of Two Snapes

"The Great Snape Debate" is engaging, entertaining and worth a quick read before midnight Friday.
Written by Amy Berner, Orson Scott Card and Joyce Millman, it is a Borders Book Store exclusive publication. You'll have to find it there. Since it only takes 2 or 3 hours to read, you could just take it to the cafe and read it in the store.
I've already passed on my copy to a friend, to help her while away the hours before we pick up our "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" at midnight Friday in Shelbyville's Three Sisters Books & Gifts, so I apologize for not having specific quotes and instances to illustrate my review.
I really enjoyed the "Two Sides to Every Story, Flip the Book Over and See" idea. On one side is "Snape as Foe," illustrated with the green Slytherin snake arising from the cauldron on the cover. Flip the book over and you'll find "Snape as Friend," with a red phoenix shimmering over that cauldron.
Inside, you'll find the major points of the Severus Snape story throughout all six books of the Harry Potter series thus far. Each side goes through these points from the perspective of Snape as friend or foe. This gets a little repetitive, and it is done elsewhere, on websites and books, better.
However, the authors then take us through major literary themes that reflect friends or foes and how Snape resembles these archetypes of comparative literature. These sections I found interesting and engaging, though, again, in a few sections, somewhat repetitive once I got to the second "side." Here is expounded the idea of Snape as Shape Shifter, a character is makes a major shift from neutral to good/bad or from bad to good. These areas were illuminating and worthwhile. It is easy to see how Snape fits into the Shape Shifter mold.
Here, the friend and foe sections both begin with Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Satan, as the model for Snape. It is easy for me to see Snape echoing the Satan archetype, as well as an ultimate Shape Shifter, from bad to good.
The section I thought was best was the chapter written by prolific science fiction author Orson Scott Card. Here he looked at the issue as an author, explained how he would handle Snape (shape shifting from bad to good) and as an ultimate sacrifice. I was shocked at this, but after reading his reasoning, I could see how an author might come to that plot twist.
Now, I look forward to see how J.K. Rowling pulls together the separate threads of Snape's story not just on an emotional reader level but also on a comparative fiction basis. Rowling has shown a mastery of weaving myth, legend, whimsy and religion in her Potter series. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be a masterful, epic Final Act.
Mugglenet's "What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7?"
While I was browsing in Borders, after securing my copy of "The Great Snape Debate," I came across a book written by the creator, and contributors, of mugglenet.com, which has been hailed by Rowling as the best fan site she has visited. I have enjoyed visiting mugglenet.com, so I picked up "What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7?"
Included in this book were sections on the major plot "secrets" so far that still have to be resolved, a synopsis of the series through Book 6, and a short section explaining how Mugglenet.com and the book came to be.
Mugglenet's synopsis of the series is better than the one given in "The Great Snape Debate" because it is written by Emerson Sparks, the home-schooled teenage with too much time on his hands who created mugglenet. The website is encyclopedic and includes one section where fans may write in with discrepancies or mistakes they have found in the books.
Themes that have been ongoing for years now on the website were pulled together for the book. "What Will Happen" covered the Snape-as-friend-or-foe theme more succinctly. Then it went on to the second-most-talked-about puzzler, Is Dumbledore Really Dead? It covered What Will Happen to Neville Longbottom, the Boy Who Almost Was Harry, and his future, inextricably twined with Death Eater and torturer of his parents, Bellatrix Lestrange.
In comparison, I probably enjoyed "What Will Happen" more on an entertainment level. It WAS fun and entertaining and covered more than just one topic. I was a little bored with "The Great Snape Debate" even though it was thought-provoking in a way many books on popular topics aren't'.