Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a novel written using the English language. It was written by J.K. Rowling, who has also written several other novels.
As far as the novel goes, it has a nice cover featuring a picture of Harry Potter on a broom. It wraps-around fully and even goes onto the inside flaps. It’s rather whimsical and is one of the reasons that I bought the book. The book is a 6″ x 9″ hardcover with a glue binding. The type is very legible in 12-point Adobe Garamond. The interior art is all pencil drawn and of decent quality. I have seen better in other books, but it’s not bad. The margins are fairly large and the type is widely spaced. I did not notice any problems with proofreading.
On the contents. The inside covers are blank and navy blue in color. The first page contains the title, then there’s another page with title, author, and illustrator. The third page contains the copyright notice followed by a table of contents. There are seventeen chapters.
On page 9, the action starts. Harry Potter is a young boy who has been orphaned. This goes on for 17 pages, then we skip ahead a decade or so. Things proceed in a linear narrative from that point forward.
At the end of the book, there’s a couple pages detailing the type font and various other credits.
Overall, the novel was quite good. The format is a bit worn (young hero does heroic stuff), but there is a good mix of mystery and magic to offset this. It is supposed to be the first in a series of novels focused on Harry Potter, so the characters should see some much-needed development in the future.
I recommend this novel and await the next installment.
But is the pdf bookmarked? That’s a deal breaker for me.
Hah!
But since RPG books are handbooks, meant to be used at the table rather than just read once, I think it is actually appropriate to comment on the binding, typeface, etc. in RPG reviews, and whether or not there are indexes, ToC, etc.
Why so many reviews obsess over art and such is less understandable.
Agreed about the art – when I buy a PDF version of a book, I don’t even bother printing the pictures if I have the choice. As for fonts, I don’t really care as long as they are legible. If the binding breaks, I just hole-punch it and put it in a binder.
Having a good index is nice, although I can get by without it. Post-it notes on the outside of the pages get me to the most important parts faster than an index anyway, but it’s nice to be able to look up the obscure things in an index.
What I want to know from a review is the content.
Cover art, illustrations, and type size ARE all important factors in whether a novel is worth buying or not – particularly type size!
Speaking of Harry Potter, weren’t you going to do a Deathly Hallows review at one point?
Brilliant.
Is this in response to a L&L review or just generally bemused at how RPGs are reviewed? Hilarious in any case.
Just general bemusement. It’s actually one of the reasons I stopped writing reviews for RPGNet. There was a little fetish cult which had become obsessed with the physical properties of their RPG manuals and thought that “cost per page” or “cost per word” were the only factors that determined value.
The result was that the majority of reviews at RPGNet were being written with multiple paragraphs of irrelevant nonsense. It was a culture I had no interest in joining: Unless there is something truly exceptional (either good or bad) about the physical presentation of a book, there is absolutely no reason to mention it in your review. There’s certainly no need to wax rhapsodic about it for multiple paragraphs or make the majority of your review about it.
LOL!!! The worst part is that it plagued over to spanish reviews… Not only that, but you see a lot of pictures of the art and the cover and whatsoever. To make it even worse, the commentary sections read “Great review!!!”. I’m shocked. I didn’t know it was a trend on english world as well. I never been to RPG.net, the first time I tried to enter I found out I was banned, which is kind of funny, maybe I need a Visa because I’m argentinian? 🙂
The worst part is that the few reviews I wrote for a forum, they were five or more lengthy paragraphs about the system, what it accomplished, putting comparisons and examples in tiny boxes so that people can choose whether to read them or not, saying what was improved or wasn’t compared to the previous version, etc. And people just walked by(others of course expressed gratitude, so it wasn’t all waste). I’m curious, if people care more about the visual than the substance, why are they even playing a tabletop RPG where you actually have no visuals? Just go and play videogames.
The artwork is an important accesory since it fires up imagination, but it’s the fried chips, not the actual burger.
Hilarious version of a Harry Potter review, despite all the good points in the comments. My biggest issue at the moment, is I can’t find review of the Gamemaster’s Book of… that doesn’t sound like a sales pitch, sounds like they are paid or part of the company, so weird. But then again – it’s made by ordinary people in the community like you and me and not journalists.
🙂 Mikkel
Hillarious version of a Harry Potter review,
I’m trying to find a review of The Gamemaster’s Book of… that is somewhat critical. They all sound like a commercial. I’m sorry if offend anyone.
Anyone seen any true reviews of these books?
Best Mikkel (old timer returning to the hobby – DnD and CoC) 🙂