The Gist:
The third in Titan Book’s series of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes books focuses on the different characters that appear in the films.
The Review:
The Character Vault keeps in line with the design established by The Creature Vault, the first book in Titan Books’ new series on Harry Potter film design.
The content summary however makes one thing immediately clear: this time, there is a lot more material to deal with for a book of 208 pages, and this then becomes The Character Vault’s biggest weakness.
All characters are grouped in different categories, which results in very long and very short chapters.
The Character Vault includes every character that appeared, and it’s not easy to determine whether that is a good or a bad thing because it leaves you with a severe imbalance of material.
The pictures are sized in a way that sometimes suggests the lack of suitable material, especially since one of the pages will always be a full-sized film still.
Harry, Hermione and Ron as main characters get six pages each, main characters get four, while the rest has to do with two pages, this means only one page of information. Also The Character Vault relies more heavily on film photography than The Creature Vault did, which means a lot of material doesn’t feel as exciting and new, especially for those who were hoping for more detailed shots or sketches. The included photography is printed brilliantly however, so a lot can be gleaned from the promotional photographs themselves.
The text includes a short interview with each actor and a description of their costumes and wands. Again a little more detail could have gone a long way, which could have been achieved by leaving our certain minor characters, but this comes down to each individual reader’s preference.
Overall The Character Vault might not provide fans with as much new information as The Creature Vault or even the DVD bonus material did, but it still is a very good and ultimately beautiful book every Harry Potter fan can enjoy.
The Verdict:
Perhaps overambitious in its scope, The Character Vault is welcome addition to every fans’ bookshelf that falls just short of a must-have.
Publisher: Titan Books
Publishing Date: October 27th, 2015
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