Rating: 
Summary: AWESOME
Review: I bought this book for a friend's birthday this weekend. I was a little apprehensive, since I've heard that some of the Harry Potter companion books and such that have come out are pretty disappointing. However, this one looked good, so I took it home and decided to flip through it. I was amazed at how wonderful it was! It had detailed illustrations of Mandrakes, Hippogriffs, Unicorns, Manticores, and LOTS MORE. It tells you the legend of the basilisk and where you can find a basilisk today. It explains, with four pages of shapes and their meanings, how to read tea leaves (very interesting). The story tells the tale of how a king in Europe funded an entire war with a single unicorn horn. Did you know that Nicholas Flamel was a real person who actually dedicated his life to alchemy? I didn't, but I know now! SUCH AN INTERESTING READ and VERY WORTH THE MONEY. All of my friends at the party have called dibs on reading it when my friend was done with it, and I get first turn, I can't wait! Anyway, it's very fascinating and pretty educational too, yet it's related to Harry Potter, which makes it 10 times better! BUY IT!
Rating:
Summary: great fun
Review: For adult and older teens who want to know about Harry Potter's world this is a marvelously entertaining book. The Hippogriff, the Red Cap demon and the house elves who populate the Potter series all come from European or Eastern folklore. Nagini, the evil snake companion of the evil Voldemort is taken from ancient Indian myths. The centuars in the Forbidden Forrest come from Greek mythology. Hagrid the half giant can trace his literary lineage back through centuries of English and Irish tales. The more you read this book the greater your respect for J.K. Rowling will be. She obviously studied Brittish folklore before she sat down to write. Thanks to the Companion I now know that Nicholas Flannel and his wife were real people and that Flannel was a well known alchemist in his day who claimed to have created a Philosopher's stone. Using this historical figure in the her first book was a brilliant stroke. If you are fond of folklore this is the book for you. If you haven't read the Potter books becuase you thought they were just for kids this book may make you curious enough to pick one up.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting with Only a Few Inconsistencies
Review: I've read many a Harry Potter "accessory book" but this one is one of those I'd recommend. It allows readers of the Harry Potter books to see the depth of the magical world J.K. Rowling has created. It was neatly organized and had an almost textbook feel. I enjoyed it immensely, though I did notice something didn't quite fit with what JK Rowling has written on some subjects such as witches and wizards flying on broomsticks. If I remember rightly, The Sorcerer's Companion and Quidditch Through the Ages contradict each other. But I do realize that the Sorcerer's Companion merely delved into "Muggle" lore on witches and wizards therefore little things like that do not take away from the books charm :) I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book and A Great Idea!
Review: This book is fascinating to read. It is well researched and well written. Hats off to the authors for their work and for their marketing skill. I'm sure it would not be doing as well if they had not linked it to the Harry Potter phenomenon!Some of the great facts this book that leap out are that Nicholas Flamel was (still is?) a real person, you can find basilisks living today and a lot of what people considered to be magic actually has much factual basis. This book is still a good read if you are into myths and legends (and not into Harry Potter). It's surprising how much of these ancient myths still survive in today's world in one way or another. Good luck charms and believing in good or bad luck are only two examples. Read the book and you will find that maybe we are not that far advanced when it comes to wanting to believe in something else out there.
Rating:
Summary: A MUST for the devoted HP fan!
Review: I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and was a little wary of buy a companion book. But this is an absolutely fabulous book. It tells about almost every mythical being/activity mentioned in the HP series. The book goes into the detailed history of each subject. You can even learn how to read tea leaves, read palms, & analyze a name through Arithmancy. The pictures are great and the information even better. No wizard or muggle should be without this book!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but very little to do with HP
Review: This is a very interesting book and I read it over and over. The only thing wrong with it is that I was expecting for it to have something to do with HP, but it didn't, aside from mentioning it every once in a while. It's like an encyclopedia of monsters and magic and it's interesting, but it's muggle lore, it's what people actually believed in the middle ages and other times. While JKR certainly based some of her magical creatures on traditional folk lore, it is her book and she changed the creatures to suit the plot. By itself it's wonderful, but don't expect much insight on the books.
Rating:
Summary: A Pottermanic's delight
Review: "The Sorcerer's Companion" is a great fun resource not just for us Pottermaniacs, but also for those who have a passing interest in magic and occult lore. It's an invaluable companion book for the HP series but it stands very well on its own. Those who already have David Colbert's "Magical Worlds of Harry Potter" may want to add this book to their library; it covers a lot of areas the Colbert book doesn't and it's more comprehensive. Written in the form of a mini-encyclopedia covering everything from Amulets to Zombies, "The Sorcerer's Companion" provides links to the first four HP books (it was written two years before HP5 was published) with notations for easy reference. (Check out PA 8/154 for mention of Grindylows -- PA being "Prisoner of Azkaban", and 8/154 being the chapter and the page number of the American edition.) We learn that there are many kinds of Divination (ever heard of Astragalomancy? It's a fancy term for throwing dice) and the difference between amulets and talismans, along with a zillion other delicious tidbits of information. Want to know just what a Hinkypunk is? Or what the study of Arithmancy (the bane of Hermione's existence) involves? Did you know that the Kappa is a Japanese demon which loves cucumbers and the best way to keep it off is to placate it by feeding it kappamaki sushi? (Okay, I admit that one sounds a tad farfetched, but hey, it's all in fun.) It's not necessary to go through this book from A to Z; you can browse through it however you like and still come up with a bounty of entertainment and information, as well as practical advice on how to read tea-leaves (maybe you'll do better at this than Harry and Ron who couldn't see anything in the leaves but a big mushy mess), where to find a basilisk (guess what? there really is a basilisk lizard) and how to rid your premises of goblins. The book is a browser's delight -- fun and educational at the same time. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Shallow and not really about HP, but very interesting
Review: A great night table book, it is arranged in short, alphabetical entries that can be read quickly. The authors seem uniquely suited to their subject-matter and obviously know their stuff. But, while they try to cite passages from the books as much as possible, most of the material just doesn't apply. JK Rowling seems to have skimmed a volume like this, then put it into a blender and extracted her own take on it all. It's liable to make purists a tad angry. It's all very interesting in its own right, though. I would have liked a lot more info on the "real" stuff, and less of a stretch to make it applicable.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read for Harry Potter Fans and Occult Fans Alike!
Review: Untill I read this amazing and informative book I had no idea how baffled I was about Harry Potter and the world of the Occult. Now, I consider my self a pretty hardcore fan of the Harry Potter series, (after all, I have read all of the first 4 books 10 times and the 5th 6) and I have long studied and been dazzled by every aspect of magic, alchemey, ghosts, mythology and so on, but this book opened up a whole new window for me. Something that suprised me about this volume is that it does not veiw magic as simply a fantsy and fairy tale, and veiw our ancestors as dim-witted and under-evolved for devoting so much of their lifestyle to their beleifs, but presents the history of the Occult as a genuine part of history and do not scoff at it but respects it and gives as much information as possible. Some of the things mentioned in this book I would have never even thought were not the products of J.K Rowling's well-devoloped imagination (Red Caps, veela, hinkypunks and hippogrifs come readily to mind)and somethings, like dragons and wands and such, get a great spotlight and you start to see things you never saw before. In conclusion, this book is great for all ages, with a boatload of information and great reference images. A Must Buy!
Rating:
Summary: Another fun read while we wait for Book 6
Review: I've read a number of the "accessory" books inspired by Harry Potter, and this one is really good. It's a little like "Magical Worlds of Harry Potter"(which I also recommend)in that it's set up by alphabetical entries you can easily reference without necessarily reading it in any particular order. It's very different in that "Companion" has subject by subject entries, referenced by which book/chapter/page it concerns (rather than questions based on the books as entries)and is a little more scholarly. If you love history, this book is probably the most detailed and informative (along with Buckbeak, who knew people charged all kinds of animals and even bugs with crimes)! You can learn arithmancy, tea leaf reading, palmistry, runes, and so on. This book is so complete, I don't think the authors missed anything connected with the books, regardless of how obscure. Give it a try-I actually rate it around a 4 1/2 stars.
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