I finished Harry Potter. You know, that book I had no interest in reading? It was quite good. Several people have said that it’s better than the last two, but that’s faint praise. I’ll go one better and say it’s the best of the lot, excepting the first. There was, for a change, just enough plot to go around — after the avalanche of plot found Phoenix and Goblet, this was a huge relief. This allowed Rowling to actually develop her characters and — hey! look! — get off some great, funny lines. I don’t remember ever being this pleased with her actual writing, which has previously struck me as a little flat: Words were merely the tools she needed to build a bridge between the points in her overwrought story. A perfectly respectable bridge, but not one you’d want to take pictures of or anything. This time, I found myself re-reading a few enjoyable sentences or snatches of dialogue, not because I didn’t understand what they were talking about but because they were particularly well-phrased or touching or funny. It didn’t happen often, mind you, and not nearly as frequently as with my favorite writers, but I don’t remember that happening at all with Rowling’s past books.
Plotwise, I was very pleased with the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, which totally knocked me out. She set me up good. Never saw it coming. And while I knew [deleted] was going to get killed, it was still a shock when it happened. We took this book out of the library, and now we may have to buy it — it’s the first one in a long, long time that’s likely to be reread.
One Comment
It’s not my favorite (that would still be Prisoner of Azkaban), but I think it’s the official runner-up. I do think there were some weak parts of the book, but they’re all things that have generally been a bit weak throughout the series (you know, like the thing where Harry spends the entire book warning people about something, and no matter how many years in a row he’s been right, they always all think he’s nuts).