Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

(If you haven't read books 1-5 of the Harry Potter series or want no advance warning of what happens in book 6, you may want to avoid reading this post.)

I've now finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and am in agreement with many of the reviews I've read: it is a great improvement on the Order of the Phoenix, in no small part due to the trimming of excess verbiage. This is not a book which panders to fans with unnecessary cameos from characters long gone, but something much leaner and infinitely more satisfying.

On the downside, like the Chamber of Secrets and the Order of the Pheonix, it is full of backstory, leaving the reader with the distinct feeling nothing much is happening except behind the scenes, where Voldemort is presumably still busy marshalling his forces. There is the death of a significant character to cope with, but J.K. Rowling has yet (for me, at least) to recapture the effect of the demise of Cedric Diggory in the Goblet of Fire. Sirius Black's death in the Order of the Phoenix was seriously fudged, so again this is an improvement, if not a patch on the superlative prisoner of Azkaban.

Loose ends are starting to be tied, but thankfully the series' humour has yet to let up, with Dumbledore in particular given some wonderful lines. I fully expect all hell to break loose in the next (and final) instalment, though given what Harry has to do in this I'm a little worried it will be very episodic in nature. We shall see.

(1st August 2005)

Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home

Reviews A-Z