Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

J. K. Rowling’s latest was released yesterday at 9:01am in Australia. Unfortunately, at 9:00am I had to be at Sydney Secondary College, to help load a truck with all the NSW Fencing Association equipment we had borrowed to run the Australian Universities Fencing Championships. I then had to go to the Ann Clarke Netball Centre to unload it. So I wasn’t able to pick up my copy of the book until about midday. However, having had an exhausting week at the championships, I decided to skip Fencing Club training, and put my feet up and read that afternoon.

Book number 5 (Order of the Phoenix) had been my least favourite Harry Potter. On re-reading it in preparation for Half-Blood Prince, I found that while I still thought it was crying out for severe editing, the “Harry as rebellious adolescent” was better presented than I had remembered. The problem was, as an angsty, “nobody understands me”, Young Adult kind of story, it didn’t really seem to fit that well into the Potter-verse.

The moody adolescent was gone from Half-Blood Prince, and, as a result, it felt much more like the earlier books. It could probably still have done with some more editing, but it was nowhere near as bloated as Order of the Phoenix or Goblet of Fire. However, it still wasn’t as tightly constructed as some of the earlier ones. I’m not sure if this was an editing issue, or just that there wasn’t as much plot. In particular, it didn’t have that twist at the end that makes you want to re-read it, to find all the clues you missed the first time around. So, while I think she’s heading back in the direction of what I liked about the earlier books in the series, she’s not there yet.

Some general comments, which are FULL OF SPOILERS:

• I thought all the relationship stuff was a bit superficial, but probably inevitable given the ages of the characters. Though I’m wondering how it sits with the original target audience of 9-11 year olds. Of course, the original readers are now older than Harry, but are the current crop of 9-11 year olds supposed to read the first few books, and then wait until they grow up a bit before reading the later ones?
• I’m probably in the minority here, but I was pleased there was a lot less of Hagrid in this book. I was finding the Care of Magical Creatures lessons increasingly painful in the last few books.
• I thought Horace Slughorn was set up as an interesting character, but then nothing much was done with him.
• The revelation that Snape was the Half-Blood Prince was a bit unexpected. There don’t seem to have been any Agatha Christie style clues-that-you-don’t-even-notice scattered throughout the book.
• I got a bit fed up with Harry continually using the Potions book, when it was so obvious all along that Hermione was right about it. And Ron should have taken it a bit more seriously, too.
• I liked the little cameos by Luna Lovegood. I’ll be interested to see what happens with her in the last book.
• I’ll also be interested to see what happens with Percy. My original theory – that his ambition and liking for rules would lead him to Voldemort’s side without him actually realising it, and that he would end up coming good, but probably dying in a sacrificial moment – now seems less likely than it did a couple of books ago. But I’m assuming he’ll have some impact in the final climax.
• I thought Dumbledore’s death scene was much more moving than Sirius’s in Order of the Phoenix (though this may just be that I was getting a bit fed up with Sirius anyway). Dumbledore was the one I had my money on to die in this book, and as the plot developed, and he gave Harry more and more information, it became increasingly likely that he wasn’t going to be around for Book 7.
• My reading of the death scene (which I thought was the only possible reading until I saw some other people’s comments) was that when he says “Severus … please …” to Snape at the end, he is actually asking Snape to kill him, in order to stop Malfoy from doing it (and thus, to save Malfoy from turning to the Dark Side). Presumably he and Snape had already discussed this as a possibility.
• There seemed to be at least one continuity error – Dumbledore says that they haven’t been able to keep any Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for more than a year since he refused the job to Voldemort. But in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone I certainly got the impression that Quirrell had been in the job for quite a while.