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Pah, after Sirius died I expected another surprise attack, because I assumed that when Rowling had said she'd cried after killing off a character she couldn't have meant Sirius, if only because of the crapness of his dispatch. And it did all feel a bit like 'New X-Men', 'this issue, a beloved character DIES!' 'Oh wait, it's just one of the cuckoos!'.
What most browned me off was the oh so important talk at the end between Dumbledore and Harry. And what important information do we learn? That he and Voldemort are mortal enemies, that they will fight and one will live and one will die, and that the shared blood between his Mum and Aunt Petunia is what keeps him safe at home. The last point does justify why Dumbledore is happy to send him back there each summer (and on a sidepoint, the Dursleys are threatened again to look after Harry. That's not had much luck before) but is hardly important.But on the first point, it's rather stating the bleeding obvious. Harry has fought Voldermort four times now, did he think that in the end Voldermort would give up and go off to become an Ibiza DJ? I'm sure that if Voldemort had been succesful in hearing the prophecy about him and Harry he would have said "I've spent the last eight months working my arse off for that? I've been wasting my time!"
Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle and the Other One. FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCK! This is so bloody tedious! Every year we have the same thing, with Malfoy and co. making a nusiance of themselves in various ways but doing nothing useful to the plot in terms of menace. In the next book I want Malfoy to kill either Ron or Hermione or I want him gone, practically every time he appears the plot slows down so that he and Harry can trade weak insults. It's more tedious than Quiditch. I don't care if in the final book he turns 'good' like Snape, Malfoy merely bores me.
Remind me, what's the difference between a half-blood and a mud-blood? Hermione is a mud-blood because her parents are Muggles, and Harry is a half-blood because his maternal grandparents (at least) were Muggles? Is that right?
Does anyone else suspect that Neville will turn out to be important to destroying Voldermort? Maybe sacrificing himself to deliver the killing blow so Harry doesn't have to?
I notice that despite his promise to tell Harry everything Dumbledore hasn't actually told him anything about his plan for defeating him. It involves giants (I'm sure Hagrid's trip will have reprecussions) and nothing that was set-up at the end of the last book is actually resolved that far here. What worries me is that with two more books to go Rowling will keep stringing us through book six before finally bringing things to a head in book seven.
I did like the fact that though it was a little too long there weren't huge chunks of filling space as with last year. The whole thing with Umbridge was a bit tiresome, did anyone not expect her to take over control of the school?, but did help increase the tension and the thing with the pen was pretty fucked up in a good Roald Dahl kind of way. The two main points this book was advertised on (Dumbledore telling Harry 'everything' and someone dying) were disappointments, but the rest was okay.
Characterisation was pretty much standard with how you feel about Rowling really. The token ethnic minority characters had a little more to do, with obviously Cho having the most. I think Rowling handled the awkwardness between them quite well, especially as Harry is emotionally backward due to his upbringing. It did occur to me that because Hogwarts doesn't teach any normal subjects like home ec, Muggle languages and so on, that anyone that goes through education there has no idea how to live a normal life. So sex education-wise no-one has any idea what goes on! And at last Rowling tries to expand the wizard-universe, as up to last year the job opportunities seemed to be work for the Ministry of Magic, be a teacher, lurk in pubs in Diagon Alley.
All in all then, a pretty good read and better than I expected from Rowling. |
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