Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: One Last Golden Year
Written: Jul 23 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Harry's character development; engrossing, emotional story; moves the series forward in a satisfying way
Cons: With the overall epic picking up speed, less character development with secondary characters
The Bottom Line: A must read for any Harry Potter fan.
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| befus's Full Review: J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Pr... |
Like Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has a flavor to suit just about everyone. Mystery, suspense, romance, a touch of horror, are all here. Readers get to enjoy time with endearing characters we love...and those we love to hate. The book transports us to places we love to visit...and provides us glimpses of new settings, including a few we might be afraid to go back to.
J.K. Rowling continues her winning magic formula in this sixth and penultimate volume of the Harry Potter series. Harry, now 16, returns to his sixth year at dear old hoggy Hogwarts, where things are much the same as usual... although Harry himself has changed a great deal.
***(Note: I'll attempt to keep this review as spoiler free as possible regarding the book under discussion, but I will assume a familiarity with books 1-5. If you haven't read the first five, please tread cautiously from this point.)***
If you've been travelling along with Harry's story, and if you can cast your mind back that far, you'll recall that the series began with the skinny eleven year old orphan finding out that he was of magical parentage, and that there was a deep mystery surrounding the death of his Mum and Dad. In fact, Harry's parents were killed by the self-styled Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard who most people in the wizarding world fear to name.
Voldemort tried to kill Harry when he was just a baby, for reasons that only began to become clear in the fifth book in the series. For reasons we still understand only in part, the killing curse failed, rebounded on Voldemort, and sent him into a basically unbodied exile (but not death). Following a return to embodied strength in book 4, Voldemort has renewed his attempts on Harry's life, and in the process of climbing back to power, has begun to wage an all-out war on the wizarding world.
In my review of Order of the Phoenix, (the fifth book, published in 2003) I wrote that the storyline was darkening, and that the tale of the young boy was changing into an epic of a young man really wrestling with his identity and destiny. That remains true in Half-Blood Prince, but the book feels lighter in some ways than its predecessor. (It's actually also physically lighter, as it's about 200 pages shorter than the incredibly lengthy Phoenix.)
That's not to say that Half-Blood Prince is relaxed in tone or doesn't have scenes of darkness and sadness. That would be impossible, given the overall direction the series is headed, which is a inevitable life or death showdown between Harry and Voldemort. However, Half-Blood Prince was a smoother read in many ways, in part because Harry is truly growing up. Having come to terms with losses endured in Phoenix, he is stronger, more open with his friends, more aware of the preciousness of life, and more able to be guided by his mentor, headmaster Albus Dumbledore, the "only wizard Voldemort has ever feared." Much of the story this time out focuses on Harry and Dumbledore's growing relationship, and on Dumbledore's teaching of Harry.
And, as a wonderful gift both to Harry and to Harry's faithful readers (many of whom are rightly feeling quite worried about the fate of our hero) Rowling provided some great moments of fun and plain enjoyment to Harry and friends here. Because we're nearing the end, the main thrust of the story is of course becoming more and more central, and with the wizarding world now at war, the atmosphere can get quite tense. What again saves the story from its own weight is the continued enjoyment Rowling has in weaving in delightful details of this "secondary world" she has created -- although we've now figured out that it's not the use of magic that makes a world or a person good, it's still fun to live vicariously in an enchanted castle!
It also helps that Rowling has created very believable teenage characters, who (in the midst of all the seriousness and sadness) still get crushes on each other, engage in kissing and hand-holding, complain about writing papers for classes, worry about passing their "apparition tests" (the wizarding equivalent of getting a driver's license) and compete valiantly on the quidditch pitch. If the middle section of the book feels a bit "fluffy," I think it's because Rowling wanted to give her protagonists (and readers) a bit of a breather before plunging us into the final difficult quest of book 7, a quest definitely set in motion by revelations and some painful moments of crisis at the end of book 6. By the end of this one, Harry has truly grown up (even if he's not officially come of age) and the final leg of the quest is about to begin. In book 6, Rowling has given us one last "golden year" of relative freedom and innocence before Harry and friends dive into the most hard and painful part of the epic.
The usual smaller "mysteries" also serve to keep the plot moving forward. Although the sub-plots of the individual books always weave into the larger overall plot of the series (and the far more giant adventure of Harry's ultimate quest) the sub-plots themselves are often quite clever in the manner of detective fiction. This time out, the burning questions surround Harry's nemesis at school, Draco Malfoy (what is he up to? and is he now working for Voldemort?) and the identity of the title figure the half-blood prince (whose notes in a used textbook prove intriguing and useful for Harry). Astute readers of all ages may pick up on enough well-planted clues to figure out the last before the book ends. Both questions are answered by book's end, though there is undoubtedly more still to learn on both fronts.
As a real lover of the Harry Potter stories, my biggest complaint with this novel is that I didn't get enough page time with some of the secondary characters I've grown to enjoy through earlier installments. The epic is getting more complex and crowded, so I supposed that's inevitable. Ron, Hermione and Ginny all get some great moments in this one, but I missed more time with the incorrigible Fred and George Weasley, and I was hoping for further character development with Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. But you can't have everything.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is an exciting page turner, an emotionally draining and curiosity inducing tale in a fascinating ongoing story. As the penultimate book in the series, it raises as many questions as it answers. But along with the earlier books, it seems to have been written with loving care and true zestful enjoyment, and that alone makes it a very good read worth celebrating.
I continue to strongly recommend that parents read these stories ALONG WITH their children (especially younger children under the age of 12). The marketing hoopla around the books definitely aims for younger as well as older readers, but the serious themes in these stories need, nay demand, honest and guided discussion by loving adults. The Harry Potter books have a deserved wide appeal to readers of diverse ages. They can be read, on one level, as amusing and exciting adventures of young adults, set in a fantastic world, often with elements of detective fiction and fairy-tales. Since the beginning of the series, however, some difficult and important themes of the stories have been clear, and are becoming clearer as time goes on: the power of self-sacrificial love, how our choices affect who we are and will become, and the reality of evil and the high cost of fighting it. These are things worth talking about with our children, and indeed among ourselves.
Recommended:
Yes
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You-can't-get a cup-of-tea big enough or a book long-enough to suit me...C.S Lewis
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