"His Eyes Are As Green As A Fresh Pickeled Toad"
Written: Mar 26 '03 (Updated Jul 21 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: An Excellent, Eerie Story from J.K. Rowling.
Cons: None.
The Bottom Line: The 2nd Book in the Harry Potter Series is filled with strange creatures, voices, and is so far, the darkest in J.K. Rowling's acclaimed series.
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| thevoid99's Full Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Pot... |
With the next part of the Harry Potter story, Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix approaching with its June 21, 2003 release, anticipation for the book is already at a frantic pace. With the book covers released on several Harry Potter websites, anticipation for The Order of the Phoenix is already looming. To continue this countdown of sorts to The Order of the Phoenix, we now go to the second book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets where the Boy Who Lived returns in J.K. Rowling’s acclaimed series.
Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets continues the story of young Harry Potter as he just came off from a fresh first year at Hogwarts School of Wizardry & Witchcraft. After meeting Lord Voldemort, the evil wizard who killed his parents, in the body of a teach who was trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone in the previous story, Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone, Potter defeated Voldemort for the second time as he learned of the secrets behind his parents murder as well as finding friends in fellow young wizards Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger as well as the school’s large gamekeeper Hagrid. In The Chamber of Secrets, Harry returns to Hogwarts where something mysterious is lurking in the school as students get attacked and Harry discovers more things about himself and the secrets of the school as well as a few people.
The Chamber of Secrets in comparison to the previous story, The Sorcerer’s Stone is a much darker, funnier, and more developed story in the series as Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts as he learns more about himself and some secrets about other people. Rowling brings in new subjects to the series including one about prejudice. Now in our world, (or as wizards call it, the Muggle world) we have disputes over skin, religion, and all other such. In the wizarding world, it’s blood that becomes the centerpiece behind some of the prejudices in the wizarding world, particularly one of the stories main villains, Potter’s rival Draco Malfoy who prides himself and his family as being “pure-blood” since his parents come from a long line of witches and wizards that spans generations and his family considers those with Muggle-parentage to be second class.
Rowling again, brings a sense of innocence and intelligence to the series as Harry Potter and his gang grows up a little bit and discover more secrets about the school. The readers also get introduced to new characters in the story that were briefly mentioned in The Sorcerer’s Stone as well as a vain, egotistical wizard named Gilderoy Lockhart who claims to be a great wizard but he isn’t everything as some people see. The Chamber of Secrets is also filled with new creatures and dark overtones that is chilling enough to give kids nightmares but with a sense of hilarity that kids and adults can enjoy. While The Sorcerer’s Stone is an excellent introduction to the phenomenon known as Harry Potter, it’s The Chamber of Secrets that helps makes Harry Potter become the literary icon to children.
The story begins with Harry back at his dismal home in 4 Privet Drive, Surrey, in England where Harry is now being treated like a time bomb that might go off to his relatives, the Dursleys and whenever he mentions magic in front of them, he gets in trouble with his Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and their fat, spoiled son Dudley. For Harry, it’s the worst summer of his life and on the day of his 12th birthday, it gets worse since his pet owl Hedwig is locked in her cage by Uncle Vernon, he cannot contact his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger as well as the school gamekeeper Hagrid. Even they hadn’t contacted Harry since he wasn’t receiving letters from them either. Just as things got worse, Uncle Vernon announces a dinner party was coming where he could make a big deal for his drilling company, Grunnings and Harry was forced to stay in his room for the night.
Just as he entered his room, he saw something strange in his bed. A house-elf named Dobby was waiting for Harry Potter and was telling Harry how much of a hero was to house-elves and warned Harry about something horrible that’s happening at Hogwarts and told Harry not to go back to Hogwarts. Harry told Dobby that he has to go back and it was his home and he found out that Dobby had been stopping the letters he was supposed to receive from Ron, Hermione, and Hagrid and Dobby causes all sorts of trouble by levitating food that dropped on one of the Dursley’s guests at the dinner party. Things get worse when an owl sends Harry a letter, and it was not a birthday present. Instead, it was a warning from the Improper Use of Magic, a department from the Ministry of Magic, who told Harry that if he used magic again outside of Hogwarts, he’d be expelled which made Uncle Vernon happy since he was ecstatic that Harry, as an underage wizard, wasn’t supposed to use magic and decided to lock him up in his room and if Harry used magic to get himself out, he’d be expelled.
Harry’s summer was on its way for the worse until one night, he saw a flying car coming to his barred windows and in that car was Harry’s best friend Ron Weasley and his troublemaking twin brothers Fred & George, all of whom had flaming red hair. The Weasleys help Harry bust out and get his school things which was locked in the old cupboard Harry had lived since for years and the bust woke up the Dursleys who tried to stop Harry but was too late as he escaped the Dursleys. Harry tells the Weasleys about Dobby and Harry learns that house-elves have their own magic but it’s only used on the command of their masters where Harry and Ron finally begin to suspect their common enemy, Draco Malfoy. Fred & George tell Harry that Draco is the son of Lucius Malfoy, an old supporter of Voldemort, and the fact that the Malfoys are a rich, evil pure-blood family and Lucius wasn’t well-liked with some in the Ministry including the Weasley’s father Arthur who works in the Muggles Artifacts Department (things that involved Muggle-made materials) for the Ministry.
Harry and the Weasleys boys arrive at their home called the Burrow which Harry thought was the best house he’d ever seen since it has a bunch of chimneys and had tall stories where Harry meets the boy’s mother Molly who is upset at her sons for stealing the car but doesn’t blame Harry who she treats very warmly. Harry joins Ron, Fred, and George on getting rid of gnomes out of the Weasley’s garden (for more info on gnomes, read Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander). Arthur Weasley arrives at home where he is overjoyed to see Harry and keeps asking him about all the things Muggles do and Arthur Weasley is a hilarious character since he is a grown man who collects Muggle-things including plugs and batteries. Harry also meets older brother and school prefect Percy and the youngest sibling in the Weasley clan, Ginny who gets embarrassed whenever she sees Harry.
Harry finally gets a letter from Hermione as well as their school list where everyone is supposed to get a set of books by Gilderoy Lockhart, who Molly Weasley adores, and the Weasley boys are worried about getting those books since they’re expensive and wondered how Ginny is gonna get her school things since she is about to start going to Hogwarts. The Weasleys decided to get Diagon Alley through the chimneys through a powder called Floo Powder where you’re transported from one fireplace to another and Harry begins to worry and he takes a wrong turn and ends up in dreary shop where he sees Draco Malfoy and his father Lucius. Draco keeps telling his father how much he hates Harry Potter and he wanted a new broomstick to join the Slytherin Quidditch team so he can beat Harry and his fellow Gryffindor Quidditch team. After the Malfoys leave the shop, Harry learns he is Knockturn Alley and thought he was lost for good until he sees Hagrid who helps him get back to Diagon Alley where he is found by the Weasleys and friend Hermione Granger.
Harry tells Ron and Hermione about seeing Draco and Lucius Malfoy in the shop selling some things and Arthur wants to bust Lucius until he sees Hermione’s parents and goes ga-ga over their Muggle money and such. Then as Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys enter the bookshop, they see Gilderoy Lockhart who is selling his autobiography, Magical Me to the wizarding world and Lockhart sees Harry’s famed scar on his forehead and decides to take a picture with him for publicity and gives Harry his entire collection for free. Lockhart announces that Harry and the students of Hogwarts will be getting Lockhart as their new teacher for Defense Against The Dark Arts. Harry is then confronted by Draco Malfoy, who also is confronted by Hermione and the Weasley children until Arthur Weasley tries to stop the confrontation but was met by Lucius Malfoy. Lucius picks up an old, battered book from Ginny who then criticizes Arthur’s work in the Ministry and thinks he is a disgrace to the name of wizard since he hangs around with Muggles and is underpaid while Arthur fires back by saying that he has a different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard which leads to a brawl between Arthur and Lucius until Hagrid comes and breaks it up where Malfoy gives Ginny back her book.
Harry finally gets to have an enjoyable summer until he and the Weasleys leave for King’s Cross to get to the secret train platform of 9 ¾ where Harry and Ron crash into the barrier and are locked out of the platform. Harry and Ron decides to use the Weasley’s flying car and fly all the way to Hogwarts where they catch up with the school train and Harry wondered why they couldn’t get on the platform. As they reach Hogwarts, the car gets into trouble as it crashes into a tree and Ron’s wand is snapped after the impact. Things gets worse when the tree starts to attack the car and as the car leaves the tree, Harry and Ron are blasted out of the car as well as their trunks and the cages of Hedwig and Ron’s pet rat Scabbers as the car suddenly takes off into the Forbidden Forest. As if it couldn’t get any worse, as they were about to enter the Great Hall for the Sorting Ceremony, they get an unwelcoming reception from Harry’s least favorite teacher, Professor Snape.
Snape leads them into his dreary office where he shows them the newspaper of how Muggles saw the Weasley’s flying car and wants to expel Harry and Ron (Snape hates Harry since we learn in the previous book, Snape was an enemy of Harry’s late father) but since they weren’t in Slytherin (where he’s the head of that house), he fetches Gryffindor’s house head Professor McGonagall and then comes Dumbledore who decides not to expel them but they will both receive detention from McGonagall who tells Ron that Ginny is also in Gryffindor. The stunt Harry and Ron had made was well received with the entire Gryffindor house including their fellow classmates Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, and their forgetful friend Neville Longbottom. Unfortunately the next day, Ron gets the shock of his life when his mother sends him a Howler, a howling letter that screams at you, and he and Harry both they got what they deserved.
Things get normal but Lockhart who is trying to use him for more fame annoys Harry and Lockhart isn’t well liked with some of the teachers as well as some students who think he’s an idiot except the female classmates who think he is a hero, even Hermione thinks he’s great. Their first class with Lockhart is a nightmare to some students as they answer a quiz answering some of Lockhart’s achievements as well as a disastrous episode with flying pixies. Harry is also then annoyed by a first-year named Colin Creevey who follows him everywhere for pictures and stuff and Ron is having problems of his own since his wand was already malfunctioning. We now then go to some of the more troubling parts of the book where Harry confronts Malfoy, who is now the new Slytherin Seeker and whose father bought the entire team new broomsticks, as Ron and Hermione wonders what’s going on where Hermione says, “At least no one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way in, they got in on pure talent” where Malfoy retorted with a foul comment saying, “No one asked you opinion you filthy, little Mudblood” which causes havoc and Ron tries to curse Malfoy but the wand backfires and Ron ends up belching slugs out of his mouth.
After the disastrous slug episode, Ron and Harry serve their separate detentions where Harry begins to hear a strange voice in the walls and he hears it again a few days later during Halloween where he finds caretaker, Argus Filch’s cat Mrs. Norris frozen stiff and a message saying “THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE” where Filch finds his cat frozen and blames Harry for what happened. The staff and Dumbledore examine the cat and Filch wants some punishment and blames Harry for what happened after Harry had read a letter from Filch where Filch reveals himself to be a Squib (a person from an all-wizarding family with no magic powers). Harry, Ron, and Hermione then begin to read about the Chamber of Secrets where they learn it was made by Salazar Slytherin, who co-founded Hogwarts but had a problem with students that have Muggle-blood in them that forced him out of the school after a tense argument with another school co-founder, Godric Gryffindor.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione begin to suspect Draco Malfoy since he hates those that had Muggle parentage and after an intense Quidditch match where Harry gets injured by a rogue bludger and his arm’s bones was accidentally removed by Lockhart, Harry learns from Dobby, who tells him that the Chamber has been opened before but trouble emerges as another student was attacked by the monster from the Chamber. Hermione decided it was time to question Malfoy by using the Polyjuice Potion, a potion that makes you become someone else, as the students were given a dueling club where Harry has another confrontation with Malfoy but when Malfoy spurts a snake out of his wand that was going to attack a student, Harry stops the snake by talking to the snake in a strange language called Parselmouth and Harry then begins to suspect himself since Salazar Slytherin’s greatest gift was talking to snakes.
Harry is suspected by many students as well and more attacks come in where Harry finally goes into Dumbledore’s office for the first time who believed that Harry didn’t attack anyone as well as Hagrid, where Harry suspects something about him as well since in the previous story, Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts for something in his third year. Harry, Ron, and Hermione begin to work on the Polyjuice Potion and drink it where Harry and Ron disguise themselves as Malfoy’s friends Crabbe and Goyle where they question Malfoy. Unfortunately, Malfoy himself wondered who is the heir as Harry later uncovers a diary from a student named Tom Riddle. Harry then learns about Riddle’s secret in his diary and later on, Riddle’s mysterious latter identity as well as the monster behind the Chamber of Secrets and other secrets as well.
Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets is easily the darkest book in the Harry Potter series and it’s also one of the most brilliant in J.K. Rowling’s classic series. It would later be trumped by it its next book, Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban but it’s still a masterpiece in its equality. While the upcoming fifth book The Order of the Phoenix might beat The Chamber of Secrets in its dark overtones, The Chamber of Secrets might still triumph since it carries some funnier overtones in the story while The Order of the Phoenix is slated to be much more mature story for the fans. In the end, Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets is a successful sophomore effort from J.K. Rowling.
Harry Potter Reviews:
The Novels: Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone - Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban - Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire - Harry Potter & the Order of Phoenix - Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince - Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
The Films: Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone - Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets - Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban - Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire - Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix - Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince - (Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (I & II))
Recommended:
Yes
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thevoid99
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Member: Steven Flores
Location: Smyrna, Georgia
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