FF:SA **LIGHT SPOILER ALERT!!!** Reveiw & Thoughts on Harry Potter & THBP!!

Late last night i finished the new Harry Potter Book Harry Potter and the half blood prince, and i just thought i'd post my thoughts.

The hype for the book was phenomenal and it is nigh impossible to ever live up to the hype surrounding such things. To begin I?d like to say I always had the feeling that Rowling was either going to Crash and Burn on the order of the phoenix or the half blood prince, She manages to do neither, but only just.

With a book like this first impressions really count, and the second chapter really delivers a bombshell about one of the main characters. This single revelation is so strong that the allegiances questioned in the book are questioned by the reader as well. You never want to admit to what the character has done, but by the book finale their side is cemented well and truly. I won?t saw who or how but be sure its something you never wanted to expect.

Apart from that the next three to four hundred pages are almost pure filler, its like Rowling just wants to get to the damn finish so she can do something radical. At this point i'd like to point out that I hate the way Rowling writes both kissing and love scenes. They seem forced, as if she is scared to have her characters showing true affection. Harry's infatuation for a certain someone (i think) is so poorly done that the reader really has no idea what?s going on. He will have a dreamy moment for half a page and the subject will not rear its head for another hundred and fifty pages, very disconcerting. I also hate her use of the word snogg, its too damn english, which i can't really blame her for i guess. She just uses it over and over again.

When the reader gets past the real filler parts of the book, including the introduction of the name half blood prince, (which i think was used as a simple excuse for an intriguing title) Dumbledore furnishes Harry with the final revelation on how Voldermort was able to survive the backfiring Arvada Kedavra(sp?) spell, this is also (rather cleverly) the key to how the bad man can be killed. This is my major complaint with this book, not for what it does for the book but for the series as a whole. For me Harry Potter books are about magic and wizardry that is just plain cool. This major piece of the final puzzle just doesn't ring true for me, it just doesn't seem like it should be used as the first step on the road to the end.

I do fear that by about page five hundred many people who are no die-hard fans will have simply put the book down because its just too boring and nothing seems to be happening. Whatever you do don't so this. The final seventy five odd pages of the book are hands down the best piece of writing that Rowling has produced to date.

Not to say that there is not anything else worth reading in the entire book, their is a two page flashback sequence in the pensieve(sp?) with Dumbledore and a young Voldermort which is expertly done. But it is the shocking act in the tail end of the book that will leave every single reader (i assure you) in total and utter disbelief. If your like me you'll keep reading only with the hope that it will somehow be reversed, that in some way the act can be undone. Hand in hand with this is revelation about the one whom Harry has always held the deepest suspicion, which in an instant changes everything. The realisation of the half blood prince?s identity is well done and great to read but i still think it adds little or nothing to the overall story.

The final scene is a true heartbreaker, it shows how Rowling has really changed the audience if her books to older readers because only they can appreciate the pain the characters are going through.

Needless to say
-Someone hooks up
-Someone dies
-a traitor is revealed
and the world will be forever altered.

If you can get through the fist five hundred pages then I assure you, the rewards are great. It just seems that Rowling has a hundred and fifty pages of really story and tried to stretch it out, it doesn't really work, bu

 

Who's "Harry Potter" ?

Was he in the cantina scene ?

 

Ad.. please refrain from hitting me with female fish in season.....


what are we gonna do with all this caviar.... crackers anyone ?

 

evil - I think Harry Potter was the Neimoidian on the Trade Federation ship that said, "They've gone up the ventilation shaft".

 

My guess for RAB:

Regulus A. Black

The middle bit dragged a bit, but I pretty much blew through it anyway.

Too much love angst, especially when it's not the type you wanted

 

Yeah that's a good theory but isn't he dead??

then again maybe not......

 

Tzhan, it could have been done at any time... not necessarily a week earlier or that recently.

 

Also there was a heavy locket that nobody could open mentioned in No 12 in OOTP...and since that note says that 'I will be dead soon' or something I believe it's pretty old

 

indeed, indeed. if thats true then perhaps the rabbit hole goes deeper than we think.

I never really thought of it that way.

 

you guys do realise that Harry Potter is pure plagiarism, don't you?

not that I hate the books, they're a good read and I enjoy them, but having had read some of the classics, JK Rowling doesn't have an original idea in her head. She's just managed to make a lot of money from someone else's imagination. I'm quite surprised she hasn't had Harry pulling a sword out of a stone yet!!!


If the HP books had been written in the same style as Lord of the Rings, for instance, they wouldn't be anywhere near as popular as they are among kids and people who can't be bothered with the beautiful language used in the LOTR books.


Having just finished studying Children's Literature and pulling these books apart, you can really see the similarities when you look at the bare bones.

 

Agreed,

But have you noticed everything is copied, Alien, Wheel of Time... It's amazing how we as a consumer can purchase something and it can be exactly the same as something else yet we pay no real attention.

Speaking of the book now

OH MY GOD.... is it just me or has everything now comepletely and utterly changed

 

Didnt he pull a sword from a hat!

 

you know, I remembered him pulling a sword from somewhere, but couldn't remember where!!


oh, and btw, Star Wars is pure plagiarism too. Well, mostly. Go back and read a few Greek and Roman myths, some old Chinese and Japanese traditional stories, and you'll find all of our heroes there!!!

So, no, I'm not bagging Harry Potter as some would probably believe.


yes, most fantasy writers of today nick their work from old stories - funny how we jump on the bandwagon of something that someone else has decided should be the 'in thing' to read.....

 

hehe Amen

Thou I must admit that Krushels Dart was a good book and as far as I can tell decently Original

 

I'll have to give it a read then...who wrote it?

I'm gonna wait to buy HP until the price goes down like it did last time at Kmart about a month after the release....

gives me time to read the last one too then!!

 

Um... starcruiser would know, or look on Amazon they would know as well. think maybe it might be someone called Traci but I am not sure

 

so what you're trying to tell me, right, is that StarCruiser may or may not have written the book? lol

 

lol god I wish, she could buy a house in two seconds flat

No she has all the books in the series (1 - 3) and I do believe she is even designing a costume of the main character