Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling
I feel like I'm desperately looking between the mad Potter fans and the legion of Harry-haters for some niche in which to be trendily different but...
Ho-hum.
It wasn't bad; it wasn't great. It still sucks you through it somewhat compellingly, but part of that is that its just plain so easy to read. Felt like smacking sixteen-year-olds doing the teen angst thing - think I got my lifetime's supply from Buffy or something - but I'm sure thats all very realistic; real teenagers make me feel like that too sometimes. Just because its realistic doesn't necessarily make it interesting to read though. The big reveal is fairly obvious, so that you pretty much see it coming from halfway through the book; hmmm... who could the slightly evil expert potion-maker from Hogwarts past be? And Malfoy (gasp!) turns out to be up to no good... now /there's/ a surprise. Actually the whole series is starting to remind me of the X-files, with Harry playing the part of young Mulder in a dress. First, Harry/Mulder aquires a tiny scrap of inconclusive evidence and builds an incredibly complex conspiracy theory on it which ends up blaming his enemies. Everyone around him fails to believe him because his evidence is scanty and hes obviously biased, but in the end, he turns out to be right anyways. The moral of the story is apparently that you should persecute people you don't like mercilessly regardless of fact, because in the end they will turn out to be behind whatever might be going wrong in your life. And meanwhile, after the 5th or 6th time its happened, you want to scream at Ron/Hermione/Scully to just BELIEVE him instead of being reasonable because facts or no facts is he EVER wrong? Dumbledore dying was very sad, but Harry breaking up with Ginny to keep her safe had no emotional impact, since he does it in such a condescending way - never even asks her opinion - and we'd barely seen them together in any case.
The first ones were aimed at kids but appealed to all of us because we all, deep-down, still like to think we're a bit of a kid. These ones are aimed at teenagers. Who wants to be a teenager again?
Ho-hum.
It wasn't bad; it wasn't great. It still sucks you through it somewhat compellingly, but part of that is that its just plain so easy to read. Felt like smacking sixteen-year-olds doing the teen angst thing - think I got my lifetime's supply from Buffy or something - but I'm sure thats all very realistic; real teenagers make me feel like that too sometimes. Just because its realistic doesn't necessarily make it interesting to read though. The big reveal is fairly obvious, so that you pretty much see it coming from halfway through the book; hmmm... who could the slightly evil expert potion-maker from Hogwarts past be? And Malfoy (gasp!) turns out to be up to no good... now /there's/ a surprise. Actually the whole series is starting to remind me of the X-files, with Harry playing the part of young Mulder in a dress. First, Harry/Mulder aquires a tiny scrap of inconclusive evidence and builds an incredibly complex conspiracy theory on it which ends up blaming his enemies. Everyone around him fails to believe him because his evidence is scanty and hes obviously biased, but in the end, he turns out to be right anyways. The moral of the story is apparently that you should persecute people you don't like mercilessly regardless of fact, because in the end they will turn out to be behind whatever might be going wrong in your life. And meanwhile, after the 5th or 6th time its happened, you want to scream at Ron/Hermione/Scully to just BELIEVE him instead of being reasonable because facts or no facts is he EVER wrong? Dumbledore dying was very sad, but Harry breaking up with Ginny to keep her safe had no emotional impact, since he does it in such a condescending way - never even asks her opinion - and we'd barely seen them together in any case.
The first ones were aimed at kids but appealed to all of us because we all, deep-down, still like to think we're a bit of a kid. These ones are aimed at teenagers. Who wants to be a teenager again?
posted by anti ob at 9:16 PM
1 Comments:
it was *such* a yawn, and as you say, so bloody obvious, Ob. and I am a potter fan. so far the 3rd and 5th books have been by far the best, because it includes the best characters and action.
this one... what a grind...
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