My Thoughts on The Half-Blood Prince
At last, I finished reading it....
People told me I was crazy when I said that I was going to resist my urge to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince until my vacation in mid-August. But I was determined to do it--and I did! Given my voracity for the previous five, I had no doubt that no more than two days of sea, sand, and a comfortable beach chair would knock it out for me.
Alas, almost three weeks after beginning it, I just now finished this morning. Bobby called me to supper last night with three pages left to go, and my frenzied evening of peeling strawberries, doing laundry, and catching up on email/LJ meant that I couldn't finish it. So I brought it to work and read the last pages while waiting for my computer to boot this morning. (State computers, like workers, are unbelievably slow.)
It is hard to give a completely unbiased assessment, as I naturally overhead many conversations about it and got people's impressions before even buying it for myself. On top of that, someone at Nerd Nite leaked that Dumbledore died. No big deal...I didn't know who killed him. Then, one morning, when my radio clicked on and woke me up, the stupid morning show DJs had this dumbass kid on who said, "And then Snape killed--" before they cut her off, saying, "Don't tell people!"
Well, you dumbasses, some of us didn't want to read the entire book knowing that Snape was, in fact, evil, and perhaps, you should have followed your own advice and not played that phone conversation!!! I am not dumb: I know that in this enlightened era where our biggest fear is the f*** word or accidentally seeing someone's breast on TV, that there are plenty of delays and that listener calls are recorded in advance. So why did they play it? ARGH!!!
But now the ending was thoroughly ruined for me.
Nonetheless, I found HBP a disapppointment after the earlier books.
The first two chapters dragged interminably for me. Harry Potter didn't even come into the story until Chapter 3, and while--being a writer--I appreciate the difficulty that serial stories present, I was so dulled that I actually thought, "If this doesn't get better, I'm abandoning it altogether." Yes, I know that Rowlings had to put the readers into context, to catch them up with happenings in the world and remind them of what had happened in previous books, but it all struck me as rather forced and graceless.
In Chapter Three, I started to get into it more because Harry entered the scene, and he is the reason we read the book, right?
But it dragged in the middle for me too:
1) Way too much snogging. Way too much teenaged drama. Yes, I understand that the characters are at *that* magical age, but I love fantasy novels for their ability to take me away from the real world. I have always delighted in the world that Rowlings creates. I love hearing her descriptions of things and events unique to the wizarding world. I love the detail she goes into about the students' classes and the kinds of magic that they use. I love trips into Diagon Alley.
If I wanted to read about girls and boys making out and getting jealous and huffing off in tears, no offense, but I would pick up a Sweet Valley High and forget about Quidditch, Defense of the Dark Arts, and Potions. Whlie I appreciate that character romance is necessary in most novels--and I am not unwelcoming to the idea in HP--I felt as though the teeny-bop drama was overshadowing the other conflicts. If Hermione stormed away from Ron one more time...if I had to hear "Won Won" or imagine teenaged characters wrapped around each other in the Common Room.... The other conflicts strike me as underdeveloped, given the attention that is given this. Considering Harry's affinity for Defense of the Dark Arts and the fact that Snape teaches the class in this book, I feel that this conflict was wholly underdeveloped.
2) Slughorn never strikes me as real as the other professors and the other characters, which is odd, because he seems like he should be the most complex. Nonetheless, he seems like he should be central to the book--after all, he told Voldemort about Horcruxes--but he strikes me as being a very shallow character. I never liked the guy, and I feel like I should have. He was too transparent. His obvious favoritism of certain students should have been more subtle, in my opinion. Given the subtlety with which other characters are developed and presented, Slughorn struck me as a wholly unlikeable Character in a Can™.
3) I hate to say it, but I found the trips into the Pensieve to learn about Voldemort's past to be rather bland. Voldemort's history is so cookie-cutter: abandoned by his parents, grew up in orphanage, exceptionally gifted and irrevocably evil. Evil characters do nothing for me. I wanted to see some conflict in Voldemort, some reason for becoming evil. (Versus just being an orphan. I know people who have been through this country's excuse for a foster care system, and they are not evil. I believe it innate, and Voldemort just needed an excuse.) Snape has always been a sympathetic character to me because of the way that Rowlings showed the hands reversed, with James Potter & Co. as the tormentors and Snape as the sympathetic one. But Voldemort is disappointingly one-dimensional, and I believe that a character who forms the crux of a story should never be that.
4) And that brings me to Snape. Well, Snape's role in the story was ruined for me, but I must admit to being disappointed. Why? Because all of the "good" characters have now turned out good, and all of the "evil" characters have turned out evil. Given Snape's history, I have always empathized with him. Despite his torment of Harry, I found it hard to hate the guy. I really didn't want all of his "good" deeds to be in service of a foul end.
I realize that my gripes mostly pertain to how I would do the story differently. This is a downside of being a writer, I guess, that it is hard to enjoy a story without analyzing it like an author at the same time. But I never felt like I wanted to change the earlier books.
All in all, I think this book took on too much. It was bulging with conflicts, and none of them (save the damned Ron/Lavender bit) got the attention they deserved. Here is a run-down:
1) The Pensieve and Voldemort's past
2) The Horcrux dilemma
3) Dumbledore's hand
4) Avoiding Slughorn
5) Harry's suspicions about Snape and Malfoy
6) The Room of Requirement
7) Harry's feelings for Ginny
8) Ron/Lavender and Hermione's jealousy
9) Who is the Half-Blood Prince?
10) Hagrid's anger that they missed his class
11) Hagrid's dying/dead spider
12) Harry is Quidditch captain
13) Classes, studying, and the usual rigmarole--did anyone notice that in this hardest year, less attention than ever was devoted to talking about the students' classes?
14) The Bill/Fleur marriage
15) Tonks' depression/changed Patronus, etc.
16) The Death Eater's influence on the community
17) Scrimgeour's request of Harry
18) The necklace/poisoned mead
I realize that a lot of these conflicts tie in together, but there are so many threads going on that none are consistently pursued to completion. Perhaps that is part of the point--to show how much distraction there is in a world gone mad and in Harry's life--but then there are small, distracting conflicts that accomplish no real purpose but seem to be in there merely to continue including plotlines with a certain character or theme. Like Hagrid. Like Quidditch.
I feel like, coming away from this book, that I have no new enlightenments about the world Rowlings has so exquisitely created.
I could go on for hours more, but I'm not going to. I did like the book--parts of it were downright funny and wonderfully enjoyable--but it was too peppered with dull bits to really *love* like I loved the others, particularly the last two. I thought Dumbledore's funeral was handled well. The bit about the song of the Phoenix was perfectly done. And the line about Harry's fear of the funeral because he didn't know what he'd see or experience was so poignant and true--it was only ten years ago that I went to my first funeral, my uncle Wodie's, at the age of fourteen--that it made me want to cry for him.
As it was, I didn't cry, but that was mostly probably due to that obnoxious kid and the stupid radio morning show.
People told me I was crazy when I said that I was going to resist my urge to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince until my vacation in mid-August. But I was determined to do it--and I did! Given my voracity for the previous five, I had no doubt that no more than two days of sea, sand, and a comfortable beach chair would knock it out for me.
Alas, almost three weeks after beginning it, I just now finished this morning. Bobby called me to supper last night with three pages left to go, and my frenzied evening of peeling strawberries, doing laundry, and catching up on email/LJ meant that I couldn't finish it. So I brought it to work and read the last pages while waiting for my computer to boot this morning. (State computers, like workers, are unbelievably slow.)
It is hard to give a completely unbiased assessment, as I naturally overhead many conversations about it and got people's impressions before even buying it for myself. On top of that, someone at Nerd Nite leaked that Dumbledore died. No big deal...I didn't know who killed him. Then, one morning, when my radio clicked on and woke me up, the stupid morning show DJs had this dumbass kid on who said, "And then Snape killed--" before they cut her off, saying, "Don't tell people!"
Well, you dumbasses, some of us didn't want to read the entire book knowing that Snape was, in fact, evil, and perhaps, you should have followed your own advice and not played that phone conversation!!! I am not dumb: I know that in this enlightened era where our biggest fear is the f*** word or accidentally seeing someone's breast on TV, that there are plenty of delays and that listener calls are recorded in advance. So why did they play it? ARGH!!!
But now the ending was thoroughly ruined for me.
Nonetheless, I found HBP a disapppointment after the earlier books.
The first two chapters dragged interminably for me. Harry Potter didn't even come into the story until Chapter 3, and while--being a writer--I appreciate the difficulty that serial stories present, I was so dulled that I actually thought, "If this doesn't get better, I'm abandoning it altogether." Yes, I know that Rowlings had to put the readers into context, to catch them up with happenings in the world and remind them of what had happened in previous books, but it all struck me as rather forced and graceless.
In Chapter Three, I started to get into it more because Harry entered the scene, and he is the reason we read the book, right?
But it dragged in the middle for me too:
1) Way too much snogging. Way too much teenaged drama. Yes, I understand that the characters are at *that* magical age, but I love fantasy novels for their ability to take me away from the real world. I have always delighted in the world that Rowlings creates. I love hearing her descriptions of things and events unique to the wizarding world. I love the detail she goes into about the students' classes and the kinds of magic that they use. I love trips into Diagon Alley.
If I wanted to read about girls and boys making out and getting jealous and huffing off in tears, no offense, but I would pick up a Sweet Valley High and forget about Quidditch, Defense of the Dark Arts, and Potions. Whlie I appreciate that character romance is necessary in most novels--and I am not unwelcoming to the idea in HP--I felt as though the teeny-bop drama was overshadowing the other conflicts. If Hermione stormed away from Ron one more time...if I had to hear "Won Won" or imagine teenaged characters wrapped around each other in the Common Room.... The other conflicts strike me as underdeveloped, given the attention that is given this. Considering Harry's affinity for Defense of the Dark Arts and the fact that Snape teaches the class in this book, I feel that this conflict was wholly underdeveloped.
2) Slughorn never strikes me as real as the other professors and the other characters, which is odd, because he seems like he should be the most complex. Nonetheless, he seems like he should be central to the book--after all, he told Voldemort about Horcruxes--but he strikes me as being a very shallow character. I never liked the guy, and I feel like I should have. He was too transparent. His obvious favoritism of certain students should have been more subtle, in my opinion. Given the subtlety with which other characters are developed and presented, Slughorn struck me as a wholly unlikeable Character in a Can™.
3) I hate to say it, but I found the trips into the Pensieve to learn about Voldemort's past to be rather bland. Voldemort's history is so cookie-cutter: abandoned by his parents, grew up in orphanage, exceptionally gifted and irrevocably evil. Evil characters do nothing for me. I wanted to see some conflict in Voldemort, some reason for becoming evil. (Versus just being an orphan. I know people who have been through this country's excuse for a foster care system, and they are not evil. I believe it innate, and Voldemort just needed an excuse.) Snape has always been a sympathetic character to me because of the way that Rowlings showed the hands reversed, with James Potter & Co. as the tormentors and Snape as the sympathetic one. But Voldemort is disappointingly one-dimensional, and I believe that a character who forms the crux of a story should never be that.
4) And that brings me to Snape. Well, Snape's role in the story was ruined for me, but I must admit to being disappointed. Why? Because all of the "good" characters have now turned out good, and all of the "evil" characters have turned out evil. Given Snape's history, I have always empathized with him. Despite his torment of Harry, I found it hard to hate the guy. I really didn't want all of his "good" deeds to be in service of a foul end.
I realize that my gripes mostly pertain to how I would do the story differently. This is a downside of being a writer, I guess, that it is hard to enjoy a story without analyzing it like an author at the same time. But I never felt like I wanted to change the earlier books.
All in all, I think this book took on too much. It was bulging with conflicts, and none of them (save the damned Ron/Lavender bit) got the attention they deserved. Here is a run-down:
1) The Pensieve and Voldemort's past
2) The Horcrux dilemma
3) Dumbledore's hand
4) Avoiding Slughorn
5) Harry's suspicions about Snape and Malfoy
6) The Room of Requirement
7) Harry's feelings for Ginny
8) Ron/Lavender and Hermione's jealousy
9) Who is the Half-Blood Prince?
10) Hagrid's anger that they missed his class
11) Hagrid's dying/dead spider
12) Harry is Quidditch captain
13) Classes, studying, and the usual rigmarole--did anyone notice that in this hardest year, less attention than ever was devoted to talking about the students' classes?
14) The Bill/Fleur marriage
15) Tonks' depression/changed Patronus, etc.
16) The Death Eater's influence on the community
17) Scrimgeour's request of Harry
18) The necklace/poisoned mead
I realize that a lot of these conflicts tie in together, but there are so many threads going on that none are consistently pursued to completion. Perhaps that is part of the point--to show how much distraction there is in a world gone mad and in Harry's life--but then there are small, distracting conflicts that accomplish no real purpose but seem to be in there merely to continue including plotlines with a certain character or theme. Like Hagrid. Like Quidditch.
I feel like, coming away from this book, that I have no new enlightenments about the world Rowlings has so exquisitely created.
I could go on for hours more, but I'm not going to. I did like the book--parts of it were downright funny and wonderfully enjoyable--but it was too peppered with dull bits to really *love* like I loved the others, particularly the last two. I thought Dumbledore's funeral was handled well. The bit about the song of the Phoenix was perfectly done. And the line about Harry's fear of the funeral because he didn't know what he'd see or experience was so poignant and true--it was only ten years ago that I went to my first funeral, my uncle Wodie's, at the age of fourteen--that it made me want to cry for him.
As it was, I didn't cry, but that was mostly probably due to that obnoxious kid and the stupid radio morning show.