Warning: contains spoilers
Sorry if this upsets anyone, but I just couldn't resist posting a few choice morsels to whet your appetites.
- JK Rowling defies her critics by handling the subject of Harry's increasing maturity deftly and subtly in Chapter Eight, which begins "For the past five years, Harry has started to notice hair where there hadn't been hair before. He'd also begun to experience... urges."
- All of the new characters are described as looking "just like the action figure".
- As a reaction against criticisms of the scenes in Book Five where Harry spends a lot of time SHOUTING IN BLOCK CAPITALS, the book features a "very special appearance" by the poet e. e. cummings.
- Harry discovers that, not only does he bear a pronounced physical resemblance to the young Thomas Riddle, but he possesses the same exteremely rare blood group, has a very similar birthmark, and discovers hospital records, a birth certificate and the sworn testimony of three archbishops to support the claim that Voldemort is his father. However, this all turns out to be pure coincidence, which they all have a good laugh about at at the end.
- In a radical break from the simplistic style championed in the first six books, JK Rowling adopts a structure not dissimilar to that of James Joyce, invoking the themes and characters of Greek myth. Chapter Six reworks the drama of Medea into the flashbacked backstory of Luna Lovegood, and the final chapter mirrors Dante's Divine Comedy in the scene where the newly regenerated Dumbledore awards Gryffindor ten points every year in perpetuity as a token of his gratitude.
- Lord Voldemort is revealed to not be a wizard at all, but rather a suave intergalactic jewel thief, whose advanced technology is often mistaken for magic by simple folk.
- It is revealed how Ron knew what "going out with the giant squid" was like.
- A several-hundred page digression explains that sometimes, wizards can change from looking like Richard Harris into looking like Michael Gambon. When this happens, it generally takes other wizards about four years to notice.
- The new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher is named Mr Aste. Mr Magister Aste.
- The last seven words in the novel are "all a big dream. Or was it?"
- JK Rowling defies her critics by handling the subject of Harry's increasing maturity deftly and subtly in Chapter Eight, which begins "For the past five years, Harry has started to notice hair where there hadn't been hair before. He'd also begun to experience... urges."
- All of the new characters are described as looking "just like the action figure".
- As a reaction against criticisms of the scenes in Book Five where Harry spends a lot of time SHOUTING IN BLOCK CAPITALS, the book features a "very special appearance" by the poet e. e. cummings.
- Harry discovers that, not only does he bear a pronounced physical resemblance to the young Thomas Riddle, but he possesses the same exteremely rare blood group, has a very similar birthmark, and discovers hospital records, a birth certificate and the sworn testimony of three archbishops to support the claim that Voldemort is his father. However, this all turns out to be pure coincidence, which they all have a good laugh about at at the end.
- In a radical break from the simplistic style championed in the first six books, JK Rowling adopts a structure not dissimilar to that of James Joyce, invoking the themes and characters of Greek myth. Chapter Six reworks the drama of Medea into the flashbacked backstory of Luna Lovegood, and the final chapter mirrors Dante's Divine Comedy in the scene where the newly regenerated Dumbledore awards Gryffindor ten points every year in perpetuity as a token of his gratitude.
- Lord Voldemort is revealed to not be a wizard at all, but rather a suave intergalactic jewel thief, whose advanced technology is often mistaken for magic by simple folk.
- It is revealed how Ron knew what "going out with the giant squid" was like.
- A several-hundred page digression explains that sometimes, wizards can change from looking like Richard Harris into looking like Michael Gambon. When this happens, it generally takes other wizards about four years to notice.
- The new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher is named Mr Aste. Mr Magister Aste.
- The last seven words in the novel are "all a big dream. Or was it?"