Thursday, July 21, 2005
Reviewing Potter
Finished the latest Harry Potter book a few days ago, and now that it's sinking in, I thought it was time for a review. I wanted to like the book: that's an upfront bias. I enjoyed the book as much or more as any of the others, that much I know.
The third book still stands as the high watermark of the series in my thinking. I look for any new book to surpass Chamber of Secrets, which this one does, easily. But it doesn't match Azkaban. Not quite.
First the positive points: Half-Blood Prince is well-plotted and unlike the few negative reviews suggest, it's well-paced and deliberate, rather than too slow. I was considering the various hints and clues from previous books, so the various surprises were just as they needed to be: surprises, but set up mostly well. And too snail-paced? I don't think so. Mary GrandPre's art is the best in the series, both the cover and chapter headings.
In book five, everyone but Harry's closest friends think he's whacked. Circumstances are reversed in the new book: Harry's obsession with Malfoy is an annoyance for his three closest allies. It's not played up too much, which is good, because it comes off as a trifle contrived. It's rather necessary for the plot, and it makes a good contrast from Phoenix, but Hermione's smart enough not to dismiss Harry's suspicions too easily. This item needed more set-up, but I'm at a loss as to what I would've done.
My biggest complaint about the book is reserved for Rowling's editor(s). In the first hundred pages, I saw the over-reliance on spell-check three times. "Site" instead of "sight?" A writer shouldn't make a mistake like that, but it's even more unforgiveable for an editor to miss it. Book editors in general have gotten too damned lazy, and Harry Potter is no exception. They should offer me a job on book 7. I've heard reports about sloppiness in printing: pages missing, sections repeated, etc.. No excuse for that either. Scholastic Press can and should do better. Printing millions of advance orders is no excuse: you're making this kind of money on a publishing phenomenon, and you should be up to the task. It's that simple.
Good fantasy writers are distinguished by the quality of their ideas, and despite over two-thousand pages heading into HBP, there are still some nice ideas popping up. Great fantasy or science fiction is distinguished by what marks other good literature, especially characterization. There's that, but there could have been more. Rowling uses her typical chapter introductions to reset the scene and mood in a comfortably familiar way. And at times, the writing is very good. I think an active editor would catch Rowling's occasional sloppiness, thing like using the same descriptive word twice within a few hundred words, say. A collaborative editor might suggest a thing or two about enriching descriptions, or perhaps fleshing out a secondary character a bit more. Or even disguising a clue a bit deeper. Or streamlining the overall narrative a touch. I was happy for the secondary romances, but were they worth the ten percent of the book to set them up? If Rowling is going to focus the book on Ron and Hermione along with Harry, I'd rather see a bit more backstory on those two to explain why they doubt Harry all of a sudden in book 6.
In three thousand pages of narrative, we know Harry and his two friends very well. We know the supporting cast somewhat well, but it's mostly a sharp drop-off after Ron and Hermione. Like a good mystery, we don't see the motiviations of the antagonists until the end, and then Dumbledore explains it for Harry and us. I don't have a complaint with Rowling focusing almost every chapter on Harry, Ron and Hermione. But I think her backstory with the Marauders, the Order, and the other students gets in the way if the only point is to fill in the details she has in her head. An outstanding writer would have thought of that.
As it is, I think Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a very good book. It was what I expected: a great read and very enjoyable. It wasn't quite what I had hoped, or what it could have been.
