Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Well, 24 hours after I received my copy of J. K. Rowling’s latest novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I’ve finished reading the book.
Rowling’s style of writing has definitely matured (or she has found a better set of editors). At first, I was surprised by the size of the novel — the length of the previous books in the series seemed to growing at an alarming rate. I feared that the latest book would be longer than my Quantum Chemistry textbook. Surprisingly, and thankfully, this installment is nearly 200 pages shorter than its predecessor.
The story seems more carefully planned. There are fewer sudden interruptions in the text by action sequences, and character and plot development play a more central role in this novel. Unfortunately, Rowling felt the need to replace most of the normal interaction between Harry, Ron, and Hermione with extended dialogues (well, more like monologues) between Harry and Professor Dumbledore. I quickly grew weary of these contrived exchanges.
All in all, though, this book is nearly my favorite in the series.
BEWARE! Spoilers follow below:
- Dumbledore dies.
- Snape is the Half-Blood Prince. Contrary to what Dumbledore believes, he apparently cannot be trusted.
- Ginny becomes Harry’s girlfriend.
July 18th, 2005 at 11:22 pm
Mmm. We thought of some theories about Snape in class. So much for working on CS.
Anyhow, I think its getting annoying, that she keeps adding in new, random characters. >_>
May 27th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Oh, Snape isn’t evil at all, and I think he can be trusted, (at least by Dumbledore!) It is so obvious that Dumby and Snape planned his death from the beginning. But I do agree with you Kath, that new random characters are very annoying.