| Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince | |
 |
Rating: Author: J.K. Rowling Published: 2005 Series: Harry Potter (#6) Review by: CL6 MissMaul Order from Amazon.com  |
|
The sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, gives the reader what he expects; a set up which can trigger the climax in the final installment. We get a lot of background information, a lot of which takes place outside Hogwarts and even partl of it in the muggle world. Apparently when major stuff goes on the wizarding world, muggles will notice this also. That’s why the book starts with the prime minister of Britain who gets a visit from Fudge. He needs to know what’s going on now that Voldemort has regained full strength and death eaters are moving out in the open. Innocent people (both magical and muggle) are dying because of death eater actions. Fudge hasn’t been able to stop that, so he’s been fired. Immediately we find ourselves in a full-fledged war situation where pretty much all bets are of.
Harry has to spend part of his summer with the Dursleys and that’s where we find him. This time he only spends two weeks there and then Dumbledore comes to take him to the Weasleys. But not before he takes Harry to go see a new teacher by the name of Slughorn. Slughorn is a retired teacher and seems a nice fellow at first. However he used to be the head of Slytherin and though he isn’t evil, he isn’t all good either. Rowling gives us yet another character who is in the grey zone, someone we don’t know what to think of yet. Though she still gives the impression that she knows where she is going with all this and she knows all the characters through and through. This also shows in the most important storyline in The Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore giving Harry a lot of background story about Voldemort. This does mean there isn’t as much action as there is in the previous books, though the end makes up for that. Quidditch is finally back after we’ve been pretty much deprived of it for two installments. Further more our main characters are now 16 and hormones are racing. There are got a lot of social entanglements going on, which I thought were very amusing. All in all it’s pretty balanced book. At the end of the book all pieces seem to be in place to work to the big climax at the end of book 7. Half-Blood Prince doesn’t disappoint and is as rich with details as all the previous books. It should please all the Harry Potter fans out there, but it can’t be read without knowledge of what happened in the previous five books. Also the Half-Blood Prince from the title will have a big part to play, I won’t spoil who it is but you know more about him/her than you think. The story is getting darker with every chapter and when you’ve finished the book you’ll only want to know what happens next. Unfortunately we’re going to have to wait for about a year and a half until we can finish this saga. So now we wait…
Title: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince |
8/24/2005
