Harry Potter and The Half Good Book

I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday on the plane, and while it was still quite good, I didn't think it measured up well to the other 5 books in the series. For starters, the mystery of who the half-blood prince is resolves quickly without any real impact on the plot. The story itself is long and drawn out. Where previous Potter books are punctuated with periodic climactic eventful actions, this book manages to make it through roughly 500 pages before anything truly exciting happens. It feels old and used up, which is the worst feeling you can get from a fantasy book.

I think the strongest appealing feature of the Harry Potter world is its fantastic new-ness combined with relatable same-ness. Harry Potter and his friends inhabit a world filled with wonder and excitment through the circumstance of school and medium of interpersonal relationships. The first 5 books delved into new and exciting parts of this world. The first book gave us the entire structure of the world, and the second expanded upon the first and introduced new characters, a giant snake, and some new spells. The third brought in people who change themselves into animals and a few exciting and lasting new characters, and the fourth even more with all of the amazing adventures in the tri-wizard tournament. The fifth introduced a real set of antagonists in named death-eaters and matured Harry into a climatic battle against them. And now the 6th. There are no exciting new characters, no exciting new beasts, no exciting new features to the world. Even quidditch is made mundane as Harry is made conveniently absent from the majority of all games as if Rowling just got sick of writing matches.

The story is still good because it's still Harry Potter, and J.K. Rowling is still a genius. In the end, the book is borne on the shoulders of it's characters. Dumbledore, Snape, Harry, Hermoine, Ron and the rest are still as interesting and dynamic to read about as ever, and it makes the book interesting if not exciting. Yet even this aspect is lacking, as returning heroes such as Lupin are barely featured, and Mad-Eye Moody isn't even mentioned.

If Rowling can't add some of the inspiration from her first five novels back into book six, this epic series will end in several years still marvelous, but far less so than it promised to be.