esides this review, I've blogged about the Harry Potter books on numerous occasions, mostly in the form of quoting reader emails on the subject. Several of those are attached below the review itself.

My history with the Harry Potter books is odd, since I didn't read any of them until the summer of 2004, by which time the fifth novel in the seven novel series had been released. I was not expecting to like them, after hearing from numerous fantasy fans that they were pretty insubstantial and just basically kid's books. Being an aspiring fantasy writer myself, I had to read them at some point. I'm trying to read at least one book from every major/popular fantasy series, so I'll have an informed opinion.

I went into the HP series with an open mind, but I was expecting to be somewhat bored by the kiddy books. It was therefore a surprise when I read book 1, and enjoyed it. It's hard to rate it with my usual scale, since HP1, while entertaining for adults, is clearly a kid's book, and as such is written in a different style. The series becomes more mature in the later novels, starting especially with #4, but for book one:

HP1 introduces a great concept, and kicks off the series pretty well. It's not a great book on its own, but it's not bad, it sets the table for the superior books that come after it, and it's certainly better for a series to improve as it goes rather than the opposite. You can criticize HP1 for not being more interesting on its own, and for not having a better plot with less of a silly video game style ending challenge, especially with Harry saving the day in the very end by using some magical power he didn't know he had, the reader didn't know he had, and that is never used again. But overall, it's an acceptable start to the series.

The books come in stages. Book 1 is basically the introduction to everything, and has the silliest plot and least depth to every character. Book 2 is also somewhat of an introduction, except that the plot is better, or at least more detailed, and Rowling begins to get more into her characters. Book 3 is where the series really begins to grow and become more serious, and then Books 4 and 5 are juvenile literature (rather than kid's lit) and things become much more serious, there are deaths and danger.

I'm looking forward to books 6 and 7, mostly for the plot elements and to see what becomes of the characters, even though it's all sort of ruined for me by Rowling's musings about writing some future novels about Harry as an adult. Thanks for the spoiler there, Joanne.

My original Harry Potter #1 review is below, in somewhat scattered form. I've restated it above and tried to be clearer about things, so the next section is somewhat redundant. Skip below it for more comments from blogs and reader mail on the HP book.

March 30, 2004

As for my overall take on HP1, I definitely need more than a simple 1-5 star rating system, like they have on Amazon.com for reader reviews. If all I can use is that, I'll give it a 3/5 rating, but with many comments.

If I can be more involved, I'll say it's a 4/5 kid's book.  5/5 for younger kids, but teens will find it a bit too plain and goody goody, and it needs more depth and complexity to challenge teens. Aside from Prof. Snape, there's not really a character in the book who isn't exactly what they seem at all times. The writing is great for kids, very clean and smooth, without being condescending or overly simplistic, though it fails to ever really shine.  I only remember one time I stopped and noted a really well-written phrase. (However, Rowling is 10x the writer that Brooks is, judging them both by the first books in their big fantasy series. Brooks' prose and narrative is a train wreck. Fan-fic quality in places.)

For adults, it's a 2/5, or possibly 3/5 if you're a big fan of fantasy. The world Rowling creates is fascinating, a mixture of modern reality with secret magic everywhere, and that's fun, and the school is nifty, and some of the characters are interesting. But Harry is the typical child of prophecy stereotype that every fantasy novel has, combined with the outsider who finally finds their place to shine (basically the story of every McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern novel that's got a young character in it). Plus Rowling pulls out every stop to make Harry likeable/loveable. Orphan, evil step-parents, famous but humble, tries real hard but isn't perfect, is brave and virtuous, etc. His friends are both total clichés as well, with Hermoine being the bossy know it all and Ron the natural second fiddle, as is Draco his boy enemy, and the main evil wizard Valdemort, AKA "You-know-who" is nothing in the first novel, other than pure evil.  No depth or flavor to him at all. Which is fine for kids, but I'd like to think that adults want a bit more. Why is he bad?  What's his motivation to do what he does? He's not just some demonic boogeyman who exists to provide something for the good characters to battle against and fear, is he?

Since I did all that yapping about "novel structure" last week, I should comment that HP1 has almost no novel structure at all.  It's more a very long short story than a novel, since it's just a series of events in sequence. There's no real conclusion, and there are zero novel-style flashbacks, digressions, background scenes, info about characters who aren't essential to the main series of events, etc. There's one goal, and it leads to another, and it leads to another, and the overriding plot is discovered, but it advances almost accidentally until the book ends with a big "to be continued."

The book reads very quickly though (largely due to the prose, since the plot isn't really that stream-lined and the time flow isn't very well done, with weeks and months vanishing with no real sense of change or development to anyone in the book), and it's got such a great setting and characters you can't help but care about and root for, that you're left wanting more. I want to read HP2, despite my mediocre review of HP1, and I'm actually looking forward to HP3, since that one will be all new to me, since I haven't seen the movie version of it. I'll be able to give the most objective review of that one, since I can review the plot and development of it without already knowing what's going to happen later.

And for bonus fun, here's an image C attached to his email, that I found pretty funny.

This isn't quite fair, but it's true in its selective editing. It's also as much an indictment of the archetype-addicted Lucas as it is of HP1.  There's nothing original in the plot of SW; it's all cribbed and cobbled together from ancient myths and legends, courtesy of Joseph Campbell. It's only the setting that's changed from old legends to futuristic scifi.

Anyway, my initial overall on HP1.

• Writing: 3/5, due to it being a children's book.  5/5 for that target audience.
• Plot and characters: 3/5, with a decent plot, but far too many cliché characters.
• Overall: 3/5 or possibly even a 4/5, since it's somehow greater than the sum of its parts.

It's just a pleasant little fantasy book with some interesting characters, and not a bad read, but I'd certainly never have given it any real thought or analysis if it hadn't somehow become this huge international sensation. And honestly, I have no idea why it has.  I'll have to see if the series grows on me as I read more of it, but I'm really wondering about other kid's books. Are they so bad that this one is brilliant in comparison?

My only theory as to why so many adults like it is that it's comfort reading.  It's nothing great, but it's got a soothing structure and everyone loves to root for the loveable underdog as he triumphs against great odds.  Plus the world it takes place in is a lot of fun, much more fun than the real world, and most everyone likes to escape to a happier fairytale land from time to time.

Grab a copy from your local library if you haven't already read it; you'll enjoy the read in a quick, innocuous sort of way.  I did, at least.

Reader and Blog Comments on Harry Potter 1

March 30, 2004

Continuing C's letter, as he segues to the Harry Potter (HP) discussion.  He didn't care much for the books.

Your necromancer story (talking about the original) feels mature. The main characters have depth (and a basic alignment of Neutral Evil in the DnD ruleset, my favorite alignment of all :), their motives are complex, and it takes more than two lines to describe them (for example, I believe that we did not truly get to know Quinoss throughout the whole chapter one, although we got to know some of his motives and values).

With the HP books you have characters in black and white (with the exception of Prof. Python, who actually helped Harry not to fall off the broom -- and I am delighted that he is played by Dogma's Metatron, the amazing Alan Rickman). While this is OK for the kids -- most 12-13 year old's do not have a truly complex personality -- it's really a showstopper when the grown-ups are so predictable and, well, *simple*.

This is something I noticed about the HP stuff, but to be as blunt as C, it's epidemic in popular fiction. The vast majority of literature (using the word loosely) that I read, especially Fantasy, is very simple, plain, and black/white. Good guys are good.  They may have some flaws but they are definitely good. Bad guys are bad, and exist almost exclusively to oppose the good guys.  Or else the good guys exist solely to try to stop whatever horrible, world-destroying plot the bad guys are working on. In either event, the world feels very small, and like nothing matters but the main protagonists. All other characters are much like the NPCs in a computer game; simply there to assist or hinder your quest.  They don't seem to have any lives of their own, and you never see anything happening that's not directly about what the main characters are doing.

This isn't necessarily bad, but it's sort of self-centered, and feels small.  Like the whole world revolves around the main characters.  This is very much the case with Harry Potter, where not a single other character in the book seems to do anything that's not related to the major plot, or Harry, or both. For example, they never see other students doing anything on their own, no one ever seems to get into trouble or go to the rescue other than Harry and his friends, all of the teachers seem to have their eyes on Harry 100% of the time, etc.

C's take on this.

Ok, let me be blunt. To me the HP books feel like your (normal) Halloween stories. And I already said so, they are FUN, and better than most fan fiction on your (D2) site, but I've grown to expect more from you. Like the necro story, or some of your earlier works. And while I have no trouble seeing some lower quality work from you when I can see some really HQ and enjoyable pieces, it is somewhat maddening to see Rowling be praised so highly for something so --- mediocre. There are a ton of writers out there publishing (or hoping to publish, *wink-wink*) whose work surpasses the quality of the HP books, yet they get no fame. For 10 year-olds, it is a godsend, truly. If something can make them read 800+ pages, it already proved miraculous. But as fantasy goes, well, she's no Bruce :)

Ah well. We can discuss her again when you read the books. It'd be cool if I re-read them again to provide some more cunning arguments, but I seriously doubt I will have the inclination to do so.

I've just read the one HP book (so far), and it wasn't bad, but it's like C says here. It's a good story, told well, but it's clearly for children. There's a little bit of mystery in the book, but I can't really judge how well it was presented, since I'd seen the HP1 movie, and it's about 97% identical to the book.  The book was better in some ways as it added more detail to things, but a lot of the stuff they left out of the movie was just fine on the cutting room floor. The best change in the movie was Hagrid taking Harry right off to the train station after he finds him on the island. In the book he takes him shopping, then sends him back home to wait for two months until school starts, and the time Harry spent back in Mundania, waiting to get on with the wizarding, was a boring lull and momentum killer.

The only real changes (minor spoilers here) from the book to the movie that I noticed were character ones. Harry's Aunt/Uncle being even meaner to him in the book than the movie.  Ron was just a bumbling doof in the movie while in the book he's more of a real character who isn't afraid to stand up to Draco when he talks shit. And Draco was an even bigger pussy in the book, picking on the weak when he could get away with it, and constantly trying to get Harry into trouble when he couldn't pick on him personally.

April 2, 2004

Continuing the Harry Potter topic, here's a follow up mail from C, AKA Caaroid, who I quoted in the last blog.

About the rating: you said 2/5 for adults, 3/5 for fantasy addicts. Well, it did not work for me. Then again, I am not a quantitative addict, rather a qualitative one. Yadda yadda. Truth is, I wanted to read the second book after I was done with the first one, just like you did. I don't think it's spoilery to say that you get the exact same thing for a second time. I got it now! Harry Potter is STORY+EYE CANDY, lacking CHARACTERS, WRITING and DEPTH. Rowling is the Bill Gates if fantasy. (And the story is the same, with some minor changes).

Ok, another thing I did not like about the HP books: When I read a (semi)-fantasy book, and the story has some mystery element (instead of the I-gotta-kill-em-all-otherwise-they-kill-us-all plot), I expect to be given clues in due time. Re-reading a Terry Pratchet book you find clues to the crime within the first ten pages of a 400+ page book. Rowling keeps the suspense up by retaining information, thus denying the intellectual pleasure of working things out before the characters do. This reduces the re-read value of the books to zero, while at the same time I feel played for a fool.

A valid point, other than the fact that most Harry Potter fans seem to have read them all 50 times. Of course most of those are 9 year olds whose analytical fiction skills aren't exactly honed to a razor edge.  I've still just read the first HP book (Next time by the library I'll grab #2 and #3, though I'm almost done with Brook's Elfstones #2 book now, and still have the Hillerman mystery awaiting me.) but I can see rereading the first one, and the whole series, if I read up through #4 now, #5 when it comes out later this year, and then don't get around to reading the last two until #7 comes out in 3 or 4 years. I might want a memory refresher at that point.

Also, as I said in the last blog, the HP books are comfort reading.  The good guys are good and they win in the end, the bad guys are bad and they lose, and it's enjoyable to see characters you like triumph over long odds. I never felt the odds were very long in HP1, but perhaps things change over the rest of the series. After all, if you only reread books that are suspenseful and have clues to things early on and you want to catch them the second time around, that's only two reads.  I've read several books numerous times in my life, since I like the stories and characters. It's no different than watching a rerun on TV or viewing a movie more than once; you know how it's going to turn out, you just enjoy the experience.

It just so happens that for Caaroid and myself, HP1 doesn't fall into that category of entertainment.

¤ Another reader mailed about HP, with a different perspective. Here's Nathan, who claims to have a cat that's virtually identical to Jinx, and is going to prove it photographically, at some point.

As for Harry Potter, I too recently finished book one and have barely ventured into book two. My personal take on book one is that it reads somewhat like a prologue. We are introduced to the main characters of the following novels, but many of the background details are left to be revealed later. Voldemort and his motives remain mysterious, because that gives us something to look forward to reading about in future books. I would hardly call Rowling a literary genius, but I think she did quite a respectable job of writing a novel that appeals to a remarkably wide audience. I read quite a lot, and one of the most important things for me is that a book keep me interested. I could hardly wait for the next time I could get a chance to read book one. Even though I had seen the movie already, I wanted to see what Harry and Co. would do next. It was simple, but it kept me entertained. 

From what I have heard, the following books increase in complexity. I think that book one fills the important role of any first book in a series: it grabs your attention and makes you want more. But, as always, YMMV.

¤ And lastly on the HP topic, here's Aahz:

Regarding HP, I had a bit different attitude after reading the first book. I found myself not interested in reading the other books in the series. The writing was just too simple and the plot too childish. I no doubt would have loved it in my early teens year, when I devoured anything written by Joe Dever (Lone Wolf series). But as an adult I didn't have any interest in continuing the series. My wife and sister-in-law tell me that book 4 is where the series really starts to shine, so perhaps at some point I will read on. I don't consider myself a literary snob by any means, but for whatever reason the HP series did not grab me. And I've read most of the books in McCaffrey's Pern series and enjoyed them.

Good thing about the literary slob bit, or he'd never have stuck around here for too long. I'm interested enough to read book 2, and probably book 3 as well, given how quick a read HP1 was, but if I'm not more into it by then, I'll probably quit.  Though I'm probably lying, since promises that book 4 will get things going would likely lure me on, but if it didn't get me into it, that really would be it, at least until book 7 was out and I could finally read the whole thing without waiting. I'd hate to get stuck in another never-ending Wheel of Time scenario.  Being 3 books into Martin's 6 or 7 book masterpiece series is bad enough.

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