April 15, 2004

I began reading the Harry Potter books a couple of weeks ago, my heart filled with skepticism.  I was curious about the hype and hoopla both as a reader and a writer, but I'd seen the first two movies and come away unimpressed and vaguely bored.  The first book did little to change my opinion; it wasn't bad, but it was clearly a kid's book, and did little more than set the stage and introduce characters and themes for the series.  The second book was better, but still felt somewhat superficial in it's treatment of the characters, and formulaic in the plot.

The third book was the first one I really enjoyed, since even while it was basically the same plot over again, the main characters were beginning to progress a bit, the new characters were entertaining, and the overall plot was better, even if it did wrap up with about 20 solid pages of explanation that readers needed to tie up all of the loose ends, most of which could not have been guessed at by reading the novel.  Mysteries are fun when you read along and figure them out yourself, or at least when you hear the solution you realize that you could have and possibly should have known.  When there's a mystery that you get the answer to and don't see any way on earth you could have guessed it you feel cheated by the author.  Book 3's involved ending was more cheat than clever.

Since I've written about the first three books at some length already, I'll get right to books 4 and 5.

The following will contain minor spoilers for books 4 and 5, but no more than you'd get reading a quick book summary/review on the back cover or in a library catalogue.

I thought book 4 was the best in the series, to that point. It wasn't the most fun, since it's much darker and bad things happen, which some of the fans have complained about. And it's a valid criticism, if you're a person who wanted the whole thing to remain fun and happy and light. I personally loved the turn to the more serious and darker, since that's more what I'm interested in reading and writing. I also thought it was realistic, as the characters are aging and Voldemort is coming closer and closer to fully returning to his powers. The plot shouldn't still be all Harry's happy fun exploits at Hogwarts. It should be more serious and heading towards an adult struggle, and that's what book 4 was. It also had the first real tragedy in the series, and I like that there was some collateral damage. It makes things far more serious and weighty and scary, and I'm sure if I were a little kid I'd have been shocked.

The overall body of book 4 wasn't superb; there were some major plot holes in terms of the bad guys making things far more complicated than they had to, though it wasn't quite to the point of "Dr. Evil putting Austin Powers into an overly-elaborate trap that he's sure to escape from." But the way Rowling wrote it meshed pretty well with the rest of the book, and allowed the usual "steadily rising action and danger over the course of the school year before the big conclusion around the end of the term."  Complaining about the way things developed is sort of like asking why the bad guy doesn't just shoot 007 the first time he's got a chance, rather than talking and explaining things to set up further deadly show downs. It's just sort of a property of the genre.

Book Five, The Order of the Phoenix, which I read yesterday and this morning, is the best in the series, by far. In my opinion, of course. Book 4 showed that Rowling could rise above the silly school boy stuff and craft a more complete, complex, mature novel, even though it had flaws and pacing issues. Book 5 is a quality novel, not just a kid's story, and deals with numerous mature issues and themes. Death, family, tragedy, danger, power and corruption, and more. It's not a brilliant novel, but it's quite a page turner, and it holds together very cohesively. Things that are hinted at or briefly mentioned early on in the book turn out to be very important later, the bad guys look to be too strong to defeat and the good guys looked doomed, and there are losses; it's not all happy fun good guys win and live happily ever after. Harry certainly isn't happy, not at the ending or the beginning, and I liked his character best in this book out of any of them.

He's truly become a teenager, bitter about things beyond his control, sulky, moody, and he's even starting to discover girls.  I'd thought it was sort of silly through book 4 that no one had shown any sort of sexual thoughts or desires. The guys were 14 and 15 years old; they'd be wanking like rabbits and obsessing over girls. Yet no male character seems to do more than blush and consider maybe asking a girl to go to the big formal ball.  In real life half the kids that age are screwing and/or pregnant, not to mention using drugs, smoking, etc. I found it sort of silly that no one seems to have any vices at Hogwarts, other than being assholes, in the case of the bad guys. I guess that's just how the children's genre works, and parents aren't real happy about buying their kids books that reflect reality with all of its ugliness, but since I'm used to reading adult novels with characters doing real things, it's always seemed sort of silly to me.

Harry's friends are maturing as well, and along with them the action is becoming more adult. There are much greater risks and perils in book 5, there is suffering and unhappiness, and violence, hatred, and death. I don't know if I'm willing to give Rowling full credit for planning the whole series out that well, but the tone of books has definitely changed over time, growing more serious, more mature, and more adult as the characters have aged. I don't know if books 4 and 5 are really appropriate for the 8 year olds who so love Harry Potter, and who books 1 and 2 and 3 were written for. 

I'm going to cut this off here and possibly discuss the HP books more in response to future reader mail, but for now I'll say that books 1 and 2 are okay, if childish. Book 3 starts to improve things for the adult reader, and book 4 is more adult yet and the first book in the series that really works as a whole novel.  Book 5 continues that trend and is the best of the bunch, and it's a novel that I think most adult readers would enjoy. You don't need to overlook silly kid's stuff to get through it happily, there's real gravity and peril in the plot, and though it's still got tons of silly funny stuff for kids to enjoy, it's also a serious novel that should be satisfying to adults. It's at least an adult of a novel as most other fantasy I've read, such as the Dragonriders of Pern novels, or anything by Piers Anthony or Terry Brooks.

It's not an adult novel, nothing like the horror and sexual content of George R R Martin's masterful Song of Fire and Ice, and HP5 doesn't have the horror and war elements of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, but it's not at all bad.  I'll recommend it to any adult fantasy fans, though it's obviously going to be a lot more enjoyable if you read HP 1-4 first, and not all of those are as enjoyable as the 5th one.  I'm looking forward to books 6 and 7 now, and seeing how the whole thing turns out and what becomes of the main characters, who are all maturing and beginning to go their own way.

Reader and Blog Comments on Harry Potter 4 & 5

Coming soon.