he Harry Potter series has now run half a dozen books, and much to my surprise, it's gotten better with nearly every installment. The first few books were good reads, but very much targeted at the children or young adult markets. The characters were interesting and vivid, the action was fast-paced, and the world was well-defined and orderly. Things looked bad for our heroes, but always worked out in the end, and Griffindor always won the House Cup and the Quidditch Cup, usually in some improbable, last second fashion, while Harry and Ron and Hermoine saved the day in a larger sense with their behind the scenes.

The series began to grow darker in book 4, and then more serious and adult still in book 5, as the stakes grew higher, the bad guys appeared to win some battles, and the good guys even suffered a few casualties. The writing of the series became more adult too, with more complicated emotions in the characters and situations in the world, and not such a simple, quickly-flowing prose.

This trend contined in a huge way in book 6, which was very adult in a lot of ways. Good fights evil and doesn't always win, the bad guys appear to be gaining in power, the safe world of Hogwarts is shattered, and a very important, major character even dies.  Amazingly, for the most popular children's book series of all time, I'm not sure I'd consider book 6 appropriate for children. It would certainly provoke a great deal of fright and crying, in a younger child, and while that sort of thing appears to be an inevitable part of growing up, that doesn't make it any more enjoyable to go through when it's your kid sobbing about _______ dying and the bad guys winning.

To the scores:

Harry Potter 6, The Half-Blood Prince
Plot: 6
Concept: 7
Writing Quality/Flow: 6/9
Characters: 7
Suspense: 7
Fun Factor: 6
Page Turner: 8
Rereadability: 7
Overall: 7

I am curious as a reader and a writer, about Rowling's plans. Just how detailed was her outline in advance? I assume she knew how things would end in book 7, but personally, I always deviate a mile from my initial outlines, as I get better ideas while writing, change characters around when I think of new ideas, toss out plot sections and add in new ones, and so on.

This issue interests me now, because there are several completely new things in book 6 that have not been seen anywhere in the rest of the series. The horcruxes and the apparently divided nature of Voldemort's soul were the most interesting and plot-important, and I wonder if she had those in mind all along, or if they were something she thought up recently. I tend to be impatient to get to the cool stuff in my own stories, and I have trouble not throwing something nifty in early on, even when I know the story would be better served by me saving it a few more chapters. So, if Rowling thought up the horcruxes and their importance and nature in advance, and then schooled herself to hold them back until book 6, congrats to her.

I think she's also doing an excellent job of keeping the story going, while not abandoning everything that made the first few books work. There is far less of the same old school hijinks in this novel, and I thought that was a wise choice. Things are too serious now for much time to be spent on silly subplots about winning quidditch matches, or Hermoine earning another 20 points for Griffindor by being the only one to have actually done the assignment in advance, or house elf happiness.

The greatest portion of the book consists of Harry working with Dumbledore to learn about Voldemort's past and thereby understand his future. Numerous long flashbacks are detailed out of the memories of Dumbledore and others, and lots of mysteries and secrets are partially revealed, while there is still a great deal we don't know.

I'm also wondering how Rowling can wrap this all up in just one more book. I've long assumed that book 7 would end happily, with Harry defeating Voldemort, but given what book 6 teaches us about his multi-part soul and his ever-growing power, I'm having trouble seeing Harry winning at all, much less in just one more book.  I so rarely have any real doubt about how a story is going to turn out (since the good guys always win in triumphant fashion) that I happily squirmed through every setback and difficulty in book 6, since they all seemed to so effectively complicate the plot.

I still expect everything to be happily ever after when book 7 concludes, but it's hard to see how, and I enjoy that state of affairs.  I will have to reread this book at some point, and probably the entire series as well, since I've only read each book once, with the exception of 5, which I reread before digging into 6.  I never expected to like it as much as I do, and my reviews of the first few books were very quick and breezy, since after all, these were just insubstantial kids' books.  Now that they're turning far more adult and weighty, I'm curious to go over the early ones again, to see if perhaps they were this way all along... and I just wasn't looking for it.

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