jeudi, juillet 28, 2005 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince  Spoilers ahead, you know the drill. 827 pages long (or so says my PDF file), this is one heavy brick to be lugging around on buses, and I was rather surprised to finish it in five hours - without rushing, as I consciously took my time about it. I also made the effort not to scan, as readers on the computer are wont to do, reading each word - and yet, the book was done in five paltry hours. Such a pity, but this book definitely had much tighter writing (or better editing) than the long, draggy Order of the Pheonix. Potter's rescued from the Durseys (again), goes off to the Burrows (again), they start having mysterious tipoffs and adventures when they go shopping at Diagon Alley (again), Harry finds something out on the Hogswart Express (again), there's a Quiddich match (again), Harry gets knocked about (again)... see a pattern? (I suppose I can't really blame JKR, it's pretty much the same with Blyton's 'St Clare' and 'Mallory Towers' boarding school genre of childrens' literature.) As I mentioned to one totally Potter-obsessed friend, I was rather disappointed with Snape's deception. JKR could have done interesting things with that character, like she did with Malfoy, to make the character more sympathetic and complex, and to finally damn Snape in this book felt like something of a cop-out. Apart from You-Know-Who, Snape's character had the most room for author-play. He had all the characteristics of an evil character, yet was endorsed by the best - Albus Dumbledore himself. And for Dumbledore to be killed because he was deceived by something so trite, by someone whom our hero had been telling him, warning him about since the first book... well, it seems rather harsh to punish that character for wanting to believe the best in someone, even in a character as loathsome as Severus Snape. But it was an interesting move on JKR's part to kill him - almost as if signalling that with the imminent writing of her seventh (and final) book - that there are no sacred cows. Dumbledore is dead, the Ministry of Magic is in shambles, the world of Muggles is being intruded upon more and more by the Wizarding community, Aurors are (apparently) in the pay of Voldemort (where does he get the galleons, I wonder), and what I think is the most shocking news of all - Hogswart is closed, and Potter is to wander around the countryside lonely like a cloud till he finds Snape and Mouldy-Voldy. Or something to that effect. (Amanda - 10 bonus points to you if you can find the literary reference! Maybe I should put one in every post...) Oh, and he (stupidly) breaks up with Ginny Weasley too, using a variation of that super-hero line that we all know - "Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He's already used you as bait once, and that was just because you're my best friend's sister. Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up. He'll know, he'll find out. He'll try and get to me through you."I'm rather put-out by this; I was rather enjoying them together! I've always liked Ginny - I hope she still goes after him. Stupid men, thinking that they can save the world without a girl by their side. (Always, always, always have a reward for yourself in the end. Making it back from some adventure or other just to kiss the girl can sometimes be a very large motivator for survival...) Ron and Hermione, however, have yet to fall head-over-heels, or snog, as JKR so quaintly puts it in British English, but JKR's really making them put up an interesting dance for us, so that's fairly entertaining reading. Alas, there aren't any particularly brilliant zingers, like what was found in the Order of the Pheonix (revived here from my June 2003 (!) post on it): A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said,"Emotional range of a teaspoon!" That line cracks me up everytime. In fact, it's probably the first line I'll quote if you ask me about Harry Potter. "Emotional range of a teaspoon!" These romantic liaisons seem to be related to the larger theme of the book , which seems to be "love". Unfortunately, it is thrown at us in a rather heavy-handed manner - one wishes she could have just alluded gently to it rather than bashing it into our heads with her (very thick) book. I also rather hated the way it ended - as I hated the way ALL her other books had ended. JKR has yet to grasp the subtle art of the literary anticlimax. (And for some weird reason, Terence Trent D'Arby's "Let Her Down Easy" comes to mind...) I don't know how she's going to be able to fit in the conclusion with the final book, given two things : that she has (1) removed most of the boarding-school structure that she writes in (but Harry will still start the next book at the Durseys, never fear; just that he won't have Hogswart to go to anymore), and that she's (2) killed off a rather central, stabilising character (Dumbledore.) JKR says she's got the whole thing planned out in her head already, but I'm of the opinion that Harry Potter was just a brainwave that's grown into something its creator might not be able to handle. We'll see. Bring on that final book and we'll evaluate the entire series together. (Who guesses that she'll be blowing her publishing deadline by a couple of years?) Libellés : harry potter [Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince] |
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