Over the weekend, I finished my pre-book-7 re-read with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, or, as I found myself thinking of it, Harry Potter and the Belated Infodump. It looks a little worse on a re-read, now that I’m past the relief that it’s not another Order of the Phoenix, and I continue to have concerns about whether the conclusion will be satisfying.
This principally stems from my feeling that the books are weakest when it comes to the mythic, and I can’t see how the ending can be other than mythic. Since the first book, there’s been a theme about the power of love, which could in theory work, but here, well, I can’t even write the phrase without rolling my eyes. There was no improvement on that front in this book—but I did find a small ray of hope in the direction taken with regard to fate and prophecy and predestination.
Here I’m obligated to note that I’m still worried that the broad critiques of Wizarding society will get lost in the plot to come. The opening of this book was interesting in that regard, as the first return to an omniscient viewpoint since book one. (Yes, there’s the fourth book’s opening, but that gets fudged as a dream. (Rowling’s never been very concerned about strict POV limitations—consider the Pensieve scenes.)) Unfortunately, the return to school muffles the urgency in that wider view, a tension that’s been recurring throughout the series, and one of the reasons that I was really pleased by the ending of this book.
(The opening of this book is also interesting for chapter 2, the wisdom of which seems likely to be debated hotly for years.)
But this made me realize, on this re-read, just how much plot is to come in the last book, even by the narrowest expectations. I’ve criticized prior books for dragging the plot out to fit the school year. This time I’m worried about the reverse, that there’ll be too much to fit easily and things will be slighted. (A book that’s nothing more than Harry Potter and the Quest for the Plot Tokens [*] will not satisfy.) Especially since this book shows signs of doing just that: there are a couple of matters that should have continued to be problems, but are very clumsily dropped—so clumsily, in fact, that I’m now more inclined to believe that some things have been set up from the start, because of the contrast. And I particularly worry about plot holes in quick-wrap-this-up situations.
(One that I’m oddly afraid of is that Rowling can’t count. For very spoilery reasons why, see this old LJ post.)
Two other notes: the “Half-Blood Prince” subplot in this book still feels kind of forced, for all that I can infer a couple of reasons for it to be there. And everything adolescently-hormonal in this book is awful, and I say that as someone who was not bothered by the portrayal of Harry and Cho.
On the whole, as I said two years ago, I am more excited about the series than I had been after this book and the possibilities its ending opens up. The re-read has helped me get a better handle on my hopes, expectations, and fears. While I don’t have it in me to get too emotionally invested after Stephen King ripped out my heart and stomped on it, I am looking forward to the last book.
[*] I find myself wanting to do parody titles for all the books, now, but nothing’s leaping to mind for the first three. The others are:
4. Harry Potter and the Idiot Plot
5. Harry Potter and the TEENAGE ANGST
6. Harry Potter and the Belated Infodump
7. Harry Potter and the Quest for the Plot Tokens
Suggestions?
Harry Potter and the Cliched Beginning
Harry Potter and the Missing Memories
Harry Potter and the Good Plot?
Well, I think it’s obvious that the power of love is indeed the overriding theme. Consider that Harry Potter:
1. Don’t need money, thanks to his massive inheritance.
2. Don’t need fame, and indeed finds it notably unpleasant.
3. Don’t need no credit card to ride that train, since the Hogwarts Express is free.
It might just save his life!
Konrad: none of those are quite doing it for me, though it may be because the first is giving me Lemony Snicket flashbacks. Perhaps other people will think differently.
Mike: I hate you.
The thing that really annoyed me about that interminable series of Pensieve scenes was that almost NONE of it was necessary for the book. It could have been cut back to the single one with Slughorn’s fake memory (though even that would have been better done otherwise IMHO). We already knew Voldie killed his father and his grandparents, after all.
I wish I could get Tolkien to give JKR some lessons in resisting the allure of the backstory.
Sue: and thus, we get through the school year.
Though I’m not sure that straight expository conversations would have been much better, really.
You know, I have to admit I am surprised at how critical all of you are of her book length. Honestly, I think that was one of the best parts of the series. It’s really rare to find an author willing to go into the detail she does, and I think that’s part of why her books are so wildly popular when all the other fantasy novels that you have mentioned are, frankly, obscure on that same popularity scale. People LIKE reading the little details about schooling at Hogwarts, and the friendships and the houses and the boarding school life. Sure, she could make the plot tighter by skipping things and by leaving out those details, but I don’t think that would improve anything about it. When an author can weave details, even ones that seem pointless at first, seamlessly into the integral plots of later books, that’s skill. And I think that’s what makes Harry Potter such a literary phenom
Leigh: welcome, and sorry your initial comments got caught in the spam filter. (An IP lookup service thought your IP was a spam haven. I’m tweaking those settings.)
As for Harry Potter–I like the little details, and indeed I think it’s one of Rowling’s strengths, both because they’re often fun by themselves and they turn out to be important later. But for the fun-by-themselves details, I prefer them to be accessorizing (as it were) a plot that isn’t dragged out for stupid reasons.
Some authors can pull off lots of detail, and some can’t; some popular authors have lots of detail, and others don’t. It’s all a matter of what a particular author does well.
I agree with Leigh (#6) regarding the level of detail in the books. I also think that the increasing level of complexity of the latter books compared to the earlier ones nicely reflects the increasing complexity of one’s world view as one grows up.
Also, Mike’s comment (#2) is totally killing me.
I’ll put on my grumpy old man hat and observe that mere length does not imply either pleasing detail nor pleasing complexity. Sometimes, it’s just length — pointless padding, muddled confusion, or pseudo-complexity that could be resolved by any two of the characters communicating normally for 5 minutes. That kind of length just annoys me.
As for the popularity of the books, well, I note that they became wildly beloved on the basis of the first 2 or 3 books, which are all short. The first book is short by any measure; the next 2 are much shorter than the subsequent books. I personally didn’t find that the length of the later books added anything to my enjoyment, and in some cases (I’m looking at you, Order of the Phoenix it detracted considerably.