{"id":345,"date":"2005-07-22T19:29:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-22T23:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=345"},"modified":"2005-07-22T19:29:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-22T23:29:00","slug":"rowling_jk_06_h","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2005\/07\/rowling_jk_06_h\/","title":{"rendered":"Rowling, J.K.: (06) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince<\/cite><\/strong> is a considerable improvement over the last book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix<\/cite><\/a>, and bears out my theory that Phoenix<\/cite> was the Teckla<\/cite> of the series: the painful but necessary turning point.<\/p>\n

[I’m not going to talk about specific plot developments here, but I can’t say what I thought of the book without giving some indication of the shape of the story. Don’t read any further if you still haven’t read the book and don’t want to know a thing about it.]<\/p>\n

As this book opens, Harry has decided to get his act together, stop YELLING ALL THE TIME, and behave in a manner befitting the past sacrifices of others. This is not psychologically realistic (and indeed I would have welcomed more acknowledgements of his grief), but it is a relief. Not only that—but Dumbledore is actually giving Harry information<\/em>: indeed, that’s the fundamental core of the book, Dumbledore preparing Harry for what lies ahead of him. And the information that we get, and the paths this takes Harry, open up some fascinating possibilities for book 7. The story ended up going in at least two directions that I did not expect in the least, which impressed me. I’m also inordinately pleased by the climax of the book: Chad and I both came to diametrically opposed conclusions about what was going on, and for some reason I just think that’s really neat, that Rowling was able to set that up.<\/p>\n

So, Harry and Dumbledore are behaving much more bearably, interesting things are afoot, and it’s also much shorter than Phoenix<\/cite>, which is all to the good. It’s still a flawed book: besides the psychological issues I mentioned above, the entire “Half-Blood Prince” thing felt like a red herring to me; I don’t really see what it added to the story, at least not relative to the time it consumed. I would have preferred to see that time spent on wider issues: I read Phoenix<\/cite> as a broad indictment of Wizarding society and government, particularly its prejudices—attitudes that were shared by Voldemort but that didn’t originate with him. I was hoping that the series would contain not only the defeat of Voldemort (presuming, of course, that he is defeated, which I think is reasonably safe) but a larger and more fundamental reform of Wizarding society. We get very little about that in this book, and I am unsure that there will be room in the last for this to happen satisfactorily.<\/p>\n

By and large, I was pleased with this book, and I am much more interested now in the series than I was a week ago, when I only read the book on the release date to be able to participate in the initial rush of discussion. (Because it’s fun, that’s why. Not just online stuff—a surprising number of people at work have read it, and I’m just tickled to have very intense fannish conversations about these “kids’ books” at the proverbial water cooler.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a considerable improvement over the last book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and bears out my theory that Phoenix was the Teckla of the series: the painful but necessary turning point. [I’m not going to talk about specific plot developments here, but I … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Rowling, J.K.: (06) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,83,15],"tags":[367],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-harry-potter","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-rowling-j-k"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}