You-Know-Who and Who...? (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling)

Member Name: leighsady

Product:	Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
Date:	25/01/09 (122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great interesting sections that go over Voldemort's past.

Disadvantages: Misleading title, the true identity of the prince bears no significance to the plot or its context

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

What is it ?
********
Pretty obvious, but apparently not everyone has heard of Harry Potter.

This is the sixth instalment of the Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling.

I've always been a fan of the Harry Potter books, especially during the first few years when all the hype was at its peak. The 5th and 6th book have come out very slowly and with each book through the series, each academic year seems to be packed with more events and so each of the books are often bulkier and longer.

However, after the fourth book I started to become a little disillusioned. Though the previous 5th book, the Order of the Phoenix was good and still engaging, I felt at times the drama just lacked substance. With many pages describing things that were not necessary and were not meaningful to the plot. It felt as if the author was required to reach a set number of words or pages before submitting the work. I just felt that it wasn't necessary for the book to be that long, or else, whatever was contained in book 5 could have been told with less pages.

This was the same of what I thought of book 6. Another much larger book with a wealthy number of pages that was perhaps planned well before the draft was presented.
Again, I felt that less pages could have done just a well a job with what was told in the sixth book.

The title 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' was quite misleading. Much of the sixth book centres on the history of Tom Riddle aka. Lord Voldemort. We are led to believe that the title refers to this character, but in fact, we find out the Half Blood Prince is actually referring to someone else. I felt a little cheated as the suspense of prince's mysterious identity was kept untold for almost the entire book, up until the end and even then the significance of this discovery was left unexplained - the fact that the true identity of the Half Blood Prince did not link up or relate to many of the things that had happened left me bewildered.

The book ends with a major character's death, which, is supposed to cause a significant uproar as they are such a prominent figure of the books, but strangely enough, besides Harry, no-one seems that bothered when he is killed off. Even more bizarre is that no-one goes after the one who killed him.

The best bits from this book was finding out about Voldemort's history. I think a book just solely concentrating on Voldemort's past and historical background would have been just as interesting.

It's a good 6th book, but I just expected a bit more, after the 5th book, I had an inkling feeling that this was going to be similar, so I just waited to borrow this out from the library. The hardback book would have cost around £16.99 and the paperback, around £8.99. I'm glad I waited to get it from the library. I will probably be doing the same with the 7th and last book as I have already heard from some who say it isn't as good as all the hype...


Thanks for reading. xx

©Leighsa 2009

Summary: Should have been titled ' The beginnings of Tom Riddle/Voldemort' or something similar...