Amazing, isn't it? (Harry Potter Series - J. K. Rowling in general)

Member Name: moistoist

Product:	Harry Potter Series - J. K. Rowling in general
Date:	09/06/01 (185 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A phenomenon

Disadvantages: Victim of it's own succes in the future?

I suppose it's a testament to the sanity of modern society (no, really!) that a talent can still be recognised for what it is. I expect that a decade ago, if anyone had said that a book about wizardry written by an unknown author would be on or near the top of the fiction charts for more than a year, they'd have been laughed at! But a meritocracy has reigned supreme recently in the literary world and an author has been rightly rewarded for creating a modern phenomenon akin to Star Wars in it's global stretch and popularity...and she's British. That's something most heartening, I think.

THE BEGINNING!

The first book appeared in print in 1996, entitled "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (called "...the Sorceror's stone" in the USA). To date it has sold millions and millions of copies, has received the National Book Award, the Smarties Prize, the Children's Book Award, and is short-listed for the Carnegie Medal, the U.K. version of the Newbery Medal. Not bad for a previously relative unknown!

The plot of Sorcerer's Stone revolves around our first meeting with Harry and his first adventure at his new school - his first year at Hogwarts. (I always found this amusing - apparently some crackpot thought it was a prophesy of the foot and mouth disease! More about crackpots later). A friendly giant (where have we heard about that species before :-) ?) delivers Harry a letter which tells him he has got into "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry". Despite Uncle Vernon's, ahem, reservations about 'old crackpots'...and he finally escapes the existence he so hated with the Dursleys and the bully Dudley. And little does he know that at this school awaits a great destiny for him...

This book really introduces us to the characters, but it does it in such and endearing way that reminds one of Lewis Carroll or Rudyard Kipling. The complexities of all the diffe
rent names doesn't ever seem to be a problem (you can get just about any 10 year old to recite off Harry's classmates, but try to get them to remember their school work...apparently it's driven some teachers to dispair more than Pokemon!), and reading it I never felt bombarded by silly names: rather like in the Star Wars universe, you are so drawn in that it seems second nature.

In literary terms it is rather fine...it's not as if it's all short sentences and 'cat sat on mat' stuff, it's really quite heavy weight, except that it doesn't come across as that due to the fact it's so honest in its expectations of the reader.

THE CHARACTERS

By now, having read the first book, you'll know that these are the main characters

Harry - our hero

Hermione Granger - Harry's best friend, and the cleverest in the year (how many of us have experienced that!) - she is the first witch in the line of her family who are 'Muggles' (the word for non-witches who can't even see the platform at the station to go to Hogwarts)

Ronald Weasley - Harry's other best friend

Dudley Dursley - Harry's irritating cousin.

Lord Voldemort - Killed Harry's parents, but vanished when he couldn't kill Harry.

Albus Dumbledore - Hogwarts' headmaster. Kind and merry in his own eccentric way

Hagrid - gamekeeper at Hogwarts - a sort of uncle to Harry as the story progresses - their relationship is one of the more interesting pieces of character development in the series.

Anyway...that's enough of that. On with the op, dear muggles!


THE SAGA CONTINUES!

After the huge success of the first novel, it seemed inevitable that the book would spawn a whole host of sequels - inevitable also because the public seemed to be demanding it. And sure enough, like the Chronicles of Narnia, another appeared, and another, and ano
ther...

The second book appeared some months later and immediately barnstormed it's way up to the charts where it sat plumply and immutably reigning over mere...literary giants. This was when people really took notice who hadn't bothered before - you know something is big when Jeremy Paxman starts talking about it 10 minutes into newsnight...

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was an overnight success with people queueing up in Oxford street to get hold of the first copy. The author was practically mobbed at a book-signing...but the critics held their breath - was it any good or just a poor spinoff?

The plot this time revolved around Harry, now a year older, spending his second year at Hogwarts. Amusements abound from Gilderoy Lockhart, the pompous and arrogant professor, and moaning Myrtle who has decided to take up residence in the girl's bathroom and haunt it for a while. However Harry is glad to be back since all summer he had been tormented by the Dursleys (an interesting social comment I think - about the nature of boarding schools and home life today). Alas he now has to fend off Ginny, Ron Weasley's little sister, which to start with seems like his main problem...but not for long. After a little while, a strange force begins petrifying the students...literally. As more and more are turned to stone statues, Harry has to investigate whether it is Hagrid, whose past we still don't know and have to discover, or something to do with the vile Draco Malloy? Only Harry can find out, that's for sure... :-)

This book is less strong I feel. I din't buy it, rather I borrowed it from a friend. Whilst the plot is equally gripping, I got the sense that it was slightly rushed. The detail is still there but just not quite so clever (who could have beaten the invisible platform at the railway station!). Maybe it's because I was more in tune with the characters, my suspension of disbelief was disturbed so
mewhat by the lesser amount of character development (aside that of Hagrid though.) An entertaining read nonetheless, and if you're reading the whole series, well you'll have to read it won't you! My least favourite.

THIRD TIME LUCKY?

Set against the backdrop of, yes you guessed it, Harry's third year at Hogwarts, the Prisoner of Azkaban was the third in the series, and marked for me an improvement in Rowling's writing style - almost as if she had got used to being the most famous author in the world for the moment.
The plot here revolves around Sirius Black, a mass murderer from a single curse he had cast, and held prisoner for twelve years in the fortress of Azkaban. Oh, and he's escaped...and he's not a happy bunny, mainly because Harry Potter's defeat of a certain person was, ahem, a setback for him. So, having muttered in his sleep "he's at Hogwarts", Harry is in peril to say the least. And there is another problem...it appears that one of his friends at Hogwarts might be a traitor. Big problem.

I really like this book a lot...if it had been a separate book it would have stood quite happily on its own, being much more fluent and well balanced than the second in my view. The plot cracks along at one heck of a pace, and is never less than gripping. The characterisation is far stronger, we learn a lot more about Harry in this book than in the Chamber of Secrets. The danger seems far more apparent, and the book just feels a lot more strong and assured. If you've got the first and want to read more (but not get the whole series) - I'd recommend this one.


FOUR!

A trilogy?
Naahh. A septet would make FAR more money.

To be honest, that's what I thought the conversation between publisher and author must have sounded like - but to be fair, Rowling has always said she planned it as seven books. The fourth and most recent book is the Goblet of Fire.
As the middle book, it's pivotal plot-wise as well as sales-wise...if she'd gone astray here it might have reduced the impact of the final three when they come out in the future.

Actually, the result is on a par with the first. THIS time the plot revolves around...duh...his fourth year! Predictable? Maybe...anyway, the plot is more mature. Maybe Rowling was anticipating that her target audience has aged a couple of years? Quite possibly, as a central theme of this one is Harry's crush on Cho Chang. But that is somewhat secondary to the main plot - which is about an inter-academy competition, about which nothing much has been said before, and it has an air of mystery about it - it's a competition that hasn't happened for hundreds of years. He wants to go to the International Quidditch Cup and escape the Dursleys again who persist in treating him rather badly to say the least.

This plot is technically the weakest, but the writing is still lively and witty, so it remains a success. I've not reread this, so I can't be particularly in-depth, suffice it to say that I wouldn't buy this one unless you've read the rest, but to be honest I think I'll say that about the future books.

GENERAL MEANDERINGS AND STUFF!

Due to the phenomenal success of the books, Warner Brothers have leapt to make the film about it. The film itself is mostly shrouded in secrecy, although a teaser trailor has been shown which merely showed a taste of what's to come. It stars Daniel Radcliffe (from David Copperfield on the BBC last year) as Harry...and it was filmed mostly in the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral. Apparently Rowling is happy with it so far, so it might be reasonable! Whether it is any good or not will not affect the fact that it will rake in MILLIONS at the box office. Had Spielberg not been directing AI right now he'd have done it himself!

A huge amount of spin-off merchandising surrounds t
he series, including two other books, supposedly the 'school books'...for example 'Quidditch through the ages'. I haven't read these, but rumour has it they aren't really worth bothering with.
Best bet - stick with the books, and if you like them, check the film out (it's released on the 11th of November of this year, just in time for the Christmas rush!)


CONCLUSION

In a way, I feel guilty for not being totally balanced yet, so I'll briefly criticise Rowling as best I can...her writing style is good when she's on good form, but if not, it goes rather lumpy; for example she tells you how something was said even when it's obvious - the story sometimes is held up by needless description.
The editing is also a little weak in places - often Rowling uses words again and again that aren't really effective - like 'actually' 'basically' 'somewhat like' 'practically'. That could easily be sorted out in a future edition.
(But that's real nitpicking!)

There has also been talk that these books encourage witchcraft in children...utter nonsense. It's mostly been crackpots suggesting this, but even the Roman Catholics decided it was 'evil'! Consider if you will, the fact that the book's central theme is a fantasy based battle between good and evil, exactly as in Narnia. C S Lewis was considered by the Catholic church as one of the finest Christian thinkers of his time! Some contradiction there?

The books are, in my opinion, true classics that have touched a lot of people. They are generally well-written, gripping, and clever. They are funny (the textbook titles are absolutely priceless!), and yet not silly in the same way that the majority of children's novels tend to be. They treat the gentle reader seriously, which is why adults have read it in their droves, as well as children. So long as the quality stays high, they will conti
nue to lap it all up, and Rowling deserves the praise for bringing the written word to the forefront of children's minds...a worthy achievement indeed.

Fantasy as a genre has been a neglected one in terms of quality - how nice that a female British author has reinvented the genre, don't you think?

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