I love the book, but I’m not out-an-out a die hard Harry Potter fan. So, you may well be sure that this review is not going to be from another delightfully screaming Potter obsessive. I read other books too, strictly! And, I think I can compare magic and no-magic stuff. I’d try to rate out the portions, comparing it with the other 5 installments. Hope you’d have a good time reading it, as much as I had writing it.
Pre Hogwarts Review
Talking of the days before HP gets his train to you-know-where, I am forced to say that it CLICKS AND IT CLICKS NOT! Think I’m confused myself, or haven’t read the book or talking about Sidney Sheldon? Think Again (please - heehaw).
There’s a bit too much happening in that column. Dumbledore picks up Potter, they persuade a teacher to - err - teach (!), back to The Burrow and bang-bang fast into the train. But kindly don’t hope all of it to be over within seven and a half pages.
There actually are a couple of very interesting chapters (first and second, to be precise) which remind you of the first chapter of book 4. Second chapter actually gives away one of the most intriguing secrets of the whole series. I FAIL to understand why it was splashed so easily; that one in the climax would’ve made the book SACRED! I’m sure there is more behind it.
Despite so many things having happened, it fails to derive the fear, excitement and a dragon in your stomach. But, it succeeds to bring in NEXT-PAGE-RUSH in you.
Rating: Book Four Rank One(Quidditch WC)
Book Six Rank Four
Normally-Hogwartly
I know I’d be murdered for saying this, but I want to say it’s a big bore, that part when HP enters Hogwarts. As compared to previous five parts, yes, it’s a disappointment. But, it’s no-way down to the standard of other writers. They show nothingness with such stupidity, but here it was with grace. Grace And Confidence. Everyone is kissing everyone else, the new DADA teacher is showing his colors, something new is happening in the potions class (yeah, as you know – he gets a book which actually belongs to the HBP), Ron and Hermoine have a row (big deal?), Harry is irritatingly obsessed with suspecting Malfoy, Dumbledore takes him to the past of Voldemort, et al.
It is unputdownable as always, though. Rowling’s feather-light way of writing is in its full swing. Whatever happens there has little link to what happens in the end. But, the portion where Harry knows about Lord V’s past in D’s pensieve is quite well written. But my feeling of content may be because it gives us so much information about Voldie. Even if it were in tabular form, it’d’ve been equally interesting. It’s the power of the classic plot, not the current flow of words.
Rating: Book Five Rank One
Book Six Rank Five(uurrgh)
==The Climax
Classic. Simple and marvellous. The story catches up pace. Earlier you were were reading it eating chocolate pies, you throw it away, and sit bolt upright. The dark night has begun, and nothin matters any more to you. You read in paper that a teacher is going to be dead, you suddenly know that’s not too far from where you are.
Rowling is on fire, mate. The long last night is not over-dramatised, neither is it what-is-this-crap bore. Before you realise it, you are in a cave. And, you just cannot miss to say a WOW! after every fourth paragraph. And just when you thought they got what they had to and your paper was wrong and nobody is dead : there is another neuclear holocaust from Rowling. Now your hero and his hero are back at hogwarts, and you with them, not knowing the AC’s on or not, not knowing your cell’s ringing idiotically under the pillow where you threw it.
You finish chapter after chapter. Your pulse has never been faster. And as the protagonist mutters the Unforgivable Curse on [PEEP], I thought your heart missed a beat.
Some discussion and a funeral later, you look at the cover again to shed some more tears. It’s over. You’r dying for more.
Rating : Book Six : RANK ONE!(.......at last)
Final Word
Right after finishing the book, you can’t stop thanking God for letting Rowling come to earth. But, with the passage of time, will it retain the its magic? For now, it seems so. Definitely many notches above many of the books on and off your shelf. But, still not quite able to be among the Elite Group, to which Harry potter and the Goblet of Fire Belongs.