Rowling really dropped the ball on this one, from the stilted, cheesy conversations to the lame and predictable ending , harry potter and the half blood prince is a train wreck from start to finish, and is easily the worst of the 6 books thus far. The usual hogwarts antics are absent, and while getting rid of them shortened the book and got rid of some ’’useless information’’, it these antics that made the books so charming in the first place, and not a contrived mystery plot and death just created for shock value. There is a rumor that rowling cried about the ending; well, the ending, while powerful, was marred by the pathetic way in which it came about, and did not inspire any emotion other than anger in me. The characters and situations felt extremely out of place, and it felt as if rowling was trying to live up to the hype of a blockbuster while forgetting her meager roots as a storyteller. People like harry potter because of the wonderful wizarding world that it places them in, not because of some ridiculus plot about an evil wizard that goes about killing people.