Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Mar. 6th, 2005 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynSo, just about two years after everyone else, I finally finished reading book five in the Harry Potter series. I was talking to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tuftears about it, and I've decided, what the heck, I'll post my rant about it.
And some additional spoiler-warning space for anyone surfing by clicking the forward button in my journal.
All right, that should be good.
Like just about everyone else I know who read this book, I was disappointed by it. Two main reasons:
1) 800 pages of torturing the main characters. In previous Harry Potter books, you got 50-100 pages of Dursley-torture that ended when Harry got to Hogwarts. In this thing, it's like the spirit of the Dursleys never leaves. It's not just that bad things happen, or even that bad things happen for wholly unjust reasons. It's that plus the total inability of the main characters to fight back effectively. They cannot rebel, and virtually every act of resistance they do make serves to worsen their situation.
This is partially alleviated by the occassional effective acts of rebellion. After all that's happened, it's utterly delightful to read the sections where Fred and George's fury has been unleashed upon the headmistress.
Still, this goal could've been accomplished in way fewer pages. I don't mind reading 880 page of delight and wonder interspersed with spots of great struggle and danger. Heck, even 880 page of struggle and danger would've been fine. Fore example, the sequence where Harry and his friends are fighting Death Eaters was not torturous: they were tense and interesting. But most of this novel wasn't struggle, it was torture, and it definitely exceeded my levels of masochism.
2) No sign the Harry learned anything from all of this. OK, Harry ignores a string of warnings, makes several serious mistakes, and winds up needing to be rescued and inadvertantly causing Sirius's death. Well, that stinks, but at least he'll realize the importance of keeping his head and listening to the advice of those around him, right?
Right?
Well, I can hope that's the case, but I don't have a lot to prove it by in the text. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad that Dumbledore did his confession thing and admitted his mistakes. (Which, let's face it, were pretty egregious. At any point he or Snape could've said plainly, "Look, we think Voldemort is trying to manipulate you RIGHT NOW so don't trust those visions! That last one was only right because he's trying to leave you with a false sense of confidence in them." And maybe if they'd been clearer, Harry would've been less cocky.)
But Dumbledore's "It was all my fault" seems to have absolved Harry from any reason to consider "Gee, perhaps I should control my temper better" or "Hmm, maybe I'm not always right about everything and can run roughshod over any hints that I might be mistaken".
So I'm left with the feeling that book six is going to be more of hot-headed, cocky Harry, and frankly whether he's right or wrong I don't expect to enjoy that much.
According to Amazon, book six is due out July 16 and will be 672 pages. I'm not going to be in any rush to pre-order it. I figure I'll wait and see what my friends have to say: if this gets another lukewarm "meh" reception, I'll pass. There are plenty of good books to read out there; I don't need to slog through the mediocre ones.
tuftears about it, and I've decided, what the heck, I'll post my rant about it.And some additional spoiler-warning space for anyone surfing by clicking the forward button in my journal.
All right, that should be good.
Like just about everyone else I know who read this book, I was disappointed by it. Two main reasons:
1) 800 pages of torturing the main characters. In previous Harry Potter books, you got 50-100 pages of Dursley-torture that ended when Harry got to Hogwarts. In this thing, it's like the spirit of the Dursleys never leaves. It's not just that bad things happen, or even that bad things happen for wholly unjust reasons. It's that plus the total inability of the main characters to fight back effectively. They cannot rebel, and virtually every act of resistance they do make serves to worsen their situation.
This is partially alleviated by the occassional effective acts of rebellion. After all that's happened, it's utterly delightful to read the sections where Fred and George's fury has been unleashed upon the headmistress.
Still, this goal could've been accomplished in way fewer pages. I don't mind reading 880 page of delight and wonder interspersed with spots of great struggle and danger. Heck, even 880 page of struggle and danger would've been fine. Fore example, the sequence where Harry and his friends are fighting Death Eaters was not torturous: they were tense and interesting. But most of this novel wasn't struggle, it was torture, and it definitely exceeded my levels of masochism.
2) No sign the Harry learned anything from all of this. OK, Harry ignores a string of warnings, makes several serious mistakes, and winds up needing to be rescued and inadvertantly causing Sirius's death. Well, that stinks, but at least he'll realize the importance of keeping his head and listening to the advice of those around him, right?
Right?
Well, I can hope that's the case, but I don't have a lot to prove it by in the text. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad that Dumbledore did his confession thing and admitted his mistakes. (Which, let's face it, were pretty egregious. At any point he or Snape could've said plainly, "Look, we think Voldemort is trying to manipulate you RIGHT NOW so don't trust those visions! That last one was only right because he's trying to leave you with a false sense of confidence in them." And maybe if they'd been clearer, Harry would've been less cocky.)
But Dumbledore's "It was all my fault" seems to have absolved Harry from any reason to consider "Gee, perhaps I should control my temper better" or "Hmm, maybe I'm not always right about everything and can run roughshod over any hints that I might be mistaken".
So I'm left with the feeling that book six is going to be more of hot-headed, cocky Harry, and frankly whether he's right or wrong I don't expect to enjoy that much.
According to Amazon, book six is due out July 16 and will be 672 pages. I'm not going to be in any rush to pre-order it. I figure I'll wait and see what my friends have to say: if this gets another lukewarm "meh" reception, I'll pass. There are plenty of good books to read out there; I don't need to slog through the mediocre ones.
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No Catharsis
Date: 2005-03-07 02:08 pm (UTC)Malfoy has gotten tiresome as a plot device. The only interesting "turn" that ever came from him was at the very beginning, when it briefly seemed he was a friendly sort, and then it was revealed that he was actually this sneering sort who looked down upon "Mudbloods". Ever since then, House Slytherin has been this ridiculous parody that seems like it belongs in a '70s Saturday Morning Cartoon - You know, the school club or the sports team or whatever, that is EVIL, so that a competition that is normally between rivals is now a battle of "good versus evil" because we just can't have it any other way.
(I remember being amazed at my first encounters with Japanese anime when they would tackle situations like this, where often times, it would turn out that the "bad guy" wasn't so bad after all: He was, after all, just a rival, and there were ways of resolving it without "good guy vs. bad guy" finality.)
I get no particular joy at seeing Malfoy or the villain-of-the-day to get turned into a slug or whatever punishment he gets settled with, because it just feels like the whole book becomes this exercise in building up anger and frustration in the reader, and then suddenly it's supposed to be all better because something horrible happens to a dislikeable character - and the "heroes" have an excuse to do something nasty.
I want to think well of the Harry Potter series. And I do plan on reading the next book - and unless it's particularly brutal - to try to make my way through the rest of the series. I guess I'm just that way about unfinished stories.
But I can't help but think that, with all the detractors I've heard of Rowlings's books - that there's witchcraft and monsters in it, horrors! - there are things more worthy of being concerned about. I just hope that Rowlings doesn't end this series the way she typically deals with her villains - by sticking her strawman bad guys into her own Dante's Inferno of ridiculous torments, to make it "all better" at the end.
I don't find it to be a particularly inspiring message in a book, that, "The bad guys get it in the end." Yeah, after they make sure that so many more good guys meet miserable ends, so that's supposed to be pay-back? Big whoop. I'm much more a sucker for the occasional bit of redemption. I would have found it far more compelling if, say, Draco Malfoy (or, for that matter, ANY member of Slytherin) were a bit less annoying, and perhaps circumstances could have compelled Harry and his "enemy" to have to put aside their differences to work toward a common goal. But there seems to be very little of that in these stories. Bad guys stay bad - or, at least, if there's a good guy that used to be bad, that all got resolved in the past, off-camera.