Harry Potter And The Half...
Jul. 27th, 2005 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eyelessgameFinished it. Major spoilers and discussion -- don't look.
I think it's her best novel. As Tamago said, she's willing to take chances, and it shows.
Much more than any of the other HP books, this leaves a lot unfinished, and really should have been titled Harry Potter: The Final Chapter (Part One). The Prime Minister thread, for example, started the book and then was permanently dropped. I would expect we'll see more of the PM in book 7.
Was a little spoiled before reading -- there was scuttlebutt somewhere that Dumbledore was going to die, and though I only half-heard it, it was enough -- and the last two chapter titles, which I happened to see facing page 1, made it too obvious. But it was foreshadowed in the second chapter, and much more obviously when Dumbledore started the major braindump on Harry.
Draco, while he appeared a lot less in this book than any of the others, was also a more complicated character. Interesting that he's not irredeemable. I suspect this will come into play. (His mother isn't either -- she, like him evidently, has the power of love, twisted though it was.)
It is pretty clear (to me) that Snape is still Dumbledore's bitch. This was all set up to put him in Voldemort's confidence -- read what Dumbledore says about not fearing death, and his bloody-obvious Dead Meat-style self-foreshadowing of his "when I say run, run" orders to Harry, and his "I am much cleverer and more expendable than you" comments. And freezing Harry when Draco appeared -- Dumbledore expected to die, and that was clear. And he was pleased that Draco wouldn't do it. I wouldn't even put it past the two cleverest wizards (D and S) to have figured out ahead of time that since Harry can't do Occlumancy (and thus will be mind-read by all the Death Eaters), we needed him completely convinced Snape was evil; thus he had to be a witness to the execution.
(Only bad people fear death and want their lives prolonged indefinitely. The parallels to Revenge of the Sith amuse me greatly, since both stories had to have been developed independently.)
Are R.A.B. among Dumbledore's initials? I don't have Book 5 handy where he gives his full six-name name to the Wizengamot. It has to be someone we know, someone we've met, but no one has those initials.
There is always even the possibility that the whole thing -- fetching the amulet, drinking the potion, facing down Draco -- was staged specifically to fool Harry and everyone else into thinking Dumbledore's dead. But I don't really believe Rowling is that devious. I don't think there's a Gandalf the White in Dumbledore's future. (But it's possible. That potion scene was weeeeird.)
Rowling has gotten much better at the use of the red herring. I could have kicked myself for not figuring out who the Half-Blood Prince was -- the trick was to focus on who he was, what he was good at, what his interests were -- and not on what he called himself, for which there was no real clue.
Polyjuice was a nice second red herring, as Crabbe and Goyle were using it almost pointlessly (except for the homoeroticism of sycophantly following around your alpha male leader while in the body of a prepubescent girl -- hey, how much HP-slash has involved Polyjuice gender changes?), but it sure had me thinking someone important wasn't who he seemed all the way up to the end. (It's of course still possible that someone is really someone else -- as I say, red herrings. But presumably the Marauder's Map renders many uses of Polyjuice detectable.)
Harry didn't ever discover anything worthwhile or illuminating in Snape's detentions. Feels like that was a bit wasted...
Voldemort's a lich! I like the use of the mystic number seven -- and it's another thread to be tied up in HP:tFC(pt2).
Some people have reported throwing the book across the room near the end -- Dumbledore's death wasn't nearly so much an offense to me as Harry's pointless breakup with Ginny: what, he thinks not snogging her will protect her? It's not like Voldemort doesn't know who she is. It seemed just too "we can't have our teenagers macking happily for long -- it'll lead to heavy petting!" gratuitous-angsty.
And the ending was very much "whaa, but I want to know what happens NEXT!" and left me hanging. And hanging. And she has until the sixth movie comes out to finish the seventh book, I suppose...
My two book 7 predictions:
1. We have not yet seen why Dumbledore trusted Snape so completely. We will. It will be convincing, and will be revealed at some dramatically opportune moment, and Snape is, and always has been, a good guy going deep undercover. Snape will, however, die just after proving himself to be a good guy.
2. Harry and Draco must work together and overcome their mistrust, possibly in a way that echoes a Snape/James or Snape/Dumbledore backstory.
I think it's her best novel. As Tamago said, she's willing to take chances, and it shows.
Much more than any of the other HP books, this leaves a lot unfinished, and really should have been titled Harry Potter: The Final Chapter (Part One). The Prime Minister thread, for example, started the book and then was permanently dropped. I would expect we'll see more of the PM in book 7.
Was a little spoiled before reading -- there was scuttlebutt somewhere that Dumbledore was going to die, and though I only half-heard it, it was enough -- and the last two chapter titles, which I happened to see facing page 1, made it too obvious. But it was foreshadowed in the second chapter, and much more obviously when Dumbledore started the major braindump on Harry.
Draco, while he appeared a lot less in this book than any of the others, was also a more complicated character. Interesting that he's not irredeemable. I suspect this will come into play. (His mother isn't either -- she, like him evidently, has the power of love, twisted though it was.)
It is pretty clear (to me) that Snape is still Dumbledore's bitch. This was all set up to put him in Voldemort's confidence -- read what Dumbledore says about not fearing death, and his bloody-obvious Dead Meat-style self-foreshadowing of his "when I say run, run" orders to Harry, and his "I am much cleverer and more expendable than you" comments. And freezing Harry when Draco appeared -- Dumbledore expected to die, and that was clear. And he was pleased that Draco wouldn't do it. I wouldn't even put it past the two cleverest wizards (D and S) to have figured out ahead of time that since Harry can't do Occlumancy (and thus will be mind-read by all the Death Eaters), we needed him completely convinced Snape was evil; thus he had to be a witness to the execution.
(Only bad people fear death and want their lives prolonged indefinitely. The parallels to Revenge of the Sith amuse me greatly, since both stories had to have been developed independently.)
Are R.A.B. among Dumbledore's initials? I don't have Book 5 handy where he gives his full six-name name to the Wizengamot. It has to be someone we know, someone we've met, but no one has those initials.
There is always even the possibility that the whole thing -- fetching the amulet, drinking the potion, facing down Draco -- was staged specifically to fool Harry and everyone else into thinking Dumbledore's dead. But I don't really believe Rowling is that devious. I don't think there's a Gandalf the White in Dumbledore's future. (But it's possible. That potion scene was weeeeird.)
Rowling has gotten much better at the use of the red herring. I could have kicked myself for not figuring out who the Half-Blood Prince was -- the trick was to focus on who he was, what he was good at, what his interests were -- and not on what he called himself, for which there was no real clue.
Polyjuice was a nice second red herring, as Crabbe and Goyle were using it almost pointlessly (except for the homoeroticism of sycophantly following around your alpha male leader while in the body of a prepubescent girl -- hey, how much HP-slash has involved Polyjuice gender changes?), but it sure had me thinking someone important wasn't who he seemed all the way up to the end. (It's of course still possible that someone is really someone else -- as I say, red herrings. But presumably the Marauder's Map renders many uses of Polyjuice detectable.)
Harry didn't ever discover anything worthwhile or illuminating in Snape's detentions. Feels like that was a bit wasted...
Voldemort's a lich! I like the use of the mystic number seven -- and it's another thread to be tied up in HP:tFC(pt2).
Some people have reported throwing the book across the room near the end -- Dumbledore's death wasn't nearly so much an offense to me as Harry's pointless breakup with Ginny: what, he thinks not snogging her will protect her? It's not like Voldemort doesn't know who she is. It seemed just too "we can't have our teenagers macking happily for long -- it'll lead to heavy petting!" gratuitous-angsty.
And the ending was very much "whaa, but I want to know what happens NEXT!" and left me hanging. And hanging. And she has until the sixth movie comes out to finish the seventh book, I suppose...
My two book 7 predictions:
1. We have not yet seen why Dumbledore trusted Snape so completely. We will. It will be convincing, and will be revealed at some dramatically opportune moment, and Snape is, and always has been, a good guy going deep undercover. Snape will, however, die just after proving himself to be a good guy.
2. Harry and Draco must work together and overcome their mistrust, possibly in a way that echoes a Snape/James or Snape/Dumbledore backstory.
