Spoilers for certain.
1. It's generally not a good idea to start a book with a punctuation error. My 12 year old sister, whose writing I'm correcting this summer, knows better than to let this pass:
It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office...
2. Holy Moses -- the potion of Deus ex Machina! And I thought Veritaserum was bad! ::collapses on the floor in uncontrollable gut-wrenching laughter::
I'm considering letting it pass, because Harry Potter seems like a semi-absurd world. (If Fforde had included Felix Felicis in his books, I'd have thought it was a stroke of genius). I usually don't care about absurdities and plot holes in the HP world. Still, this honestly seems like a bit of extraordinarily lazy plotting. Along the lines of "Oops! Some really improbable cooincidences have to occur! And I don't have time to think up a plausible chain of events!" The Deus ex Machina potion also brings up the retroactive effect problem again. Potions as super-powerful as this ought to have had a huge impact on the wizarding world. Their effect should have shown up before book 6, like Polyjuice potion did. There should be some awesome-solid reasons why they aren't used all the time (at least by Voldemort).
The same probably goes for Unbreakable Vows, but those at least didn't send me into fits of giggles.
3. Do I care who is "snogging" whom? NO!
Maybe it's just because I've never been on a single date, and never had a "boyfriend". Maybe it's because I've had a grand total of ONE crush in my entire life. (Well -- okay. TWO. Once you've learned to identify them, they can't ambush you anymore. You can shove them in a cage and laugh at them until they die).
I liked Bill and Fleur. I thought the whole thing was sweet, funny, fitting, and believable. But everyone else? Why oh why did we have to spend 30% of the book worried about these kids' childish 'romantic' squabbles? Was there honestly ANY doubt that Ginny and Harry would end up together? Or Ron with Herminone? You could see it coming from HP2. I was thrown off by Viktor and Cho in HP4; those relationships actually raised some doubt in my mind about the direction Rowling was going to take her characters. The pairs matched believably, and stayed together for a whole book. But this time around? Lavender Brown, Dean, and every other love interest were so obviously unfitting and short-lived it wasn't even funny. Forgive me if my eyes skipped whole pages.
I'm rather confunded by Tonks/Lupin as well. I guess it works, but I would have never seen if coming. Lots of other people seem to share this sentiment, so I'm going to assume my confusion isn't just due to not having read the books for two years.
4. Tentative theory...I'm wondering if the Harry Potter books could be considered an example of a (perhaps unsuccessful) Cerebus Syndrome. The stretchings of plot that work in a lightheard boarding school/whodunit/parodical world might not prove workable once things start getting more serious and dramatic. The same might also be said for the moral framework of the world.
Then again, I've probably just read way to much meta, which uber-analyzes everything and tends to make it more serious than it is.
5. Tom Riddle is an awesome villain. He's smart, he's evil, he's manipulative, he's persuasive. I like skilled and intelligent villains.
6. Harry and Co. aren't very nice to the lower-schoolers. I forgave them for any inconsideration in HP5 -- but they're 16 now, and you'd think they'd grown up a bit. Especially since Ron and Hermione are both prefects now.
7. The commentators at the Quiddich games are horrible. It's another thing I never noticed when the books had a lighter tone. If they're going to be this biased, they need to rotate commentators. Luna was probably the only close-to-objective one.
8. Snape is smart. He's talented. He's a freaking prodigy and genius. Has no one else noticed this? He practically rewrites the potions system. He's got some uber-occlumentic abilities. He invents spells and hexes. He's managed to double-face his way -- to either Dumbledore or Voldemort -- for years. Double bonus points if it's Voldemort ("the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen"). And who does Dumbledore go to when really nasty stuff needs to be healed and fixed? The last time we saw people of this caliber were Voldemort and Dumbledore. I honestly can't think of another current wizard who comes close.
If you were this good, and people didn't recognize and respect it, wouldn't you be a bit bitter, too?
When I finally get around to it, Part 2 should be on Evil!Snape vs. Good!Snape. Rowling threw me for a loop on this one -- I don't know what to bet on at the moment, and the more I look at it, the more confused I get. I'm also notoriously bad at predicting the endings to her books, so you'll be better off going with whatever conclusion I don't reach.
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