Harry Potter: All grown up and serious

Normally after reading a book or seeing a movie it takes me about 30 seconds of reflection to form a more or less complete opinion about it. Not so with this new Harry Potter book. A solid day after finishing I’m still not completely sure what to make of it. It’s not that I’m at a loss for words. Quite the opposite, in fact. As I write this paragraph I have a good three pages worth of meandering notes in MS Word waiting to be parsed into a readable (and shorter :-)) review. It’s just that the book is a bit too complicated to be covered with a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Fair warning: Hefty spoilers lay below the fold...

The Half-Blood Prince is undeniably different than the previous five entries. More focused on character development than on plot, what happens around Harry takes a clear backseat to what he thinks about it. Typically that’s a good thing. Strong characters are almost always more important than strong plots. Here, though, it’s a bit of a problem. In carrying readers though Harry’s transformation from boy to man, a necessary and welcome transformation, Rowling occasionally loses sight of the plot and the book becomes unfocused. The elements dealing directly with the Half-Blood Prince, for instance, are a major annoyance. Harry’s potions book never takes an especially important role and though Snape most certainly does, the fact that he is the Half-Blood Prince seems completely unimportant. Maybe – hopefully – it will be explained further in the next book, but here it seems less of a mystery than simply bad plotting. In any event it’s certainly an odd choice for a title.

Plot problems aside, the major theme of the book is clearly character change, so let’s talk about that, starting with Ron and Hermione. The two sidekicks have fairly unimportant roles here, except as they relate to their own long-anticipated relationship with one another. Ron goes through some confidence-building, but Hermione sits well in the background for the entire length. Partially supplanted in her role as supportive female by Ginny, who is probably the most changed character in the series so far – from timid child in Sorcerer’s Stone and naïve puppet in Chamber of Secrets to desirable alpha-female here. There’s a subtle, but very important change for Harry going on with these three. His relationship with them all remains strong, but the space between them is beginning to grow wider as Harry becomes more focused on defeating evil and less on love, and his friends the opposite. Considering Dumbeldore’s lessons to Harry focusing on the importance of love, this rift could have dire consequences in the future. Harry is willing to forego love in order to defeat Voldemort, but will he be able to do so if love is Voldemort’s only weakness?

Moving on for a moment, change is evident within the Slytherin house as well. I’m not sure I care for these changes, though. Draco and Snape go through a role-reversal by the end of the book in which Snape becomes the clear enemy and Draco the sympathetic fence-sitter. After five books of Snape as fence-sitter and Draco as bad guy I’m not sure if it’s justifiable to switch things so completely. It’s a hard change to believe, made even more difficult to stomach given that there was no real story need for it to happen. If anything it hurts the story, as Snape’s turn casts into question just how magnificent a wizard Dumbledore was, which ultimately weakens the shock of Dumbledore’s death.

Certainly the most climactic point in the entire series thus far, Dumbledore’s death is a bit mixed but altogether quite good. As I said, I don’t care for Snape as killer, nor do I think Dumbledore’s last-second pleading is the least bit appropriate (except as device to make the reader think it’s all a trick and Snape is really a good guy, but he turned out not to be so what’s the point?), but otherwise it’s a stellar couple of scenes. As it turns out, and despite my earlier complaint, the unfocused nature of the book actually helps to strengthen the sense of sudden helplessness here. Rather than weaken the scene, the climax is that much more surprising – and real – since we don’t see it coming. We’ve been expecting fluff and instead get tragedy. The naked pointlessness of it all is striking and genuinely scary.

Dumbledore’s death brings the matter back to Harry as it highlights his growing personal isolation and ultimate destiny to confront Voldemort mano a mano. All through the book we see examples of Harry growing apart from his traditional supports. As mentioned earlier, there has been a subtle shift in his relationship with Ron and Hermione, and though he is in love with Ginny, he broke off the relationship to protect her. Additionally, he no longer sees much of Hagrid and cares little about his old diversion quiddich. He will soon be of age and free from the Dursleys and has even decided not to return for another year at Hogwarts, the only true home he has ever known and his admitted favorite place in the world. His last grips on innocence and childhood are quickly slipping away, leaving Harry with nothing but his quest for vengeance. And if Star Wars has taught us anything, it should be that that is a dangerous situation for a hero to be placed.

Overall, the question of giving The Half-Blood Prince a thumbs-up or thumbs-down revolves around whether it is viewed as a stand-alone novel or as one chapter in a larger story. As a novel frankly it fails. The plot is muddled, villains and near-villains aren’t themselves, there is little real conflict until the last hundred pages and matters introduced in previous books go unexplained, leaving readers to try and remember vague characters and lingo on their own. As one chapter in a larger story, however, it succeeds brilliantly. The characters and conflict are more real than ever before. Our sense of potential loss – and gain – has never been more tuned. Only after these events are we finally ready for what is sure to be a thrilling finale.

Tags: entertainment