Book Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Before I begin, I’d like to set your mind at ease: this review contains no spoilers. It’s hardly even a review, in the strictest sense. For those who have read the book, and would like to discuss particulars, I’d be happy to do so through email. Otherwise, enjoy!

You will hate this book.

Though I only acquired it at Best Buy just yesterday and started reading around 10pm, I turned the last page just before 6pm this afternoon. Roughly twelve hours of reading later, I despised the book in its entirety.

My rage is inspired not by an insipid or uninspired plot-line; I am incensed and livid by what transpired in those unassuming typed pages, which must indeed contain some diabolical spell. For I read feverishly, voraciously devouring each inked word until they swam haphazardly within my tortured imagination. Whether by chance or design, many characters formed themselves appropriately from their movie counterparts; viscerally real depictions given voice and solidity, complicit in a vast conspiracy.

Greedily I flipped each page, inexplicably curious, increasingly unsatisfied. Everything is flawlessly executed in a symphony of dual confounding obviousness, and sheer unbelievable nerve. The characters have indeed grown, as I knew they would. This is a series not stagnant to satisfy a particular demographic, but one which grows with its readers. Those poor unsuspecting children which started reading in their preteens are now of an age to understand greater and more disturbing events. Older readers win satisfaction that the naive innocence which began the journey is no more.

You see, this is where it all starts tumbling down. Rowling has carefully constructed a towering castle of cards, and unashamedly swept her hand across the battlefield; now the cards fall, and woe be upon the unfortunate who fails to realize nothing is sacred. Everyone has aged, and with age comes responsibility, whether desired, or thrust upon. The truth now, is that nothing is impossible or unlikely; the expected happens obtusely, and righteous betrayal inevitable.

But mostly my hostility is directed at that last page, for in turning it, I must wait. The length of this interruption is unknowable, the time itself an intolerable eternity. Now with an unprecedented deluge of loose ends, my inquisitive nature must flail in abject frustration. Though “the Order of the Phoenix” hinted at this, “the Half-Blood Prince” completes the series’ evolution into infinite possibilities lead finally by cogent and surreptitious malice unhindered by young sensibilities.

This time, the gloves are off. Like me, you will likely hate this book, not because it is bad, but so irritatingly good.

Consequently this is also my 100th post here. Huzzah!