Harry Potter
27/7/05 10:50![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI was indeed very unsatisfied with Half-Blood Prince; that's certainly not the majority opinion, and perhaps I was expecting more from it than I had the slightest right to expect (not having read the other books in a while).
I will be adding to this as I think of other things to be annoyed by, it seems.
1) Could it have BEEN more high-school if it tried? It's one thing, of course, for sixteen-year-olds to act like sixteen-year-olds. But for everyone to act as if they've been hit over the head with the Stupid stick--that's too much. In many, many places...like all the places which dealt with relationships, which dragged on far too long... it honestly read like bad fanfiction, except without the weird sex.
1a) The Spiderman Breakup at the end. (I have to break up with you for your own good!) If you're going to try it, you have to pull it off awfully well, or it just comes off as the lamest thing ever, and in this case...lame.
2) It looks like the next book is going to be plot-coupons. (Collect the Magic Cup, the Magic Locket, the Magic Sword, and trade them in for a happy ending!). Hooray.
3) Because everyone spent 200 pages snogging each other, the actual plot got very short shrift.
4) Fleur's phonetic French accent. AAAAAAUGH ROWLING NEVER TRY TO DO ACCENTS IN PRINT PHONETICALLY NEVER NEVER NEVER.
5) Felix Felicis--I don't like it as a plot device, and it's symptomatic of how Harry gets pulled along for a good 85% of the book on nothing but blind, dumb luck.
6) Snape.
Look, I'm not a big fan of Snape, never was, but Rowling's world is so utterly conventional and normative that it was refreshing, even necessary to have one guy who was a good guy, who was basically on the right side, even though he was mean, vindictive, unpleasant, and kind of greasy. Otherwise... the most harsh criticisms of Harry Potter become true, and it becomes a world where you know which guys are the good guys because they're nice to the hero. A world where the things Good People do automatically get justified just because they're Good.
I've heard this charge leveled at Rowling before. I really wanted to think there was something more subtle than that going on, but I'm ready to admit I was wrong.
Hmm. Browsing everyone else's speculations makes me doubt myself. So maybe I'm wrong now. But if so, then I can't help but thinking that the series has become more concerned with plot twists and surprises and reversals of expectation than actually making sense or being good.
At least I don't have to buy the next one in hard-cover (although...yeah, I'll still read it).
Inexplicably, fandom seems to have much more faith in JKR than I do, and having read a book's worth of speculation in the last hour or so, I really really want to read the next one. Sigh. Well, just one more book and the silly season will be over and done with, right?
I will be adding to this as I think of other things to be annoyed by, it seems.
1) Could it have BEEN more high-school if it tried? It's one thing, of course, for sixteen-year-olds to act like sixteen-year-olds. But for everyone to act as if they've been hit over the head with the Stupid stick--that's too much. In many, many places...like all the places which dealt with relationships, which dragged on far too long... it honestly read like bad fanfiction, except without the weird sex.
1a) The Spiderman Breakup at the end. (I have to break up with you for your own good!) If you're going to try it, you have to pull it off awfully well, or it just comes off as the lamest thing ever, and in this case...lame.
2) It looks like the next book is going to be plot-coupons. (Collect the Magic Cup, the Magic Locket, the Magic Sword, and trade them in for a happy ending!). Hooray.
3) Because everyone spent 200 pages snogging each other, the actual plot got very short shrift.
4) Fleur's phonetic French accent. AAAAAAUGH ROWLING NEVER TRY TO DO ACCENTS IN PRINT PHONETICALLY NEVER NEVER NEVER.
5) Felix Felicis--I don't like it as a plot device, and it's symptomatic of how Harry gets pulled along for a good 85% of the book on nothing but blind, dumb luck.
6) Snape.
Look, I'm not a big fan of Snape, never was, but Rowling's world is so utterly conventional and normative that it was refreshing, even necessary to have one guy who was a good guy, who was basically on the right side, even though he was mean, vindictive, unpleasant, and kind of greasy. Otherwise... the most harsh criticisms of Harry Potter become true, and it becomes a world where you know which guys are the good guys because they're nice to the hero. A world where the things Good People do automatically get justified just because they're Good.
I've heard this charge leveled at Rowling before. I really wanted to think there was something more subtle than that going on, but I'm ready to admit I was wrong.
Hmm. Browsing everyone else's speculations makes me doubt myself. So maybe I'm wrong now. But if so, then I can't help but thinking that the series has become more concerned with plot twists and surprises and reversals of expectation than actually making sense or being good.
At least I don't have to buy the next one in hard-cover (although...yeah, I'll still read it).
Inexplicably, fandom seems to have much more faith in JKR than I do, and having read a book's worth of speculation in the last hour or so, I really really want to read the next one. Sigh. Well, just one more book and the silly season will be over and done with, right?
Tags: