I'm
writing about the Harry Potter series as a whole here and not one
specific book so that way I can cover all the issues at once. The first
three
books I must
say I really enjoyed when a friend lent them to me.
I then borrowed the fourth, bought the fifth when it came out and have
since bought the sixth and all the others for my own personal
collection.
One point however occurs to me, two mistakes which an author should
never make when writing a book, regardless of the intended audience
(teenagers, young adults or adults) or the genre, fantasy or not. That
point is simply that there are more to climaxes than simply a
main character being
killed off. In the fourth, fifth and sixth books three
main characters are killed off for the climax and we already
know that
for the seventh and final book the big question will be who will die?
Frankly, it's hardly creative writing by anyone's definition. Secondly,
since Rowling used the device in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of
Azkaban I thought I should bring up the obvious. Namely, why use time
travel as a device? After all it opens up a Pandora's Box of problems
and the reader if half sensible will then ask themselves the following
questions.
Namely that if Dumbledore had a timeturner why didn't he use it when
Harry's parents were killed or when Sirius died? Or for that matter use
it to go back to when Voldemort killed Harry's parents and surprise him
and either kill him or imprison him. I know what you're going to say as
you read this, surely I'm being harsh as a critic when I say this about
a fantasy book but the fact is that all books have to conform to
certain rules when they're written regardless of the genre if they're
going to be at all believable. In conclusion the first two books set
the scene really well, introduced us to great characters and a new
world of
magic but the third opened up a black hole of implausibility
that to be blunt, is so large that Hagrid could walk through it and not
touch the edges at all. As for books four, five and six, they'd be
great if they had some twists as the climaxes rather than just one
death after another, it makes the last few books very ho-hum. As for
the seventh I'll buy it as I already have all the others but I don't
hold out much expectations. I hope it's the last because unless she
pulls off something spectacular I doubt Rowling can rescue the series.
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