Harry Potter 1 and 2
Jul. 23rd, 2007 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishJ.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Having seen the third movie, I did a double-take when I read early in chapter 1 that Hagrid had borrowed Sirius Black's motorcycle to deliver young Harry, and neither Dumbledore nor McGonagall batted an eye.
This three-hundred page book has roughly sixty pages of plot, fifty of which are the last fifty pages of the book. Another 50-100 are devoted to trips through the Departments of Backstory and Exposition. The rest is, um, background noise and irrelevant stuff happening. You know. World-building. It's alright but I much prefer my world-building to have a point to it.
Anyone who believes that Severus Snape is a bad guy needs to reread the Two Big Expositions (with Quirrell and Dumbledore) at the end of this book.
Fluff, but fun fluff. In defence of quite a lot of editors, I wouldn't have bought it for my publishing house either.
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Much better. The plot is evenly distributed throughout the book, and there's more of it this time.
Dobby is a seriously irritating plot device and should have been edited out. He provides foreshadowing (there are better ways), screws around with a Quidditch match (o noz!), and provides a reason for the car to be in the forest so it can be a machina ex dea with the spiders. Bleh.
It's amazing how that one scene with Lucius Malfoy makes Draco understandable, and almost sympathetic.
I am unconvinced by the appointment of the obviously incompetent Lockhart as DADA teacher.
For some reason the 'let's disguise ourselves so Draco can tell us important plot information' scene really grates on me. It feels like lazy writing, and I don't know why. The sword randomly popping out of the Sorting Hat was also deus-ex-machina-like.
Again, fluff, but fun fluff, and a bit more substantial this time.
Having seen the third movie, I did a double-take when I read early in chapter 1 that Hagrid had borrowed Sirius Black's motorcycle to deliver young Harry, and neither Dumbledore nor McGonagall batted an eye.
This three-hundred page book has roughly sixty pages of plot, fifty of which are the last fifty pages of the book. Another 50-100 are devoted to trips through the Departments of Backstory and Exposition. The rest is, um, background noise and irrelevant stuff happening. You know. World-building. It's alright but I much prefer my world-building to have a point to it.
Anyone who believes that Severus Snape is a bad guy needs to reread the Two Big Expositions (with Quirrell and Dumbledore) at the end of this book.
Fluff, but fun fluff. In defence of quite a lot of editors, I wouldn't have bought it for my publishing house either.
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Much better. The plot is evenly distributed throughout the book, and there's more of it this time.
Dobby is a seriously irritating plot device and should have been edited out. He provides foreshadowing (there are better ways), screws around with a Quidditch match (o noz!), and provides a reason for the car to be in the forest so it can be a machina ex dea with the spiders. Bleh.
It's amazing how that one scene with Lucius Malfoy makes Draco understandable, and almost sympathetic.
I am unconvinced by the appointment of the obviously incompetent Lockhart as DADA teacher.
For some reason the 'let's disguise ourselves so Draco can tell us important plot information' scene really grates on me. It feels like lazy writing, and I don't know why. The sword randomly popping out of the Sorting Hat was also deus-ex-machina-like.
Again, fluff, but fun fluff, and a bit more substantial this time.