Harry Potter 4
Jul. 27th, 2007 01:15 pmJ.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Oh no, more house-elves.
Oh dear God no, more Dobby the terminally annoying plot device.
Hermione gets to play a parody of everyone who's ever campaigned to improve working conditions for slaves and near-slaves. Color me unimpressed.
Onward. The book's alright; the plot is back to "things happen to Harry" rather than "Harry does things" (as happened in books 2 and 3), but everyone gets some much-needed depth to their character. Well, except for Draco, but what can you do. (It is bloody obvious that short of one or both of them dying, Ron and Hermione are going to end up together.)
The Tri-Wizard Tournament was more interesting than Quidditch. I believe this statement is known as "damning with faint praise." The maze failed to convince me at all, and we only see Harry's segment with the dragons so there's not much of interest there. The underwater bit worked well, I thought.
The DADA teachers are getting more and more personality as the series goes on. If this trend continues I expect the one for book 7 to utterly dominate the action. (If it finally gets to be Snape, so much the better. That seems unlikely given certain revelations about his past in this book, but one never knows.)
Still worth reading. I think 2 is still my favorite so far; a second read of the series may well change that, of course.
Oh no, more house-elves.
Oh dear God no, more Dobby the terminally annoying plot device.
Hermione gets to play a parody of everyone who's ever campaigned to improve working conditions for slaves and near-slaves. Color me unimpressed.
Onward. The book's alright; the plot is back to "things happen to Harry" rather than "Harry does things" (as happened in books 2 and 3), but everyone gets some much-needed depth to their character. Well, except for Draco, but what can you do. (It is bloody obvious that short of one or both of them dying, Ron and Hermione are going to end up together.)
The Tri-Wizard Tournament was more interesting than Quidditch. I believe this statement is known as "damning with faint praise." The maze failed to convince me at all, and we only see Harry's segment with the dragons so there's not much of interest there. The underwater bit worked well, I thought.
The DADA teachers are getting more and more personality as the series goes on. If this trend continues I expect the one for book 7 to utterly dominate the action. (If it finally gets to be Snape, so much the better. That seems unlikely given certain revelations about his past in this book, but one never knows.)
Still worth reading. I think 2 is still my favorite so far; a second read of the series may well change that, of course.