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BEWARE SPOILERS!!

I tentatively planned to write a review for each of the Harry Potter books as I finished them, save them in the queue until I finished all seven, and then post them individually so I could see how my opinions changed as I went through the series. After I had gotten through the 2nd book, I made the mistake of reading the review I’d written for the first one and realized it wasn’t going to work. A lot of the dangling plot threads and unanswered questions I complained about in the first book’s review had already been answered by the time I finished the second. I realized then that the books are more meant to be taken as a single, massive 5,000 page volume instead of seven individual pieces. I was right to wait until all seven were out before bothering with any of them. It would have been annoying reading them one at a time and waiting for the next one to come out. It’s the same reason I eventually gave up on The Dark Tower series by Stephen King until all seven came out.

When I started reading it, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to like it. I chalked it up to reading a book written for people 15 - 20 years younger than me. The story was very simple and Rowling has an annoying habit of using alliterative character names for EVERY CHARACTER. Colin Creevey, Godric Griffindor, Dudley Dursley, Salazar Slytherin, Severus Snape, Cho Chang. You wouldn’t think such a little thing would grate on you but it does and it eventually made me wonder if every child in Britain was named that way.

When it started out, it was a good, simple story. It was about a boy who discovered he was something extraordinary and was taken out of an abusive home (inexplicably normal considering the way he was raised) and discovers he’s famous in this unknown world. The story was about this other world that exists right under all our noses. And in the first four books that’s all it was. A fun story.

For the first four books, the smack-you-over-the-head parallels to real world problems are mostly kept to a minimum. It begins with veiled references to where the entire series is going. Wizards see themselves as a superior race to non-magic using Muggles. Pureblood wizards see themselves as superior to half-blood wizards (the offspring of a Wizard and a Muggle) and both see themselves as superior to Mudbloods (magic users whose parents are both Muggles). Later on, we’re introduced to the Ministry of Magic - a quite powerful version of a wizarding goverment that’s seemingly unelected. There are registries for people who can turn into animals or werewolves. It is illegal for people to own dragons. The government runs werewolf support groups. It is illegal for a young wizard to use magic outside of school and they can somehow track this use. A wizard must have a license to teleport. Any of these rules are subject to a fine, expulsion from school (because that somehow makes sense), or imprisonment in Azkaban, the wizard’s prison.

In the first four books, the Ministry mostly appears as a deus ex machina “hey there’s a ruling authority overlooking everything”. The author needs some way to explain why wizards have not just taken over the world and why they live in secret. I found the explanation a bit unsatisfying; there’s really no given reason why wizards aren’t in control of the world other than they’re all really nice people. While she was writing Goblet of Fire, though, it appears Rowling realized that she could really turn the books into a pulpit to preach about anything and everything she wanted. In Order of the Phoenix the Ministry of Magic makes a conscious shift from deus ex machina to primary character. The Ministry denies Harry’s claim that Voldemort is still alive and uses the press to undermine his credibility. In this book, the government takes over everything. The government takes over the school to ensure that the students aren’t being trained as an army to overthrow the Ministry. The press becomes a magic-user version of Al-Jazeera, reporting what the government wants. Order of the Phoenix is where the books go from being a fun, creative story to a heavy-handed allegory on an oppressive government racially divided by bloodline.

Fortunately, Order of the Phoenix is primarily the only book where this silly sub-plot is front and center. Half-Blood Prince returns us to the decent story: a young wizard learning his craft and figuring out what he wants to be when he grows up. The sixth book pretty much exists to alley-oop into the seventh. There are about 100 pages of plot progression in 800 pages of book culminating with the famous spoiler that I heard on Opie & Anthony a day before the book’s release (and that I still haven’t really forgiven them for). When Deathly Hallows starts, the government has taken over the school. Voldemort is using the ministry to round up Mudbloods and put them in prison and has Harry and his friends declared as enemies of the state.

Sound familiar?

Fortunately, it splits this time with Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s quest to kill Voldemort while avoiding the Ministry backed death squads. The final resolution to the book is well done. I think it was wrapped up as satisfyingly as any long series I’ve ever read. Annoyingly, Rowling has seen fit to make attention-whorey comments regarding Dumbledore* before the books and what happened to the characters in the interim between the end of the book and the epilogue. I hate when authors do this. Readers should fill in their own gaps with what happens to their favorite characters after the book.

I am torn on my final thoughts of this series. On one hand, I enjoyed most of the (bloated) story. On the other hand, it is loathsome for the series to get the critical acclaim it does. Save Quidditch, there is not one original thing in ANY of the seven books. The witches and wizards supplied in the book are stereotypical magic-users, down to their clothes, hats, and choice of transportation. Horcruxes exist in Dungeons & Dragons as phylacteries. Veelas are Sirines. The Prophesized Child Who Will Save The World has been done in every video game since… well… ever.

I realize that these characters are written for people who are certainly younger than I am but the characters are horribly one-dimensional. The Dursleys, for instance, appear in the first few pages of each volume only to outline how cruel and terrible they are. It’s never rightly explained how they never get in trouble for LOCKING A CHILD IN A CUPBOARD AND FEEDING HIM TABLE SCRAPS. Severus Snape hates Harry Potter with all his soul until DUSTY FINISH~! he was in love with Harry’s mother and has been defending him all along. If he loves Harry’s mother and wanted to protect Harry, why not treat him like a human being? Why continually try to get him expelled? Draco Malfoy encompasses every one-dimensional stereotype of every kid you’ve ever hated.

And, speaking of random plot-holes to question, I could fill a book with questions about Rowling’s imagining of the world of wizardry. In the Potter universe, people are either born with magical powers or they aren’t. All children born with these abilities are whisked off to their local wizarding school where they learn to cast spells and make potions. If a normal person put on Harry’s cloak, would it work? How has no normal person in hundreds of years discovered a wand? Or a magic item? Would either of them work? Can normal people make potions? I mean, it’s just mixing ingredients, right? Why do wizards need a wand? How are wizards so far removed from normal society that some of them don’t even know how to dress like regular people? And how have they managed to hide their existence for all these hundreds of years? Obviously some normal people know about the wizard’s world. Harry’s adoptive family knew of it before he came along. Hermione’s parents certainly do. The Prime Minister of Britain is in on it… and it’s never come up? No one realizes what’s going on? That is one enormous version of the Sunnydale Syndrome (normal people ignoring the inexplicable or rationalizing it to fit their world).

In the sum total, I did enjoy the books but I really, really, really hate when they are called wonderfully original or something of the sort. There is not one single thing in any of the Harry Potter books that hasn’t been done elsewhere… either in a book, video game, or RPG. This is what makes it tremendously frustrating to see Rowling suddenly begin wielding the court system to stop people from deriving from her work. HER ENTIRE WORK IS DERIVATIVE OF OTHER THINGS. As someone who spent years and years reading different types of fantasy/wizardry/sci-fi books, there is nothing here original. The fact that she would sue someone for making a book about her books when her entire storyline is something out of a 1985 NES video game is asinine. Could you see a video game with the following plot: “A young boy discovers he has fantastic powers. It turns out he is the chosen one who must save the world from the Great Evil.” He could be Link.

I’m glad I read them. But, as someone who has lived, breathed, played, and read a ton of fantasy/sci-fi over the last 20 years… you can do better. There are a ton of other, better, fantasy authors out there who don’t need to cause controversy to sell books in their niche.

* - I say this was attention-whorey because there was no reason for it. Characters in books SHOULD designed so the reader can make their own interpretation of them. Dumbledore, in 4,000 pages never made one single sexual reference. There was not one sexual reference in the entirety of the seven books. Now, two years after the final book’s release, the author needs to meddle in the archetypes that fans have made for this character in their own minds. It’s selfish and fully designed to be another heavy-handed tactic to get her name back in the paper. “I’ve always thought of him as gay.” No, you f*cking didn’t. You thought of Dumbledore as every other stereotypical “wise old wizard” - right down to the long white hair, cloak, hat, and beard. Dumbledore is no different than Merlin, Elminster from the Forgotten Realms, Mordekainen, Gandalf, Sarumon, or Fizban from Dragonlance. Do you know what all those wizards have in common? They are bearded, wise, gentle, and single. She is making absurd, press-gathering statements like this because she will never write another book. She caught lightning in a bottle by re-imagining the work of a lot of other people and collecting in to one series. The young readers she created are now young-adult readers who’ve read other things. If they’ve read ANY other fantasy books, they’ve discovered their favorite characters in other places. She knows this. “JK Rowling’s next book” will be the Chinese Democracy of the literary world.