The Half-Blood Prince

Well, I finally finished the book I was rereading, and finished the new Harry Potter. Yay! And big thanks to Sean (who won’t read this) for loaning us the Canadian edition, so we can have our crisps and jumpers instead of chips and sweaters. It’s the little things, I tell ya’. I’m feeling a bit too lazy to do a cut, so we have here a spoiler-free review for anybody who hasn’t finished it yet.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling In which Harry finishes his sixth year at Hogwarts, a Beloved Character dies, and our friends are now old enough for Snogging, of which there is quite a bit. I’m with garrity on not really being surprised by any of the developments here, although she’s farther on the track of solving the remaining mystery than I am. It’s full of the endearing (and not-so-endearing) characters we’ve come to love, plus new magical tidbits and exciting plot bits. Oh-so-happily, Dolores Umbridge makes only a token appearance towards the end. Perhaps even more happily, Rowling's editor seems to have gotten some gumption back and trimmed the book down to a reasonable size. Where the last book felt like it had pages of redundant material, this one moved along at a nice clip. Based on this book, I am quite looking forward to the next one, where I had been less excited about this one. If you, too, were putting off reading it, do so no longer.