Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Oof. J.K. Rowling really knows how to write a heart-wrenching ending.

The last 100 pages aside, and despite the fear that's part of everyone's lives, this is a weirdly comforting book. No teachers are torturing Harry, Malfoy isn't as much of a bully, Harry's not in the middle of some huge plot—just sit back, relax, and enjoy some magical education. Really the only criticism I have of this book is Harry's obsession with Malfoy—even though Harry's absolutely right, I have zero interest in that little mystery. The rest of the book is brilliant. Seeing how much Harry has matured after Sirius' death is immensely satisfying. No wonder Dumbledore loves that kid so much.

**If you haven’t read this book, just skip this review. I tried to avoid spoilers, but there is just too much to talk about.**

I’d forgotten how much I adore this book. It’s one of my favorites of the whole series. The stakes are high as Voldemort begins his full-force attack. People are disappearing or dying and all of the main characters realize that they will probably lose some loved ones before it’s all said and done.

I love the way Rowling beings the book in the office of the British prime minister as he receives a visit from Fudge. It was the perfect way to catch readers up on all the mayhem that happened over the summer. It also helps us understand how the two ministries (magical and non) work together or at least touch show more base on occasion.

Harry’s trip to Slughorn’s with Dumbledore is incredibly awkward because they’ve never had a private conversation outside of Hogwarts. Also, their relationship changed forever at the end of Book 5, when Harry was broken-hearted and screamed and railed at Dumbledore. Throughout this book we watch their relationship deepen as they spend more time one-on-one and Dumbledore treats Harry more like an equal, instead of as a student. He is training Harry, like an apprentice, in what he’ll need to know to fight Voldemort.

I love the scenes where Dumbledore and Harry explore the memories that shed light on Tom Riddle’s transformation into Voldemort. We see his parents and horrible grandfather. We learn about his time at the orphanage and tendency towards violence before he even knew he was a wizard. We see him as a loveable, manipulative student and a charming young shop clerk. These scenes are what make Voldemort such a great villain. We see behind the curtain of pure evil into the roots of his desire for power and control.

Dumbledore was incredibly observant during his first meeting with Riddle. When he looks back on that memory he realizes just how much information he gathered. Tom liked to collect treasures from his victims; he had no friends and didn’t want help from anyone; he used magic to control and dominant others; he desperately wanted to be different and “special.” All of those elements are very much a part of Voldemort and help Dumbledore find his weaknesses.

During Christmas break Harry stands up to the new Minister, Scrimgeour, and sides with Dumbledore instead of the ministry. He shows such bravery and loyalty. I love the scene later when he tells Dumbledore about the exchange …

“He accused me of being ‘Dumbledore’s man through and through.’”
“How very rude of him.”
“I told him I was.”
Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.

It always broke my heart that Dumbledore died at the end, but now on my fourth re-read, I think I finally understand why it was crucial for it to happen that way. Harry has to fight the final battle on his own. Dumbledore was the only other person who truly could have helped him, so he had to die for Harry’s path to become inevitable.

A few things I'd forgotten about the sixth book:

1) Harry’s the Quidditch captain this year. I honestly think I they could have cut out half of the Quidditch scenes in the series and I wouldn’t have noticed. I like the fact that they’re used to demonstrate things like Ron finding self-confidence, but I’m just not a big fan of those parts.

2) At Dumbledore’s funeral Harry has a strange urge to laugh. That’s such a relatable moment for me. When you’re grieving your emotions are so raw and laughter is nestled right to crying.

3) Ginny is so sassy in this book. She and Ron fight, she dates other guys and she stands up for her friends. I love how her relationship with Harry develops as he gets to know her better.

4) In one scene Mrs. Weasley says, “It was a lucky day for the Weasleys when Ron decided to sit in your compartment on the Hogwart’s Express, Harry.”
I feel like it was lucky for Harry as well, because Ron, with all his bumbling faults, is such a wonderful friend for Harry. He keeps him grounded in the normalcy of being a teen.

5) Dumbledore tells Harry he should tell Ron and Hermione exactly what the prophecy said, because he needs his friends. He’s so wise.

"But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there is little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew - and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents - that there was all the difference in the world." show less

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the most complex, multi-layered, and emotional book of series so far. After a slow start, the momentum picks up like a snow ball rolling down an icy cliff until a the breathtaking, unnerving, and unflinching climax. Rowling stays true to form the entire ride. The characters become deeper and more thoughtful in a well-written book of imagination and originality. Rowling doesn't dumb down her characters; she illustrates them as they should be... as real, complicated teenagers. As such, Harry, Ron, and Hermione (and to some extent, Ginny) have matured considerably since the previous book. They are now older teenagers and are developing strong ties to the opposite sex.

Ultimately, the central theme show more is discovering who Lord Voldemort really is. Much is learned about Voldemort in this novel, a brilliant setup for what will most likely be a spectacular showdown in the final novel . There are other subplots galore, of course, that I’m guessing will tie up the various loose ends in book 7.

This book is not rushed; it has no rushed ending. It is filled with insight and emotion. It is a much darker and much more “adult” book, especially the last quarter of the book. Obviously, the novel is a setup for the final showdown. It leaves the reader hanging off of a cliff, but it is written with beauty and flawless description. Rowling gives her audience a realistic portrait of human souls in a fantasy world. I felt more character depth in this novel than any of the others.

Besides all the beauty and imagination, this book is relentless, transcending the level mere entertainment. It gives depth and wonder. It expands on the characters, not just the events. It has the usual mind-boggling wonders and creative new inventions. The ending was incredibly moving and sets up questions in the reader's mind as to what’s coming in the final volume.

It could be argued that “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is the best of the series so far. Given what has come before, that is saying a lot. Harry is growing up before the reader’s eyes, and one can't help rooting for him to prevail. Regardless of what the future holds, the present holds many rich wonders for readers and the hints of the possibilities to come are tantalizing. show less

For a book that’s over five hundred pages, it felt like not enough happened, not until the final quarter. Until then, this semi-entertaining sequel was kind of repetitive, mostly scenes of Harry using an old textbook to cheat in class, scenes of Harry and Dumbledore eavesdropping on Voldemort’s past, and scenes of romantic drama (where none of the couples bar Fleur and Bill felt even borderline romantic to me).

While I did find Harry endearing in the first book, as the series progresses I’ve yet to become a full on fan of Harry and this book did very little for his cause in my eyes, between his unconvincing out of nowhere feelings for a certain someone, along with his desire to use that textbook even after something dangerous show more happened, not to mention the lack of remorse or punishment for that incident, Harry came across as more immature, spoiled, and selfish at sixteen years old than he did at ten years old which maybe those traits are somewhat true to a boy that age, I don’t know, but I can’t say I enjoyed his regression all that much.

As for Harry’s adventures with Dumbledore, I know this is a beloved relationship by the fandom, and maybe if I’d read this at a younger age I would have felt similiarly but as an adult reader their scenes tend to grate on me rather than move me. Dumbledore almost always withholds information, handing it out piecemeal to Harry, and since there is never a concrete explanation for why Dumbledore spoon feeds pertinent information to the supposed chosen one, this slow doling out of info seems designed for the sole purpose of lengthening each book, dragging out story, yet inevitably in the end of nearly every book it clearly would have helped had Harry not been kept in the dark.

With Harry and Dumbledore “investigating” Voldemort’s past in this sequel, not only is it baffling that Dumbledore hadn’t done all his homework on Voldemort way back when Harry’s parents were killed, it also seemed questionable that he needed Harry’s help with putting it together. Then there wasn’t even really enough to Voldemort’s “past” scenes to justify devoting so many pages to it, all they did was solidify what we already know, Voldemort’s a bad seed and the history behind the making of that bad seed probably could have been summed up in a couple concise paragraphs rather than spread out in chunks throughout this book, this is one of those rare instances where telling probably would have been better than bothering to show something that wasn’t actually all that relevatory. So again it felt like more of the author relying on Dumbledore as a means of stretching a thin plot into a larger book and maybe that’s why I’ve never quite warmed to Dumbledore as to me he seems more like a plot device than a three-dimensional character who behaves logically.

The side characters tend to be the standouts in this series for me. I adore the Weasley family scenes but this unfortunately offered few of those, although the difficulty of working them into the story is understandable given that some of the kids don’t attend Hogwarts anymore, what’s less understandable is how the previous book incorporated characters like Luna and Neville so well into the story, growing them into such interesting people in their own right only to seemingly have no room for them here despite the high page count, reducing them pretty much to glorified cameos which is a shame since both bring unique energy that could have nicely broken up the repetitive nature of the story that I mentioned earlier.

Hermione, my favorite character ended up the most disappointing aspect of this one. By now I’m used to watching the movies and seeing her sidelined in one fashion or another, much of her story from the books wind up cut out of the movies but I hadn’t expected a similar experience in the books. Not that she was sidelined exactly, she was definitely present, it’s just that mostly all she got to do was be jealous over a boy and I’ve come to expect her to be so much more than that, I desperately missed the fully formed intelligent girl who had so much more going on in her head and in her life than who’s kissing who, hopefully my preferred version of her returns in the final installment. show less

The worst book of the series by far. If I wanted to read about the tangled love lives of teenagers, I would have picked up Gossip Girl instead. The romantic plot lines were not interesting in the least and certainly added little to the overall story. Interspersed between these romantic entanglements were Harry's lessons with Dumbledore, which are meant to prepare him to face Voldemort but is really just Rowling's way of telling Voldemort's backstory. It seemed like she forgot to mention it sometime during the previous five books and so decided to cram it all into this one in preparation for the last book. What should have been an interesting look at the great villain of the series was really only a history of the character's life and show more offered little insight on him. I would have liked to know just why he was so evil, what makes him tick, what are his motivations, what is his purpose in doing what he does, and so on. (Just making Tom Riddle an evil kid who wants power is a lazy way to write a villain.) What happened to the magic, the adventure, and the sense of wonder that made the first half of this series good? The fifth book was disappointing, but this one was just downright awful. show less

This is my favourite of the Harry Potter books. There's so much going on here, though admittedly most of it is rather quiet. There are few action sequences, but the little details more than make up for it.

We get tons and tons of new information here, and a few more pieces of the puzzle click into place. I found the sequences dealing with Voldemort's rise to power particularly interesting. It was also really nice to see the trio growing up: learning to apparate, coming of age, hooking up with people... all that jazz.

And there's some truly heartwrenching stuff in here, too. Harry's really forced to let go of his childhood; it's a painful process, but I also feel like it really opened up the possibilities for the last book. I can't show more wait.

Utterly fantastic stuff. I absolutely recommend this series and urge you to try them out. Read them in order, though; they're puzzle books, and the pieces won't come together nearly as nicely out of order. show less

This one might actually be able to challenge Prisoner of Azkaban for favorite in the series. And that's really saying something because I LOVE that book like crazysauce. But reading through this series a second time with the ability to know what's coming and just sort of relax into the words and pick up all the brilliant details JK Rowling has left sprinkled along the way makes it that much better. Slughorn and Harry's sudden improvement in potions? Hilarious. The whole furtive thing with Ginny. Loved it. The Draco storyline, which before I only picked up on pieces of? SO SO good. And let's not even try to get into Snape without spoiler tags. The way this was written to say one thing and oh so carefully mean another was masterfully show more done. Snape, who has forever been the cruel teacher who despises Harry, which Harry simply can't see past, even here, has another side, and the scenes between him and Dumbledore, then him and Harry after Dumbledore's death... shivers... show less