Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (spoilers behind cut).

[rivka]

I read the fifth Harry Potter book Saturday evening, finishing at 3AM Sunday. It took me a while to sink into - I think because I'd put Jo Walton's The King's Name down to read it. Jo's writing is so very good at the sentence level, and the protagonist's voice in The King's Name is so spare and distinctive, that the clunkiness of Rowling's prose irritated me quite a bit in the first several chapters. But then, fortunately, I got sucked into the plot.

In all, I thought it was quite good - and I couldn't really quibble with some of the parts that bugged me. Harry's angsty moody sarcastic unreasonableness, for example, seems like a perfectly fair portrait of a struggling adolescent. He's got the virtues of adolescence too, such as unwillingness to meekly accept injustice. So although I spent much of the first part of the book wanting to slap him, the portrayal of his character felt realistic.

I like that Rowling's books are growing up as her hero does. When he was eleven, his world was all clear-cut good and evil and moral certainty, and his faith in Dumbledore was unshakeable. As he grows older, the world as we perceive it through his eyes becomes more complex, less trustworthy, more shaded with grey. Good characters make mistakes, and thus Harry starts to doubt them - and then, as adolescents do, he takes the doubts too far and is, at times, reflexively untrusting. Bad characters may have unexpected redeeming qualities - like Aunt Petunia, for heaven's sake - or they may not, like the Evil Umbridge. And we, as readers, are being forced to mature along with Harry. We don't get to drift happily along through a world simpler and grander than our own, anymore, but there are compensations in the richness and truth of our new perspective.

I'm not finding myself with much to say about the plot right now. I'm intending to read it again, more slowly, so I might have more to say then. I'll confine myself now to mentioning a point I saw elsewhere - not sure where, sorry - on LiveJournal: it seems unwise to assume that anyone dying in a book with the word "Phoenix" in the title is irrevocably dead.

Comments

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

Oh, good catch! But I don't know. She spent a lot of time making it irrevocable. Or maybe she doth protest too much?

I was really hoping he would apologize to Snape, instead of just feeling bad. It would have been manful.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but then, Harry's a 15 year old boy.

You'll get that apology to Snape from him when you pry it from his cold, dead lips.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I was really hoping he would apologize to Snape, instead of just feeling bad. It would have been manful.

I'm thinking that we'll see some sort of resolution there when Harry's closer to being a man.

[ororo.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I'm also not sure Snape is ready to accept any kind of apology from Harry. While he's had a hell of a rough time of it, he could let go already.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

One of the things that I really appreciated is that Umbridge could be mean-spirited and wrong and unjust without being controlled by Voldemort, the ultimate evil. There are many types of bad people in the world, after all, and some of them for all the best reasons.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes! Also Cornelius Fudge, who was spiteful and stupid and sometimes nasty, but not Evil. It would have been very easy to make him a secret Death Eater, and I admire Rowling for not taking that easy way out.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

"The world is not divided into good people and Death Eaters, Harry."

Lupin, if I remember correctly. Trying to pull a quote out of an 800+ page book after speed-reading it once. . .

[geminigirl]

Plot and characters aside, I felt kind of twitchy when reading the last couple of chapters when they talked about how The Daily Prophet was publishing all kinds of things about how to stay safe, and emergency preparedness stuff.

It smacked a little too much of Homeland Security to me.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I'm struck that you commented on the clunkiness of the writing. Have you been finding yourself noticing such things more often than you used to, before you started betaing me?

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Not noticing more often, no, although it's probably a new thing that I murmured "she needs a beta." *grin*

[carbonel]

Hey! My worlds are colliding again! I assume from your icon that you're Jae Gecko, whom I met at the convention in February where we were videotaped, right? I didn't know you knew Rivka, let alone that she was beta'ing for you.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Okay, this *is* very strange! Yeah, I'm Jae. I recognize your picture -- you were the really cool one! *grinning*

Rivka's my girlfriend. :-) How do you know her?

-J

Re:

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Rivka's my girlfriend. :-)

*beam beam beam*

You know, Jae, people would know that I was your beta if you would only put something about me on your beta team page (http://www.jaegecko.com/betas.html).

Re:

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Ack. Yes. I'll add it to my to-do list!

-J

Re:

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know you're all stressed out with things to do before you leave town. Don't stress - whenever you get to it is fine. I just couldn't resist the cue to poke at you. :-)

[carbonel]

Okay, this *is* very strange! Yeah, I'm Jae. I recognize your picture -- you were the really cool one! *grinning*

*blush* That session was fun; I just wish I knew when the final version was being aired. I really enjoyed talking with you afterwards, too.

Rivka's my girlfriend. :-) How do you know her?

From science fiction fandom. That's what I meant by worlds colliding; I'm active in both SF and media fandom, and while they certainly overlap somewhat, it's always surprising and pleasing to find a new overlap. Rivka's active in the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.fandom, and I met her at Minicon (Minneapolis SF convention) last year, so it was natural to have her on my LJ friends list.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Rivka and I talked last night about you. Were your ears burning? ;-) It sounds like we have other mutual friends, too, like Elise Matthesen.

I'm actually involved in both sf and media fandom, too, though my interest in media fandom is comparatively new and my interest in sf fandom has kind of waned since I moved to Canada and have found it harder to meet local fen. But I used to live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I was involved with the group that put on Confusion.

Definitely a small world! Or a small Net, at least.

-J