Category: Junior Fiction

locket?

Posted on by Greig

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

J.K. Rowling

The sixth book in the Potter series. In which, as usual, stubborn Harry finds himself in mortal danger because he doesn’t ask the right questions at the right time, lets his paranoia run deep, starts dating his best friend’s sister and Dumbledore gets killed. By Snape (The Half Blood Prince in question). Hm. The last book will be interesting I can already see some things that will happen, I think.
It’s far from a masterpiece, but it is a real page turner. I think it took me about six hours to read!
I’d be deluding myself to offer a recommendation for this book – people will either read it or they won’t.

Rating: B+

teenager?

Posted on by Greig

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

J.K. Rowling

The latest and longest of the Harry Potter books was released this Saturday to enormous global hype.
In this latest book, Harry has definitely become a teenager. He’s moody, he’s angry, he feels left out and the world seems against him.
There’s really no point in going into the plot, but I will say that I enjoyed the book. I feel that some subplots were introduced just to give a couple of characters an appearance in the book. I enjoyed reading the subplots but if they had been edited out you wouldn’t have missed them.
As for the much trumpeted killing off a main character, well I guessed who was going to be killed off well before the book came out. It was the obvious choice.
It’s unlikely that my recommendation would make any difference to whether you’re going to read this book or not, but I do recommend it. The Harry Potter series is a lot of fun and takes little effort to read (I’ve read each of them in a very short time – the first two in the space of a day and less than a day each for the others). Not by any stretch of the imagination the greatest children’s books ever written, but definitely worth the time it takes to read them.