There’s a good chance that you’ve become aware of much awaited book release lately. You’d have to be either a total hermit or in a severe coma to miss the the news that the latest Harry Potter book hit the shelves last Saturday. People had been lying outside bookstores for days and every shop with some sense had night open and maybe they also threw a Potter party to mark the end of publishing era.
I’ve been reading Harry Potter ever since my sister gave me the books with a warning that if I didn’t like ‘em I might as well give up on books all together. That’s a harsh thing for an eleven year old to hear, especially one who really preferred audio books to those heavy things with black print in them. But I gave the books a try and soon enough I became your average Pothead addict. I tore threw the first two books available and when the Prisoner of Azkaban was released it became my first adventure into the world of English books.
In many ways Harry became my way into world of speculative fiction. Every time a new book would come out I’d be trembling with anticipation, hardly able to contain the lust to rip the damn thing out of my sisters hand (who was always the one to read them first) and make a run for it. I think I did try that once, but the memory is pretty blurred. She’s got a mean right hook, my sister of mine. Suffice to say that I never did pull something similar again.
When I finally finished the new book I normally re-read the entire series back to back, and if I didn’t find anything new to catch my interest, I’d read them yet another time. The books are like drugs - once I tried them I couldn’t get enough. By the fifth book I was old enough to know that Rowling wasn’t the only one who could write books full of magic and fun, and the rest is, as they say, history. There are few teens my age that read nearly as much books, and even fewer who’s got a weirder taste in literature. Harry, in many ways, opened that door and its remained open ever since.
That’s why it shouldn’t be a surprise for you to know that I was up bright and early last Saturday. The average temperature when I was in Italy was a blistering 40 degrees in the shade and this particular Saturday seemed like the hottest day of them all. I borrowed an old bicycle, grabbing some breakfast on my way out, and rode hastily the two miles to the nearest bookstore who carried English books (few Italian shops do, apparently). By the time I pulled up in front of it I looked like a Tour de France rider on rehab; sweaty, shivering and with a light in my eyes that made other tourists step away, saying “Loui e pazzo” or something equally insulting…
There it stood!
A new Harry Potter book, and it was mine! All mine, not my sister’s or someone else’s sister’s or I don’t know what. I surged forward and took the nearest copy in my hands, trying hard to fight the urge to flick threw to the infamous last chapter. Sensibility won out in the end and I even remembered to pay the old woman behind the counter.
Back in my apartment I took a quick bath and a cold shower to calm down. Then I found a cold beer in the fridge and settled down in the most comfortable sunbathing chair, making sure to stay out of the blinding midday sun. I remember quite clearly that I looked at my watch before I opened my crispy new hardback. It read 12.05.
The same watch read 03.23 when I closed book, having read continuously through the day and into the night, only stopping to grab new beers and a warm pizza in between my intense concentration. The book itself is just over 600 pages long, which normally means that I could finish it in just over six hours if I really tried to tear through it (not hard math, really). However, I decided that since this was the last new Harry Potter ever, I would take my time and enjoy the experience.
Two things buzzed around in my head while I sat in my chair, sipping beer. One was that I should really cut down on this alcoholic beverages or I would end up not remembering anything about the book. The other thing was a dawning realization that Harry Potter no longer was the Greatest Book Series Which I Love Endlessly and Without Fault. The Deathly Hallows was in fact a very mediocre book!
This might sound like a very simple minded thing to realize, but you have to keep in mind that this series and I have a special relationship which I won’t share with any other book ever again. I grew up with Harry and Ron and Hermoine. I grew up while attending Hogwarts, a silent observer of the characters lives, the magic of this unreal world and all the possibilities it opened up in my mind. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I lay in my bed with a firm knowledge that an owl from Hogwarts would arrive any minute, or maybe from some other Scandinavian wizarding school. Somewhere inside that little child remains, telling me that magic really exists and all I have to do is to open my eyes, expand my horizons and see the unseen. I hope I’ll always keep that silent faith, because when it goes away I know that my childhood have finally come to an end…
That’s the reason why I don’t blame myself for not noticing what a mediocre writer J.K. Rowling really is. Love makes blind, they say, and I really do love the story of Harry Potter. But Deathly Hallows isn’t a great book, and looking back, nor are any of the other books in the series. The Prisoner of Azkaban, book three, is maybe my favourite, but I’ll have to do yet another re-read to be certain.
Now don’t all you Potheads go crazy on me and start calling me cynical bastard - I still count myself one you. It’s just that I have read so many better books since the last Harry Potter installment. I was even reading a better book before and after I read The Deathly Hallows. I’m remiss to acknowledge that Rowling’s prose is at points very weak and that both the book and the series have become sadly repetitive and easy to see through. Even the final plot that was supposed to sweep us off our feet felt like the author was cheating. A good author would have dropped hints about a lot of this stuff early on. Imagine, if you will, Neil Gaiman as the author. He would have taken Harry Potter to unimaginable heights. Rowling doesn’t reach Gaiman to his ankles in a technical study, but she had a brilliant idea at a time that every teenager and child was growing cynical and losing faith in the idea of Magic. Harry Potter became the modern version of a fairy tale, making adults and youths alike imagining a world much like our own, but flavored with something of the extraordinary. The news station report daily of mass murders, war and plague - the sunshine story about the Boy Who Lived was just what everyone needed.
People keep crying about how sad it is that we’ll never get another book about Harry. I find myself somewhat relieved. I grew up with him and we both went our different ways at the age of seventeen. I’m happy to close that chapter of my life and walk away with a smile on my face. We had some good times together, now its over.
I’m glad. I’ve got better books to read.
Posts
What you’re saying, about HP being the first fantasy (or even the first more or less adult literature) one’s introduced to, might explain a lot of people’s relationship to these books. I quite loved the first three, but I didn’t start reading the series ’til all the first three were already released (and that in Norwegian), ’cause it just looked plain silly to me. I’d been reading fantasy for… I guess at least four years at that point, probably more, and while the books were entertaining enough, never, ever did they blow me away. The world struck me as simplistic and childish, at that point in time I think I’d probably called it the least impressive fantasy world I’d read anything out of. The prose was fast-paced, at least in the first three books it felt like that to me, and captivating, but it never felt extraordinary. Nor did the characters. The four only characters I remember to this day with some fondness (I’ve read the first four books, so you know what basis I’m saying this from) is Hagrid (not a very original character but maybe the one with the most depth that I can remember from this particular series), Snape (who’d be the possible tie in the depth-department, and slightly more original, to my great joy. Was thrilled to find Rickman would portray him in the movies, I recall), Lupus and obviously Dumbledore. I also liked Sirius and Malfoy Sr. a good bit back then, but all these are sadly stereotypical and flat characters (though for all I know they could be deeply fleshed out in subsequent books) The Big Bad himself was never interesting at all, save in his incarnation as his younger self in the journal Harry finds in the second book. Nor were really any of the three main characters remotely exciting beyond the “Adequate protagonist material”-level. Hands down, though, I did enjoy the books, and I probably will finish this series at some point.
The reason I went off on this ramble, anyway, was that you made me realize, I read the books too late in my reading-process. When you’ve read, I guess at that point, five books in WoT, a handful in SoT, everything Tolkien wrote on Middle-Earth more or less, The Solitaire-mystery and Sofie’s World, the Chronicles of Narnia, half the first Deverry-cycle, all of the Belgariad, the Riftwar Trilogy, a couple of Thomas Covenant-books and a bunch of Verne and Dumas a handful of times each, there is nothing about Hogwarts and its world that seem remotely original or extraordinarily interesting. If anything, the world struck me as kind of cheesy, much like Artemis Fowl’s world would some years later. And the writing, as you say, isn’t all that, though to my young eyes at least it was far from weak, that must be said.
So I’ve never been able to resummon the first spike of interest I had in the series all those years ago for the much-needed reread I have to do before I can keep up reading it. And even if I could, it wouldn’t be prioritixzed over catching up on Malazan, Sword of Truth, Deverry, Midkemia, or even Wheel of Time. Nor would I put it above reading, say, more Gaiman or giving authors like Robin Hobb or your much-pimped Lynch a shot.
Thus my conundrum. I seem doomed to forever be stuck in a HP-limbo where I want to read the rest of the series, I just don’t want it enough to actually do so.
Thanks very much for making me feel slightly better about never getting around to it with this post of yours.
Sincerely,
Loki
27. July 2007 @ 21:58 ( Permalink )
First off I gotta say that I’m relieved that you finally commented on a post on mine with out nitpicking it to pieces. Change is nice, you know
I’m glad I could be of some assistance. Me myself plan to reread them when I have kids of my own (sometime way off into the future). Maybe you should consider the same… However, parental puns aside, I agree completely that there are countless series that are a better fit for you and that you should have no shame whatsoever in putting HP off (which you don’t).
I would have posted this on your blog, but you server monkeys keep blocking me! It’s infuriating, it is!
28. July 2007 @ 12:46 ( Permalink )
“First off I gotta say that I’m relieved that you finally commented on a post on mine with out nitpicking it to pieces. Change is nice, you know :P”
Sorry, I don’t just do that to you, though. ;P
The server monkeys do that to me too sometimes. They go away after a wee bit, it’s just opera’s pages being crappy.
And no, I’m not feeling shame. Slight amount of irritation, though. I’d really like to be able to say my piece on these books, seeing as everyone is constantly comparing everything to them and talking sky-high about them, and I don’t really feel like I am as long as I only read the first four and only have more than vague memories of the first three (which I’ve at least reread once or twice). I mean, everyone reads’em. JOSS reads’em, for crying out loud. Joss called “Veronica Mars” the “Harry Potter of TV-shows”. And I’m, like, this is one of the finest storytelling minds I know of saying this, comparing one of my favourite shows to these books. I should’ve read them, if nothing else than to know why he thinks this even though I probably don’t.
And no, I’m not saying I want to read’em just ’cause Mr. Whedon does. I’m not insane. I’m just saying tons of people whose opinion I respect do, and it bugs me not feeling able to fully make my own opinion on the stuff they say about them.
28. July 2007 @ 16:02 ( Permalink )
I imagine it would. That’s kinda like me not being able to criticize Terry Goodkind since I’ve only read book 1 and 2.
28. July 2007 @ 22:02 ( Permalink )
Well, take it from me, book 1 and 2 are among his best (not necessarily THE best, but they give a good hint to his better levels of quality), so, if you don’t like those…
29. July 2007 @ 05:00 ( Permalink )
WARNING! SPOILERS GALORE!
I’ve never bothered to be critical or cynical about Harry Potter. I love the books, so why the fuck would I ruin that love by looking closer at the quality of the thing?
As for the quality, I do disagree with you on a lot of points. I’ve never found Rowling’s prose to be particularly bad — although PS shows rather strong signs of having been edited quite thoroughly, making the prose in it a lot less rich than it is in her later works — rather quite the contrary. She writes in a very describing manner, and while she takes the time to point out the weird little details, she never allows this to derail her from what she’s really talking about.
And sure. Gaiman is a better writer, but come on! Gaiman is among the best in the whole fucking genre! But compared to the weak, thin, sickeningly horrenduous prose in most other children’s literature (and HP is literature predominantly for children and youths, no matter how many adults love the series) I’ve read, Rowling is a real treat. In fact, I can hardly come up with fantasy writers beyond Gaiman whose prose I perfer to Rowling’s. There’s Martin and Erikson, of course. Vance. Maybe Pratchett, although his exaggerations and desperate attempts at always being fun can make his books tiresome to read some times. Tolkien at his best is better. But no matter how many of these I mention, they all have one thing in common: They’re all cream of the crop of our little genre.
As for your claims about TDH being predictable, I have problems understanding your meaning. Sure, she constantly dropped hints of the Wand and all that throughout the book, and the bit about love and self-sacrifice being the only ward against the Avada Kedavra curse has been a part of the Potter ‘verse since book one, but… I didn’t really have anything against the ending.
I’ve seen some people complaining about her not killing Harry or Hermione or Ron, but these people — whose arguments for this seems to be noting but variations over the theme “it’d be different!” — I don’t understand at all. Why should she kill them? Unless she’d killed any of them a couple of book ago, no character killings would have “reminded readers that characters die, too” or some such. So it wouldn’t have made the book more unpredictable, either. And the way she killed Harry, and then had him brought back to life because so many people had laid down their lives for him, was more different (although far from original; the resurrection twist is a time-honoured one within our genre) than it’d been if she’d merely killed him. And if you want to have main characters killed just for the thrill of it, pick up horror instead…
As for your claims about the plots getting repetitive, how? Sure, the way she almost always throws in an unpredictable twist at the end might seem a bit formulaic, and the way almost every book is structured around a Hogwarths school year give them all a fairly similar progression, with things staring out kinda mellow before things get more and more tense the closer you get to June — both these elements can seem repetitive. But that is, in my humble opinion (as always), repetitive only if you strip off the details and look at the essence of the books. And even then I think it’s something of a far jump to conclude that the series is repetitive, as TOotP deviates from the twist device, and TDH at least partly deviates from the structure thing.
Just to finish, I have to emphasise that I don’t think Rowling is perfect, of course. For example, although I love her characters, I have no problems admitting that I find some of them to be uninteresting at times. (Although the character interaction, in spite of this, is top notch.)
I just felt the need to formulate some opposition to your views of the series and on Rowling’s skills as a writer — mostly for my own sake. Because while I don’t think she’s among the greatest, she is great.
Oh, and my condolences. I really pity you for having “outgrown” Harry Potter… :\
29. July 2007 @ 23:52 ( Permalink )
Much love remains between me and Harry and while I may profess to have “outgrown” him, I still recognize a lot the things you comment on. If you’d tried to delve my purpose behind this post, you’d find that it isn’t there to be a sharp critique of the series nor of the latest book. I know it’s labeled “speculative book review”, but I wrote it as a personal send off to one of the greatest reading experiences I’ll ever have. It’s a piece about my own growth alongside the series and it’s about what Harry meant to me. In order to justify this, I had to throw in some comments on the latest book - which really is mediocre compared to anything by Lynch, Erikson, and Gaiman and maybe also Priest - to make a compelling argument.
As for the series being repetitive, you found half my argument why I mean it is so. However, the second half is much more important to me: The Harry Potter series are both structurally AND thematic repetitive.Harry suffers the much of the same qualms through every book (tedious), Hermione fights the same battles with herself and Ron has never grown out of being nr. 2 to Harry.
Rowling gives away the same messages with every book and every book has much, naturally, of the same emotional impacts as the previous ones. That’s anyway how I feel after having finished the series.
P.S: you’re little Loki imitation at the end of the post really lacked in snark and was also the tinniest bit unoriginal. You should leave that stuff up to the professionals
30. July 2007 @ 11:57 ( Permalink )
Just for the record, fantasy-authors I’ve read that I think write noticably better than the books I’ve read by Rowling, on the top of my head:
Martin, Erikson, Feist, Gaiman, Kerr, Moon, Tolkien, and possibly Goodkind, Brooks, Colfer and Jordan. They’re certainly not far behind if they are behind, anyway. Which would be about half the number of fantasy-authors I’ve read mentionable amounts of, I guess, placing Rowling as a rather mediocre one. A mediocre one among the ones I’ve found good enough to actually read, true, which is probably far better than the average fantasy author period, but that’s OBVIOUS, dude. She’s the most famous authour in the genre second to Tolkien, she WILL be compared to the cream of the bunch, and fact of the matter is, when that is done, she falls somewhat short.
As for seeing her books as children’s fantasy, I’d still recommend Artemis Fowl, the Belgariad or Narnia any day of the week. But I am very much willing to concede there being a rather good chance I’d change my mind on some of that if I’d read beyond the fourth book.
30. July 2007 @ 12:04 ( Permalink )
“P.S: you’re little Loki imitation at the end of the post really lacked in snark and was also the tinniest bit unoriginal. You should leave that stuff up to the professionals ;)”
Funny how the one post of yours I didn’t try picking to death was the one post Terje decided to try doing just that with, eh? XD
30. July 2007 @ 12:07 ( Permalink )
“Much love remains between me and Harry and while I may profess to have “outgrown” him, I still recognize a lot the things you comment on. If you’d tried to delve my purpose behind this post, you’d find that it isn’t there to be a sharp critique of the series nor of the latest book.”
Yeah, I noticed, and I apologise if you, in turn, read my comment as anything resembling a critique of you; it’s just that I’ve read too many dereogative comments on Rowling in the past week or so, and I needed to vent a bit. This was probably not the place, but hey. I can’t be perfect all the time, you know.
“which really is mediocre compared to anything by Lynch, Erikson, and Gaiman”
I won’t argue about her status compared to Erikson or Gaiman, but as for Lynch, I reserve the right to stay skeptical until I’ve read a few books more by him. RSURS reduced my fear of TLOLL being just a stroke o luck, but it didn’t dissuade them entirely.
“As for the series being repetitive, you found half my argument why I mean it is so. However, the second half is much more important to me: The Harry Potter series are both structurally AND thematic repetitive.Harry suffers the much of the same qualms through every book (tedious), Hermione fights the same battles with herself and Ron has never grown out of being nr. 2 to Harry.”
Hardly any arguments here; even though I seem to recall some nuances to Harry’s qualms, Hermione’s battles and Ron’s issues, the fact that I don’t recall them very well would indicate that they’re not too prominent.
“Rowling gives away the same messages with every book and every book has much, naturally, of the same emotional impacts as the previous ones. That’s anyway how I feel after having finished the series.”
Again, I remember it as a bit more nuanced than this, but it’s been a year and a half since the last time I read much HP, and my memory for these kinda of things really suck.
“P.S: you’re little Loki imitation at the end of the post really lacked in snark and was also the tinniest bit unoriginal. You should leave that stuff up to the professionals”
Seeing as it was never intended as anything even resembling a “Loki imitation”, and didn’t have even the slightest snark to it (quite the contrary; I meant what I said, and it was very much heart-felt), I feel forced to return that last sentence.
“Martin, Erikson, Feist, Gaiman, Kerr, Moon, Tolkien, and possibly Goodkind, Brooks, Colfer and Jordan.”
Agree about Martin, Erikson, Gaiman, Tolkien and Kerr. Dubious about Feist (although I’m open to being wrong; I’ve only read The Riftwar Saga, after all) and Goodkind (this might just be out of habit, though; at least Goodkind might have slightly more varied themes). Disagree about Jordan. At least when it comes to plot dispositions, charcter intreaction and language, while he beats her at world building and realism, and they’re about tied when it comes to characters and something I seem to have temporarly forgotten. It probably wasn’t important.
“she WILL be compared to the cream of the bunch, and fact of the matter is, when that is done, she falls somewhat short.”
No arguments there, although I seem to rate her a few notches higher than you do, and thus also compares her more favourably to those authors I see as mediocre.
“As for seeing her books as children’s fantasy, I’d still recommend Artemis Fowl, the Belgariad or Narnia any day of the week.”
I’ve only read “Narnia” of these, and I absolutely abhor Narnia; The Last Battle was perhaps the most disgusting piece of children’s literature I’ve ever read. But that has to do with Lewis’ old-fashined moralism, which not all children might recognise. And the rest of the series is okay.
“Funny how the one post of yours I didn’t try picking to death was the one post Terje decided to try doing just that with, eh?”
Ah, again, no real attempt at picking anything to death. However, even if that might not have been my intention, I see how my comment might be read as such.
31. July 2007 @ 00:03 ( Permalink )
Oh, cheer up, old bugger, I never thought you attempted picking anything at all to death. I just found it amusing that the one time he seemed to get away with a post without a fight from me and made a big deal out of this, you stepped in to gainsay him on it instead.
You really should read the Belgariad, if nothing else than to be able to laugh at the witticisms. The characters are basically divided in three types, all of them dreadfully flat and stereotypical (though it must be said, it’s a rather oldish series written in the early eighties, it wasn’t quite as normative back then as it is now, I think), namely the fun ones, the boring ones, and the outright annoying ones. Luckily, there’s enough fun ones to keep (at least me) going, and he’s got a much smaller percentage of annoying characters than, say, Jordan, even if Jordan’s interesting ones actually do hold some depth which Eddings’ characters, even his good ones, lack.
The plot is very stereotypical and recpie-like, but while both this and the stereotypical cast of characters becomes embarrasingly obvious when you read more than one series by the guy, as long as you only read the one, it’s not that noticable. After all, tons and tons of fantasy literature use the same tropes. And seeing as I on top of all of this would recommend this series primarily to young readers, the stereotypes become less of a problem, as they’d be less bothered by them, not being that accustomed to the tropes of the genre yet.
If nothing else, I’d like you to read the series just so I could hear what you thought of it. It was easily my favourite fantasy second only to Tolkien for a good many years, and I severely doubt anything can ever dissuade me from recommending it enthusiastically, even if everything the man’s published since is rehashes of it. (If there’d been more than one book of Goodkind available in Norwegian, though, he could have beaten Eddings out, ’cause I really loved WFR too, it was just too short to compare favourable to an entire series.)
As for Narnia, I don’t mind Lewis’ moralism in the same way I don’t mind Goodkind’s moralism, as long as they keep it from getting boring and preachy. Admittedly, “The Last Battle” IS a little disturbing, but I haven’t reread it in years, so I won’t comment on it beyond that I liked it the last time I read it despite of this.
31. July 2007 @ 03:25 ( Permalink )
I’ve always meant to read some Eddings — in the same way that I’ve always meant to read some Brooks — but back in the days when I still loaned books from libraries, I always found the editions they had as being confusingly organised, and so I never read them. Which is funny, really, as the organisation of The Wheel of Time books were even stranger back then.
And as The Belgariad and Shannara sounds like the archetypical fantasy stereotypes, it’s a shame not having read it… :\
Oh, and I don’t sound cheerful? Bugger.
31. July 2007 @ 03:59 ( Permalink )
The thing with Shannara is, it starts out as that, but the series and the world has spawned so many books by now (and the author’s not THAT unoriginal) I do believe that saying all of it is stereotypical is taking it a bit too far.
Belgariad is a very quick read, though. Five books, and if you get the order confused, they’re named after chess-expressions. (Pawn of Prophecy benig the first one, then Queen of Sorcery, Magician’s Gambit, Castle of Wizardry and finally Enchanter’s End Game)
31. July 2007 @ 13:19 ( Permalink )
@Terje: That’s all right, then. I can relate to venting some steam - I work at a gas station (steam, gas, get it?) and I never get to tell my customers to show the damned sausage up their you-know-what, how should I know you wanted fries with it if you didn’t say so??
ARGH!!
There’s a reason why Statoil equip their station with nothing but plastic forks to eat with…
As for who the question of who writes better than Rowling, my list goes like this: Priest, Gaiman, Bakker, Erikson, Lynch (Both Lies and Red Seas are better than anything Rowling has done so he gets a vote anyway you look at it) Tolkien, and maybe Martin. If Dance with Dragons get better rec’s than Feast I’ll read the rest of Song of Ice and Fire, but for now I remain undecided on his position.
Jordan and Scalzi are about on par with Rowling and I’d rate both Brooks, Eddings and Colfer beneath her (Goodkind way, way beneath her).
31. July 2007 @ 16:29 ( Permalink )
Eddings beneath her, surely. Colfer, yes, a bit. Jordan, possibly. Scalzi I haven’t read. Goodkind is markedly above her, or at least he was last time I read HP, she could have improved vastly since then for all I know. As for Martin, the sheer thought of likening him to Rowling leaves me feeling nauseous, so I will not dignify that with a reply for my own health’s sake.
And am I a spambot? Well and truly, that is my profession, such as it is.
31. July 2007 @ 17:32 ( Permalink )
Oh, and I’d rate Brooks at about the same level as Rowling, but he’s another author I should read more of before making such calls, as I remember his prose as decent, his plots as slightly unoriginal, and his characters as okay on the whole - which is more or less exactly what I remember of Rowling, too.
Totally forgot about him, sorry.
So, am I a spambot? Why, sir, I do believe that is a taaad to private to share with random blog-mechanisms!
31. July 2007 @ 17:35 ( Permalink )
@Lotta: I’d recommend you to postpone your comparison between Bakker and Rowling ’till you’ve read the rest of PoN. His prose fell drastically in quality, I felt, although I’m quite aware I’m just about the only person who doesn’t feel the other way around…
1. August 2007 @ 00:32 ( Permalink )
We’ll see. I’m soon halfway into The Warrior Prophet and it’s pure gold so far ^^
1. August 2007 @ 10:38 ( Permalink )
Oooh, have you come to the battle of Mengedda yet? Best battle scene I’ve ever read, that one. ^^
3. August 2007 @ 11:24 ( Permalink )
Drawing up on the last two hundred pages and expect to finish it sometime tomorrow or Sunday. Awesome battle scenes, in that were agreed, but I would rate many a Steven Erikson battle over them both (especially the big ones in Deadhouse Gates and The Bonehunters).
3. August 2007 @ 18:52 ( Permalink )