Is this the first HP book to come out in the lifetime of the Fugee boards? It is, isn't it.

I've been warned that some stories about the book have spoilers even in the headlines. So if you care, um, squint while you read *everything* these final few days.

I won't actually get it until after this weekend, most likely, because we're going off camping far from bookstores starting on Friday. But that's okay... my reread of the first four books is only up to the Prisoner of Azkaban, so I can use the camping weekend to finish the last two books.

Are lots of you planning on getting the book at midnight or otherwise real quick? I'm sort of bummed I won't be taking part in any midnight madness. Ah well, there are two more books yet. At any rate, I'm gonna presume that this thread is spoilery starting on Friday, since most of it is Saturday somewhere in the world. :)

Heh - I think I might be the first Fugee to get through it. I'm doing a review, so the bookshop are - wait for it - handing the book to a courier at 12.01am, which should reach my house by 12.30am. I will have to be in and I daresay I will read a chapter or two before going to bed. It's funny that they are so paranoid about the embargo that they won't even send over the copy of the book any earlier than it goes on sale.

I'm looking forward to it and to finding out what Dumbledore is going to reveal to Harry. Also I expect that we might see a lot of Hagrid going to find the giants. Perhaps Harry, Hermione and Ron will end up going with him somehow. I'm glad to be getting it early and avoiding any hints.

Sadly, I think I'll be a laggard. I do want to read it, but that'll probably be whenever the whim strikes me... or possibly when it comes out in paperback or there are enough copies in the library.

I've pre-ordered from Amazon, so it will depend on how quickly they get the book to me. My sister and I are both here this weekend and will both be desperate to read our copies. We have my brother and brother-in-law lined up to lay some wood flooring and my Mum ready to babysit my nephew. We're all set.

I also pre-ordered it and expect it to arrive on Saturday. I've just finished re-reading book 4 so I'm all ready to find out what's the dilly-o with Dumbledore's plan to bring down Voldemort.

One thing I have realized in re-reading the books so closely together is that if Voldemort would just let go of his whole "must destroy Harry Potter. Ex-ter-mi-nate. Ex-ter-mi-nate" he would be ruling the fiefdom and all us Muggles would be worm food.

Really? But hasn't he always been needing various things before he could get corporeal? And anyway, I suppose if he didn't wipe out Harry, it'd always be a threat that he could come and stop him, until he works out that it's the power of lurve which broke the spell.

So apparently JK Rowling in her interview with Jeremy Paxman reveals

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someone's going to diiiiiiiiieeee. A major character. Bets? I can only think Dumbledore, in Gandalfian stylee.

Idiotic article saying the Potter books are madly right-wing.

It's quite sweet seeing you all get excited about the new book.

I read the first one on the train back home on Monday, courtesy of Leeb loaning me the ones she had. It's rather good. However, I shan't be rushing out to get the new book until I've read the others first

I'm the same H, I've only read the first two - after seeing the movies - so I'm in no rush to get the new one.

I'll probably wait till it comes out in paperback, too.

I'm not really sure I get the hype about publication date, bookshops opening at midnight, and so on. For films (and to an extent tv shows) which can only be experienced for a limited period (at least communally in a cinema) I understand it, but for a book which can just as easily be picked up a decade from now - well, not so much.

But then I'm not remotely bothered about finding out plot points in advance. (Mind you a couple of years ago I'd've said that anyone who cared enough to avoid spoilers for a tv programme was mad. ;) )

I have read every one since the second in the first week of publication, but it's not so much for spoilers as just that I'm not great at delaying gratification. If I know it's out there and I can afford it, why not get it right away? But I wouldn't be queuing up at midnight if it weren't for the circs this time.

It makes more sense to me than those crazies (in the nicest possible way of course just in case one or more of those crazies lives here) who queued up at midnight to get Windows 95. It's an Operating System!

I'll be waiting until one of my firends gets it and reads it and then passes it on, which is what I've done with all of the other ones.

Or for the Star Wars legos...

Heh, I just noticed the sub-title of this topic. Heh.

Mmm, fair point about not wanting to delay gratification. I am like that about a couple of authors—although I prefer paperbacks I’ll find myself eyeing up their new hardback novels in shops a couple of times then will be unable to resist. Oryx and Crake was the last one I just couldn’t wait for. And I suppose there is a bit of a communal aspect to buying a book around its release date; I certainly enjoyed reading all the reviews of O&C just as I was finishing it.

Yet again I’ve totally demolished my own argument.

The other factor is that HP is so discounted that it's not as if you're saving that much by waiting for the paperback. Most places it's only £8.99 anyway.

I think I'm going to steer clear of any book store tomorrow. You'd think that the worlds greatest book that you have to buy or you will die is coming out tomorrow. Promotion Mania.

There was a half-hour interview with JK Rowling on TV here last night, for some reason conducted by Jeremy Paxman who, non-British people, is the country's foremost and toughest political interviewer, known for hammering his interviewees (he once asked the same question 13 times because the politician was wriggling out of answering). I don't know when I've ever seen anything so funny as Paxo asking if Hermione was going to get off with Draco or why Voldemort had it in for Harry's parents. JK didn't give too much away but, thankfully, Paxo didn't do his usual hardline "Oh, answer the question minister!"

However, she did hint at some things.

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This book apparently has a lot more about what's really going on with Snape. It sounds like there's something that would involve humungous special effects in a film version - giants? A battle? Harry is going to be angrier. Someone'd definitely dying, she's known all along who so it's someone we already know well and apparently there are clues in earlier books. There will be a new female Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, but it's not Fleur. She hinted that the series might end after seven books because Harry might not survive, but I don't believe that for a minute.

Interestingly, she says she goes online and enjoys reading people's speculation and even fanfic. She says there's one big thing no one has guessed, though some people have come worryingly close, but it's crucial to explaining the whole story.

A Canadian court ruled that a newspaper couldn't publish an early review of the new book. To me, this is absurd. The newspaper isn't any party to the confidentiality agreements that surround the book. I don't believe for a minute that the review would have harmed sales at all.

Amusing circumstances, though:

I just got an e-mail from Amazon that my book has shipped. Hopefully, I'll get it fairly early. I have a date tomorrow afternoon and evening, and I don't want it sitting in the hall all day where the neighbor kids can mess with it. As it is, I'm going to be thinking about it, when I should be thinking about my date.

I've been doing far too much speculation about it this week.

Voldemort is Harry's father!

Well, now I instantly thought that and dismissed it as far too obvious and having been guessed a million times, because of the Darth Vader thing.

Whoo, Jenelope, by the way!

jenelope: I ordered my book through Barnes & Noble and it's being shipped to me via FedEx so I'm assuming I have to sign for it. According to the tracking info, my book, as of 6:00 a.m. this morning was sitting in Reno, NV. It's supposed to be delivered to me before noon.

I just re-checked my e-mail. It's being sent USPS, so whenever my mail gets here, it will get here. The only thing is, I'm always either gone or shut into my apartment on Saturdays, so I have no idea when my mail arrives. But at least I know it will be in my building and not waiting at the clubhouse or something.

Correction: My package has been set via FedEx and is currently sitting in a facility in Toledo. I bought a copy for my best friend for her birthday and it's arriving via USPS.

Phew. I'm done. That was intense.

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Sirius! Noooo!

Tell me you've not read it already? I bought it today, after much soul-searching. And then the gf nearly bought me it from Tesco.

I'm not even a dozen pages into it yet. Fucking bastard Dudley though.

I'm so bored with Dudley and the Dursleys. Yup, I finished it this morning, wrote my review and buggered off to the carnival. Whee!

Now everybody else, hurry up so I can talk about it.

Okay, Pandrea, I'm done with it. Are you ready?

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I have to admit to being relieved that it was Sirius who died. I mean, if someone had to die, I'm glad it wasn't anyone that I had a huge emotional investment in. I was so worried it was going to be Dumbledore or Hagrid that when Sirius died, I let out a big sigh of relief. I'm not sure JKR played it right, keeping Sirius away from us through most of the book and when he did appear he tended to be surly and unlikeable. Not that he didn't have cause but it almost seemed as if, subconsciously, she was trying to distance us from the character before she offed him. Or maybe it was a deliberate choice to do it that way. I liked the book very much. I liked the overall theme of the book which is that everything is not black and white and it's sometimes hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. That people who believe they are on the side of good can do just as much evil with their fears and their politics as those who knowingly pursue the path of evil. A nice cautionary tale for all of us especially in light of recent world events. Yeah, GWB and Tony Blair, I think she may have been looking your way a little bit while writing this. Okay, maybe that's just wishful thinking. If I had any complaints, it would be that I didn't care that Hagrid didn't show up until something like page 400 and when he did, he kept his distance because of what was going on. That may be because I like Hagrid so much. Overall, I noticed that this book seemed to focus more on the students around them at Hogwarts than the other books did. We were definitely introduced to many more characters and that was something I liked. I'm also sorry to see the Weasley Brothers depart Hogwarts as I have always enjoyed their antics. My only other complaint is that I do wish that Hermoine wasn't always the voice of doom. She was getting on my nerves, after awhile. Even when she was right, it was annoying. Like getting after Harry about using the Floo network to talk to Sirius (Ah, Harry, if only you'd opened up that little package your uncle had shoved in your hand after Christmas break, things would be different). I am extremely glad to see Malfoy got some comeuppance what with his dad finally be outed. And I liked how we were made to see that Snape's extreme dislike of Harry was based in something real and not just the fact that he was jealous of his father's popularity. I also like that she tarnished James Potter's reputation a little bit. It's a rite of passage, isn't it, to realize that your parents are human and I think it's more difficult when your parents die when you're at a young age. One of the things I'm wondering though is whether there is any relevance to the fact that Voldemort marked Harry who is half Muggle. And it's interesting that the person who saved Harry was a Mudblood, considering Voldemort's extreme dislike of them. Overall, I think she did a good job of setting up the conflict for book 6. She also managed to end on a upbeat note (the Order of Phoenix delivering the smackdown on the Dursleys) despite the doom and gloom of most of the book. And if I could be anyone in this book it would be Tots (is that the name). To be able to change your appearance whenever you felt like just seems like so much fun.

This is the first HP book I've read since the movies have been released and I have to admit that while reading this book, I did find myself wondering, occasionally, how the FX guys were going to pull some stuff off.

Yay!

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Tonks is the cool hair-changing woman, I liked her a lot (they had the same gimmick in Andromeda, though). I don't mind Hagrid, but I didn't miss him and wasn't especially interested in his sub-plot. I had been hoping that we'd see Harry & co go looking for the giants with him, so I guess I was a bit disappointed. It was good seeing the other students and getting more a sense of their personalities. I like Ginny, Luna and Ernie a lot. This book is very much more of the same, isn't it? Which is not a bad thing, but there were places where the formula was wearing thin for me. Like, oh here's Harry being hard done to by the Dursleys again, here's the pre-Hogwarts adventure, etc. However, what I really liked was that Harry was feeling the same: moody, bad-tempered and feeling fed-up about his life consisting of long stretches of being misunderstood and wrongly accused, interspersed with having to bravely fight evil and save the day. A nice metaphor for the regular frustration and powerlessness most teenagers feel. I expect him to start listening to the wizarding world’s equivalent of Limp Bizkit or Slipknot any day now. The book was definitely too long and I think Rowling has just got so famous and untouchable that they're reluctant to get an editor in. I was glad that the 'big death' wasn't an anti-climax or a cheat. Before reading I thought it would be Dumbledore; through most of this book I thought Neville (who is a great character), because of seeing his parents and the mention of how he was doing so well at Dark Arts lessons. Though I also had a moment where I thought, well, she's going to have to get rid of Boring Cho somehow since she's obviously not around for the long haul, so maybe it'll be her. Then Neville was left facing off with Harry against the bad guys, so I thought I was right after all. So, when Sirius died, I was mostly relieved it wasn't Neville, though it was sad. I guess I liked him more in the previous books though, so I didn't mind too much. I don't know if it was deliberate, except possibly to mirror Harry's own surliness. I felt it was a bit unfair for Dumbledore to blame Sirius for his own death because he wasn't nice to his horrible house-elf. You really get a sense of JKR's personality with these books. She HATES the press and she obviously doesn't like bureaucracy either. The stuff with stupid Fudge & co not taking the Voldemort stuff seriously works quite well as an appeasement allegory but also for kids as the kind of rules and regulations they get controlled by all the time. Overall I thought this one was important to the ongoing story less for its plot, which doesn’t really move things on much, than for the way it shows Harry growing up into someone who will have a choice to make, who could become a great hero – or who could blow it completely. I love that Neville was a Potential. I'm not sure what the significance of Harry being half-Muggle is, but it is intriguing, as is the idea that James wasn't all that nice. Hey - maybe Snape is Harry's real father ... heh. Poor Snape. He's going to turn out to be the biggest hero of the lot, I've always thought. Maybe he'll sacrifice himself in the end in a 'far, far better thing I do' mode.

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Snape better not die before the last book because I love Alan Rickman's portrayal of the character. I agree with you that this book was somewhat formulaic but I did enjoy that she took the time out to flesh out quite a few characters: Ginny, Nelville, and even Snape. Nelville rocks and that scene in the hospital where he takes the gum wrapper from his Mom and slips it in his pocket is heartbreaking. Of all the Death Eaters that I wanted punished, it was Beatrice simply because of what she had done to Nelville's parents. Also, besides being introduced to more characters, we've seen a lot more of the Wizard world, haven't we? More of their institutions, anyways. I do have to give JKR credit for her imagination. She has created a completely new world and it's vibrant and real. I also like when she takes something we're familiar with and adds a new twist to it. Like the fact that there are creatures pulling the sleighs that take the students to Hogwarts, it's just that Harry couldn't see them yet, so we couldn't see them. The Hagrid story could have just been lifted out of the book and it would not have made a bloody bit of difference. I just wonder if JKR doesn't have plans for Hagrid's half-brother in another book. I kind of feel the same way about Tonks. Not much use in this book but we've been introduced to her and next time around she'll have something more interesting to do. I have to admit that I never get tired of the Wizards trying to dress like Muggles. I love the crazy combinations they manage to come up with. Also, Dobby continues to get cuter and cuter. His love of clothes is very real. It's similar to the way a person who has been starved never stops hoarding food.

So, for those of us avoiding the spoiler tags, what was your overall verdict? How did it stand up to your expectations, and to the previous books?

I enjoyed it. It had some flaws but overall I thought it was one of the better books. Certain characters are fleshed out more and we get a more adult vision of the world which seems appropriate given that the main characters are aging. It's a darker book than the previous ones but there is enough comedic scenes that it's not the literary equivalent of a dirge.

If you liked the others, you'll like this one, I think. It's more of the same, with all the good and bad things that implies. The character development is particularly good, although the plot isn't all that. Too long though!

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Yeah, poor Neville. I like that there have been hints about him being brave before - in book two (?) when he tried to stop them charging off and got Petrified, for instance. The woman who did his parents is Bellatrix - all Sirius' family seem to be named after constellations, for some reason. I'm sure that the giant-boy will be back too and maybe manage to persuade the other giants to help as well. Giants are pretty rubbish, though, aren't they? I must say, I can't quite get my head around the, uh, logistics of human/giant mating. I can take Dobby in small measures. It's good that Hermione's campaign for the house elves seems to be getting vindicated, as I didn't like her being mocked for it. She might not be handling it the right way but she's the only one making an effort. Am I way off to think of doing a Potter Bk 5/Buffy S5 comparison, given their bad mood and loss of a parental figure?

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I have to admit to also being a little perplexed by Giant/Human mating. When it came around in the fourth book, I was all "Hmmm. How could that possibly work? Maybe it's only Giant/Wizard mating and the wizard uses magic to become a Giant or to make the Giant more human size. The main problem I have is why a human would want to mate with a Giant. They don't seem that physically appealing do they? Yeah, I've probably thought about this too much. In thinking about this book last night I realized that JKR employed a technique that I really dislike and that's finding silly ways to keep characters from communicating with each other so that the plot goes in a certain way. The fact that Harry wouldn't tell Dumbledore about the scar hurting or that Snape had discontinued their lessons because he was in a snit. You'd think that Harry would know better than to do that given the consequences of keeping information from Dumbledore in previous books. And, although I was also annoyed at Dumbledore for avoiding Harry, at least a somewhat plausible explanation was given for that. I don't mind a comparison between Book 5 Harry and Season 5 Buffy so long as you don't have Harry sleeping with Draco Malfoy as a form of self-loathing.

Well, I’m kind of embarrassed. Despite all my denials last week, I actually did buy HP on Saturday—I was out looking for other books, honest, and it sort of fell into my basket. In fact I came home with 8 books: 6 from the library and 2 from the bookshop. And which one did I pick up first? Yup, you guessed it.

I thought the book was okay. It did what I expected—workmanlike prose, gripping plot, great character names, impressive imaginative flights. I’m still not quite sure what sets Harry Potter apart from the many other similar books; it can’t all be marketing hype given that the first book basically took off through word of mouth, but I can’t put my finger on what it is that elevates it over, say, A Wizard of Earthsea or even Mallory Towers. It was definitely the marketing that sucked me in, though.

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Now if I was a 14 year old Potter fan, you know what I’d be annoyed about? That the well-trailed snog was totally asterisked over! Think of all the inexperienced teens out there who were desperate for some instruction. I thought that was a bit of a cop out, to be honest. I enjoyed seeing Harry considerably more grown-up in this novel (though to my recall most of my teenage sulks and tantrums were around 13/14 rather than 15). Although he’s an everyman hero, he’s not remotely perfect and makes some serious misjudgements. I liked that, ditto his discovery that his parents weren’t perfect. Ginny’s clearly growing up too, though I wasn’t sure how much Ron and Hermione demonstrated increased maturity, apart from Ron’s being taller. I also liked the thestrals, the idea that our view of the world is changed, literally, by the things we’ve experienced. I wasn’t hugely impressed by the theme of the novel, though. Totalitarianism, censorship and repression are bad, check. But the depiction of Umbridge taking over the school just seemed so simplistic (I suppose this is an unfair criticism to level at a children’s book, though). What were her motivations? Why did Percy choose Fudge over his family? The wizard world doesn’t seem to be a very competent democracy, and I was distracted by wondering who appointed the Minister, and how, and what powers he had to impose laws. I kind of objected to Harry having no insight whatever into Cho Chan and having to have it all explained to him by Hermione. Generally he’s reasonably perceptive and the whole “aren’t girls confusing” thing seemed a bit laboured. It also annoys me that quite often the female characters are the “sensible” ones while the male characters are daring and have all the fun. Why should Mrs Weasley be doing all the cooking at HQ? But Ginny seems to be ready to pick up Fred and George’s broomsticks, so to speak, and that mollified me. Sirius’s death didn’t move me particularly but then I dislike dogs intensely. I was just hugely relieved that it wasn’t McGonagal!

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Sirius' death didn't effect me to a large degree because I'd managed to convince myself that it would be one of the kids or professors (and then I thought it might be Mrs. Weasley). I thought for sure it was going to be one of the following characters: Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Snape, McGonagall, Hagrid, or Dumbledore. Considering that nearly all of them were in fairly dangerous situations in the last few chapters, and I spent most of it yelping, "No, Ron!" and "Don't follow him in there, Hermione, that kid's off his rocker!" I ended up actually relieved when it was Sirius. I don't think I could have handled it if it had been one of the kids. I actually thought it was quite believable that Harry couldn't figure out what the hell he was doing with Cho. He's never seemed very perceptive when it comes to women. I wouldn't mind seeing Harry end up with Ginny (and it appears Ron shares my opinion). Ginny is rapidly becoming one of my favorites. Ron and Hermione are already acting like an old married couple. I suspect the JKR has big plans ahead for Grawp, Tonks and Luna. The latter two are quite good new characters, and Grawp could be an interesting story. But, man, those centaurs sure are a bloodthirsty lot, aren't they? I still want to know what they did to Umbridge. Anyway, was it me or did the little chapter illustration of Moody, Lupin and Tonks make them look like comic book heroes? I don't know if they use the Mary Grand Pre illustrations overseas. It seems odd to mention it, but I loved the art direction on this book. I always love looking at the book jackets and doing a kind of "Seek-and-Find" in the illustration. Like, "Oh, look, here's a dementor. And here's Crookshanks. And there's Prongs." But this jacket revealed so little of the story and everything was kind of murky. It really suited the story. One of the things that has always impressed me about these books is that the darkness isn't gratuitous. Bad things happen. People get hurt. People die. It's always treated very seriously and there's always a deeper meaning. You always get a sense that these things happen for a reason. And it's always seemed to me that the books have matured with Harry. It's like the first book was most appropriate to an 11 year old, and now it's aimed at someone in their mid-teens. I like that, but I do wonder about the kids who are younger. So, my Mom seemed a little surprised that I finished the book yesterday evening. I didn't start reading it until 11:00 PM on Saturday. I figure it took about 14 hours, give or take. That doesn't seem that fast does it? I mean, you all finshed it quickly, too.

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“But this jacket revealed so little of the story and everything was kind of murky. It really suited the story.” My take on that was that the cover illustrator hadn’t been allowed to read the book! I can just imagine the editor supplying the title and a description of the fountain and letting them get on with it. Given that they wouldn’t let Braille-transcribers or translators see the novel before publication, I doubt that the illustrator saw it either. Which is quite a disadvantage, IMO—if the book jacket suits the story it’s more by luck than good judgement.

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Wow! You guys do get a vastly different art direction than we do in the States. And adult covers as well. What's up with that? The Bloomsbury edition has a much more classically "book" feel to it. The Scholastic edition is much more, well, busy. This is what ours looks like, although the title text is metallic blue. We get the room full of doors on the front cover, and Tonks, Lupin and Moody clustered on the back, with Sirius kind of framed in a door. I think if I were to switch, I would greatly miss the Mary Grande Pre illustrations.

How long should we do spoiler-text for, by the way?

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Cho didn't seem too difficult to understand - just dead boring - but Harry certainly had a lot on his mind and I can see how trying to deal with her giving slightly mixed signals as well was too much. It was a cop out, but then I can imagine lots of boys going 'urrrgh, yucky kissing!' In fact, I bet a lot of them are totally uninterested in the romance parts anyway. The (children's edition) book cover here just showed a golden phoenix and there were no internal illustrations. I would quite like some, just to see what people look like, as long as there was a really good illustrator of course. Somebody as good as Pauline Baynes who did the Narnia books. I shudder to get into this but I'm thinking it's not the humans wanting to get off with the giants but, er, the giants being very persuasive. Ugh. Harry and Draco! Eww. However - I wouldn't be surprised if at some future point they end up having to work together temporarily - maybe Harry will dabble in, not the dark side, as he hates Voldemort far too much, but in a little rebellion.

One of the things that I like about these books is that so many people are reading them. I read a lot and it's rarely the same books as other people have read, or at least not at the same time, so I quite like feeling that everyone's going through the same story, in the same way that you can discuss a film or something. I like that you can now say 'he's a bit Professor Snape' or 'she's a right little Hermione' and a lot of people will get it. I don't know that it elevates them, but it certainly makes reading them a different experience.

What seems odd to me is the way having seen the films altered my reading. When I saw the first film, the one casting that really jarred with me was the Weasley twins, who looked nothing like I had imagined. Now reading The Order of the Phoenix I can’t remember at all what the original twins in my head looked like. Anyone else find that?

I did get a kick out of imagining loads of actors rushing out to buy the book and flicking to the end, hoping upon hope that their character wasn’t going to get killed off …

If I were ever to reread the book, here’s something suggested elsewhere that I’d definitely be looking out for:

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that Sirius and Lupin are a couple.

Whizzed completely over my head—anyone else pick up on it?

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I didn't pick up on Sirius and Lupin. I did see something between Sirius and James. I thought maybe I'd started seeing HoYay everywhere, but someone else said that they noticed it, too. I think Sirius was in love with James, although it might not have been sexual at all. There was just something there.

Guh? Over my head, too.

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I loved that Sirius is sitting there looking effortlessly handsome (in the 'flashback') while James is self-consciously messing with his hair. I think I actually prefer Lupin to Sirius, which is lucky really.

I was thinking something along these lines, as well, picturing the actors not only flipping to the back to see who dies but also reading the book to get an idea of what's going to be expected of them and muttering "She can't be expecting me to do that!"

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Re: Sirius and Lupin being a couple. I think there's a little of that. Lupin is always kind of apologizing for Sirius' snarly behavior and they did go in on a Christmas gift for Harry. It's typical HoYay -- There if you want to see it, invisible if you don't. As for Sirius and James, I thought that were more a matter of Sirius romanticizing the times he and James had because, really, if you look at Sirius' life most of it was pretty awful. He grows up in that nasty house with those nasty people, like Harry and the only good times he has are when he's at Hogwarts. One would assume pretty early in adulthood he spends his time in peril fighting Voldemort and then one good friend dies, another betrays him and he is framed and sent to live at Azkaban for the next ten years. He finally escapes, has about a year of freedom and then is forced to become a prisoner once again in a house he despises. So, I'm not sure it was an idolization of James so much as a yearning to relive the happiest of times through Harry. Poor Sirius.

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Wow, when you put it like that, what a crummy life indeed.

Done! I didn't even start it until late Monday night because I was rereading the other four these last few weeks.

I'd have thought people who didn't want spoilers would just be staying out of the thread. ;-) But if that's not the general expectation....

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I liked it a lot. It was quite the page-turner, and there were several points where I realized my pulse was racing ridiculously in response to the action in the book. Eh. Sirius. I'm glad I didn't hear the "someone will die" until Friday so didn't spend a lot of thought on this one. Had I had to bet on it, I'd have said it was going to be Dumbledore or Hagrid... someone we care about but not one of the kids. So Sirius... I lost most liking for him when he said something like "you're not like your father after all". Though that turned out to be not necessarily an insult at all. I don't think, after book 4, that I can ever *like* Snape, but he certainly remains an interesting character. Ginny certainly got a chance to shine in this book! Regis was afraid she was only being so cool because she was the one who was going to die. The thing I most disliked in this book is how much of the dramatic tension arose from Dumbledore being stupid. I mean really, really stupid. Light-years beyond being rude to a house elf. Because he and the other adults in the Order of the Phoenix *know* that Harry takes matters into his own hands and finds things out and adventures, and yet they decided to keep him ignorant of exactly the thing he most needed to know. Whether or not they told him the whole story, if they'd only said "there's something in the Ministry that only you or Voldemort can retrieve, and he's not walking in there so we need to take good care of you", well, there wouldn't have been a whole lot of there there, would there, now? Keeping Harry out of the prefect role may have been a kindness, but keeping him ignorant was nothing but really enormously stupid and I don't like the characterization of Dumbledore as being that stupid with four years of Harry's exploits to learn from.

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Yes, it was exceedingly dumb. Even I can't fanwank it away, even if his judgement was impaired because 'he has a father's love for the boy' (ahem). However the scene of him talking about how he was going to tell and then this and that happened was touching.

Why don't we say that a week after publication (ie Friday), spoiler tags can come off? Anyone who hasn't read it by then is obviously not that bothered by spoilers or won't come in here.

Finally finished it! Stupid Murphy's Law giving me so much free time when there's nothing to do and then taking it all away when I need it most.

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I agree that no one telling Harry why he needed Occlumency was very troubling, but conversely; Dumbledore's "tragic mistake" of not telling Harry everything early on- what was the big mistake? Not that I don't think he should have told him, but if Dumbledore had told Harry in Book 1 "Voldemort heard a prophecy that you would take him down so he tried to stop it and in effect made it come true, and by the way one of you has to kill the other" how would events following been any different? What massively horrible things happened because Harry didn't know the truth about the prophecy? Am I missing something? Although I enjoyed this one tremendously, I have to say that it's probably the one I'll reread the least. For one thing, Ron is my favorite character, and he's practically invisible. Oh sure, stuff works out for him, finally, but...I dunno, he's like Carpenter Xander. He isn't important to the plot or the other characters, and sure he's got it together a bit, (I can't remember him bitching about being poor at all in this one, which is certainly a sign of growth) but he displayed too few emotions for my taste. Rowling gave him some success, but zero drama. A few halfhearted references to being jealous of Krum, and his adorable reaction to Ginny's dating, and that's pretty much it. Most of the time it was Harry/Hermione doing everything, while Ron was MIA. I kept thinking "Where's Ron to pull Hermione out of the way of crazy giants? Why can't Ron be threatened with a curse and Hermione freak out, or Harry go weak with relief that Ron's ok? Is Harry's Wheezy not the thing he values most anymore? Oh G-d. I think my residual Xander bitterness might be seeping into my feelings about Ron. Considering they're essentially the same person and all. I was glad to see Harry's temper and resentment towards Ron and Hermione calm down for most of the middle of the book, because he was really pissing me off for the first 250 pages or so. I kept wanting Cordelia to pop in to say "Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it, because pretty soon you're not even going to have the friends you've got now." Gosh, I have so much to say and my head is all a jumble.

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Ron is Xander?! But that's ... I mean ... that makes crazy ... sense, actually. Hm. Next you'll be telling me Ben is Glory. I like Ron heaps - aw, Wheezy - and would have been happy with a little more Ronness (Ronity?) but I don't think he was mishandled. Really, both he and Hermione were equally sidelined by Harry's year-long snit, with her involvement in the irrelevant Hagrid storyline seeming, to me, to be a result of Rowling thinking that while at least Ron had Quidditch, Hermione hadn't really done anything else in the book yet except knit elf-hats. I guess the problem was that if Harry had known about it coming down to He Who Shall Not or him, he would have been better prepared for Voldy to come after him? But yeah, I thought the whole revelation was very anti-climatic. Who here, or anywhere, ever thought it was going to come down to anything other than a battle to the death between the two? JK certainly has had her work cut out to postpone it till book seven - it's worse than certain Buffy seasons where the villain sits around twiddling evil thumbs for no reason.

Mkay, so you can't hide a quote in spoiler space. Now I know.

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SNeaker wrote: I agree that no one telling Harry why he needed Occlumency was very troubling, but conversely; Dumbledore's "tragic mistake" of not telling Harry everything early on- what was the big mistake? me: It's not even the Occlumency for me so much as the "there's an artifact Voldemort wants that only you and he can get, so he'll be trying to trick you into getting it for him--watch out!" As far as Dumbledore's speech, I think the point was that 11 was too young, but it's hard for an adult to recognize soon enough, when "too young" is going away, especially when it's going to be a hard thing for the kid to hear.

Yeah, I understand why

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he kept the secret, I just don't get why this turned out to be such a terrible thing. What were the consequences of keeping *that* secret?

Yay! got my copy today. Now to actually reading it!