Rowling, JK - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

[oyceter]

I just finished the new Harry Potter... managed to get my hands on it yesterday after someone took pity and lent it to me.

Wow, now I wish I had taken longer to read it. And I'm glad I didn't turn out to be spoiled... I accidently clicked on a cut tag one day and could have sworn it implied Snape was going to die. I amused the boy greatly about my wild speculations too. So when's the next one coming out?

I was greatly proud of my girl Hermione, and of Ron being prefect and winning the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor. And I loved seeing more of Snape's past, and the greying of Harry's dad. Except... the last scene, at the train station, it suddenly occured to me that Lupin's the last of the gang really. And that made me sad.

Still want to see more of Harry's dad and mom and the history thereof. Am very excited about the second war starting. Surprisingly, I didn't think this book was that dark. I mean, they went through dark times, definitely, but they still felt like teenagers to me, worried about lots of things, like school and their love lives, and that made me happy. Actually, it's reminding me more and more of Buffy -- prophecies, seven years worth of series, the juxtaposition of the funny and light and the dark and scary.

Not many deep thoughts right now. Strangely, I found myself more scared and sad at the end of Goblet than in this one. I think because that was the first time Rowling killed off a semi-major character -- you knew that was going to change the series and that no one was really immune anymore. And the bringing back Voldemort scenes in that one were creepy as all hell. I finished that at two in the morning and didn't want to sleep for fear of seeing red eyes in a white face. The prophecy also didn't surprise me that much, I mean, who else in a series called "Harry Potter" would kill Voldemort?

Loved the DA, enjoyed hating Umbridge and the fear of totalitarian governments and the like and censorship and all those real life issues. I also liked the fact that Dumbledore didn't make Hermione look stupid for SPEW and the hints at a better, less racist wizarding world, because the constant laughing at house elves and at Hermione's quest to be nice to them really bugged me -- how could they yell at people for calling Hermione a mudblood and still say house elves were just born to be slaves?

Desperately waiting for the next one now!

Links:
- rilina's review
- my reread

Comments

Houseelves

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I think that was a very important plot point, actually. If you think about it, Kreacher did basically the same thing Dobby did - i.e. went behind the back of his "owner" to warn his "owner's" enemies. And Dumbledore explicitly compares the two and points out it's the status of the houseelves per se which caused this.
(BTW of course since Dumbledore was headmaster of Hogwarts for decades and obviously did not object to being served by houseelves, this makes him something of a hypocrite.)
And then there's the ongoing image of the golden statues forming the well, Harry realizing they are a lie early on...
As Marinarusalka pointed out, each book has darkened the image of the wizard world. In PS, it was the wonderful magic realm Harry escapted into from the misery of his previous life. CoS darkened the picture by showing there was racism (the "Mudblood" term) and slavery (houseelves). Still, only evil characters like the Malfoys were connected to those. Next we got PoA which shows the Ministery employing the Dementors, and shows werewolf Remus experiencing prejudice from the good guys as well as the bad guys. Then, GoF gave us show trials, Aurors licensed to use the Unforgivable Curses during the war against Voldemort, the Minister ignoring death and damage in front of him for utterly selfish reasons, and the fact everyone, not just the Malfoys, was using houseelves, including Hogwarts. OotP is the logical consequence.
It wouldn't surprise me if Harry, like Buffy, ended the series by having abolished every institution in the magical world.

Re: Houseelves

[oyceter]

Reading Marinarusalka's review right now (have finally been able to read all the LJ entries on OotP!), and I very much agree with what she says about the deliberate greying of the HP universe. Many of the things that I greatly disliked about the first and second books -- Harry's occasional arrogance, the obvious prejudices of all the teachers for their houses, Harry and Ron are brave while Hermione is seen as kind of annoying -- are brought up and dealt with in a way that makes me at least think about the unreliability of Harry as a narrator. Of course he sees himself and Ron as not being foolhardy when they rush in and Hermione as being too cautious and annoying in the first book. I love how the books have been showing that Harry isn't necessarily good, that he can be cruel to his best friends because of adolescent angst and that he is often angry and confused.

Which just ties in to the problems of the wizarding world. I hated Umbridge with a passion far greater than I dislike Malfoy or Voldemort because she seemed to represent everything that was wrong in the real world. Government censorship, the incredible banality that evil can take, all the greyness of the Ministry during the first war -- I can see it coming to fore in the two books, and I love it!

Points of view

[selenak.livejournal.com]

This is one of the things I loved about OotP: where we have been told about the Harry/Tom Riddle parallels several times (notably in CoS and GoF), we haven't exactly been shown Harry could go either way. OotP makes it clear being good will always have to be a choice for Harry, not his inevitable destiny. He had the childhood from hell, four years of Evil Overlord pursuit, was alternatingly either celebrated or suspected, patronized and ridiculed by the wizard world which at first seemed to be so seductive an escape from the Muggle world, survived torture and saw a classmate killed in front of him. If he were still well-adjusted, it would be somewhat unnatural. (Though how many "children's books" are that realistic? Or series in general? Again, I have to point to TV and Buffy and Farscape as the only other examples I can think of.) He's not just being a teenager, he's one emotionally scarred kid, quite capable of lashing out at people, and while I always liked him, this book was the first where he became the most interesting character to me.

Harry as unreliable narrator: or at least Harry as extremely subjective narrator, a point made as early as Philospher's Stone, I believe, as Harry himself realizes he misinterpreted quite a lot of what he saw in regards to Snape (and Quirrel). Also, by letting Hermione be right quite often (notably in GoF and OotP) and using her to explain people's motives Rowlings emphasizes the subjectivity of Harry's perspective. (Think, for example, of Hermione correctly interpreting Sirius' behaviour long before Harry can bring himself to see Sirius as flawed.)

Umbridge as the banalty of evil: Oh yes. And definitely the most scary villain because of it. Evil Overlords and their minions carry an aura of pleasant unreality with them, but the Umbridges of this world, and the institutions behind them, are all too real.

Re: Points of view

[oyceter]

I love how Harry is so closely tied together with Voldemort, and how he has to worry about this. And how this makes the reader worry, because obviously the progression of the books shows Harry getting darker and darker, to the point where readers can't just say, oh, he's Harry Potter and shrug it off. Which is why I particularly liked the inclusion of Snape's memory.

Hermione is so right in this book. About pretty much everything.

I hated Umbridge so much that I felt like beating my head against a wall every time she showed up. Although Voldemort scared me greatly at the end of GoF, in this one, he's much more of a shadowy presence, and the main threat of the book comes from Umbridge's presence in Hogwarts and her dismantling of the school, decree by unfair decree. When I was reading the book, I had a lovely vision of an alternate universe in which the Ministry would have become a much greater threat than Voldemort, one in which the wizarding world was ruled like Hogwarts. Must say, though, for the first time, I liked Peeves ;).

HP: 1984

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...that would be a fascinating AU, indeed. And would lead to some interesting alliances, because, see Real Life, some people see "security" as an aim they are happy to trade their civil liberties in for. So Dumbledore or Harry & Co. would find it far harder to recruit allies for the resistance and might be forced to team up with some Dark Wizards.