#HARRY POTTER BOOKS HOW TO#
#HARRY POTTER BOOKS SERIES#

#HARRY POTTER BOOKS HOW TO#

Like a skilled chef, Rowling knows how to add just the right ingredients, and just enough seasoning to achieve very distinct flavors, and she lets these play off each other, enriching and defining the experience over time. What’s interesting is that this lively characterization applies not only to the handful of main characters, but to second- and third-tier characters, and even to characters who appear only in flashback. How does she achieve this classic/contemporary feel? I really don’t know. There seemed something Dahlish or Dickensish about her characterization, yet at the same time it feels very original, very modern. Though at first a bit caricature-like, they deepen as the stories deepen, becoming our old friends. Rowling invests each of her characters with a delightful individuality, a vitality in speech, appearance, and behavior that makes them leap off the page as three-dimensional beings. At the end I will briefly address a few of common criticisms.

#HARRY POTTER BOOKS SERIES#

Without plot-spoilers, I offer the reader eight elements that set this series apart from other contemporary fantasy series: characters, gravity, the question of trust, excellent plotting, powerful moments, war and the question of death, the natures of good and evil, and the triumph of agape love. There appears to be only one way to go about it, and that is to attempt to approach the series through some of its most defining themes. On the other hand, so many know the story that a review might seem superfluous.

Naturally, I’ve recently been subjected to many versions of, “Wait! You mean this is the first time you’ve read them all?!”īut how to review a series with so many important secrets and twists, including some, the premature revelation of which could only be justly punished by burning at the stake? Indeed, I am greatly indebted to decades worth of discrete readers who never spoiled the books for me. What an unexpected surprise it was to read all seven for the first time as an adult, and to be dying to discuss this scene or that moment with anyone who would listen. Having read the first three novels in my teens, I somehow put them aside and went on to other things. Rowling’s seven-book Harry Potter series deserves every bit of its historic success, but I was the last person on earth to discover it. Are we surprised that the powers of the purse may have twisted a good thing?Īll that aside, enjoy this review by Mr. Second, our review of Harry Potter does not in any way indicate our views of any related sequels (in book or film form), which some avid Potter fans justifiably view as too dark and explicitly intertwined with the occult. First, we take the books as we find them on the shelf. Editor’s Note: Admittedly, this has become a bit of a controversial series, both because of the books themselves, but also because of the subsequent development of the Harry Potter brand.