Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Harry Potters 1-3

I've finished my rereads of Harry Potter through the end of book three, The Prisoner of Azkaban.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehashing them here. I feel like everyone who reads this blog has either already read them or pretty conclusively decided not to. Which is fine.

What I have noticed that's worth commenting on is that narratively Prisoner of Azkaban is the strongest of the first three books which I'm not sure I was properly aware of before. Sorcerer's Stone (book 1) is a cute kids book, but the plot is pretty spare and rushes in places. Chamber of Secrets (book 2) is a solid read but the heir of Slytherin thing was all a little over telegraphed. After the first reading, the plot twists aren't as satisfying which is, of course, the danger or hinging action on a major plot twist.

On the other hand, Prisoner of Azkaban is more thematically layered and simply richer of detail. The characters of Sirrius Black and Remus Lupin are more complex than many of the main characters and Snape finally has a crisis or breaking point. It also seems that the conflicts are more nuanced and that there are more total points of conflict in the book. If book 1 and 2 are good, Azkaban is excellent.

Prisoner of Azkaban is also the last book for the great page bloat begins. Each of the first three books comes in between three and four hundred pages. Goblet of Fire book 4 is over 700. Bigger is not always better.

1 comment:

  1. I think you would like the woodlands series by Lauren Nicole taylor. I binged read them of the the course of five days

    ReplyDelete