"Trouble usually finds me"
Being the third in a series and a review, of sorts, of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Our hero & co. are finally teenagers! Thankfully we don’t get a full frontal assault of the awkward teenage years (hormones, ~feelings, growth spurts) until the next couple books.
Oh Harry. He just can’t control himself sometimes. I wonder if this is where fandom gets the idea that he’s one of the most powerful wizards of his age. Because aside from still having accidental outburst of magic, he doesn’t show any type of genius. Maybe a genius of deciding that action needs to be taken. There is a reason he’s in Gryffindor after all. So he blows up (over-inflates would be a more accurate term, come to think of it) his aunt, fears expulsion, catches a glimpse of dog!Sirius, and takes the Knight Bus to Diagon Alley. At which point it’s reinforced that Harry is Special, and can get away with things no one else could. A classic example of a main canon character being Gary Stu-ish by fandom standards if there ever was one-even if it was explained away by Rowling.
Something that bugs me about the way Rowling writes these first books of the series, is that she pauses to remind us of the backstory. All the time. It’s like she doesn’t trust that we’ve read (and retained) semi-important information from the previous books. I say semi-important because she’s reminding us of things like: Harry is a wizard, he lives with his mean Aunt and Uncle who are non-magical (that's Muggles for all of you playing the home game), they say his parents died in a car accident when it was really the evil overLord Voldemort who killed them, etc. Meanwhile Mundungus Fletcher has been mentioned in passing at least twice already. I am totally on board with the snarking about Rowling only revealing things when she’s good and ready (i.e. it forms a vital plot point of a new development, no matter how much easier said information would have made life in the earlier books. Can’t get in the way of the larger narrative, now can we?).
She’s also been laying the groundwork for the Harry/Ginny ship. At some points it’s none-too-subtle and at others it isn’t actually all that obvious. Also, when did Hermione and Ginny become friends? Is it all the sharing of rooms they tend to do?
With the introduction of Remus Lupin, the plot seriously thickens. Because not only do we have the Harry-Snape hatred, but we have Lupin-Snape begrudging attention/simmering hatred. I can actually see where people get the Lupin/Snape pairing-not that I’d ever abandon my Snarry ship #walkingtheplankforlife #Iwillgodownwiththisship. But there’s something that’s definitely there, from the way Snape tries to be as abrasive as possible, but Lupin is determinedly nice right back, to the reveal of their school-boy … entanglements, let’s say.
And of course we need to talk about Sirius Black-the (supposed) Big Bad of the book. Until we find out he’s been wrongfully imprisoned and Scabbers of all possible characters is actually a, a human in animangi form and b, the real betrayer of James and Lily Potter. I mean, WHAT?! And that scene in the Shrieking Shack, when Pettigrew is turning to each character in succession hoping to find some ally is so disturbing and frightfully well-written. There are some characters Rowling fleshes out with incredible detail, and he is one of them. From what’s been leaked from the Pottermore site, she’s got full backstories for a fair number of characters; it’s too bad she’s kept them fairly one-dimensional for so long.
I don’t think PoA maintains the same level of narrative tension that CoS did. Sure there is the attack on the Fat Lady and the attempted murder of Scabbers once Sirius does manage to get into the Gryffindor dorms. There’s the deal with Buckbeak and Malfoy and there’s always the drama of quidditch (and Harry’s acquisition of a Firebolt), but they don’t seem at all cohesive until the very end, when Dumbledore (Rowling’s favorite agent of plot devices) makes them all connected. And while Harry and Hermione time-traveling is necessary to the end of the book, I do think it robs the book of its thunder a little. There’s this huge emotional resolution to the story when it seems like Sirius will be set free and Harry will get to live with someone who wants to be his family, but then it’s snatched away from us. And if the book had ended there, I think it might’ve been more satisfying. Because by the second time around, you know they’re going to succeed, because you’ve worked it out that time is not strictly linear and that the progression of events happened the way they did because Harry and Hermione, in the future, decided to make them so.
And of course Severus ‘lets slip’ that Lupin is a werewolf. Can’t have that ‘cursed’ position occupied for more than a year. It would throw the plot of the fourth book off.
Pt. IV Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Our hero & co. are finally teenagers! Thankfully we don’t get a full frontal assault of the awkward teenage years (hormones, ~feelings, growth spurts) until the next couple books.
Oh Harry. He just can’t control himself sometimes. I wonder if this is where fandom gets the idea that he’s one of the most powerful wizards of his age. Because aside from still having accidental outburst of magic, he doesn’t show any type of genius. Maybe a genius of deciding that action needs to be taken. There is a reason he’s in Gryffindor after all. So he blows up (over-inflates would be a more accurate term, come to think of it) his aunt, fears expulsion, catches a glimpse of dog!Sirius, and takes the Knight Bus to Diagon Alley. At which point it’s reinforced that Harry is Special, and can get away with things no one else could. A classic example of a main canon character being Gary Stu-ish by fandom standards if there ever was one-even if it was explained away by Rowling.
Something that bugs me about the way Rowling writes these first books of the series, is that she pauses to remind us of the backstory. All the time. It’s like she doesn’t trust that we’ve read (and retained) semi-important information from the previous books. I say semi-important because she’s reminding us of things like: Harry is a wizard, he lives with his mean Aunt and Uncle who are non-magical (that's Muggles for all of you playing the home game), they say his parents died in a car accident when it was really the evil overLord Voldemort who killed them, etc. Meanwhile Mundungus Fletcher has been mentioned in passing at least twice already. I am totally on board with the snarking about Rowling only revealing things when she’s good and ready (i.e. it forms a vital plot point of a new development, no matter how much easier said information would have made life in the earlier books. Can’t get in the way of the larger narrative, now can we?).
She’s also been laying the groundwork for the Harry/Ginny ship. At some points it’s none-too-subtle and at others it isn’t actually all that obvious. Also, when did Hermione and Ginny become friends? Is it all the sharing of rooms they tend to do?
With the introduction of Remus Lupin, the plot seriously thickens. Because not only do we have the Harry-Snape hatred, but we have Lupin-Snape begrudging attention/simmering hatred. I can actually see where people get the Lupin/Snape pairing-not that I’d ever abandon my Snarry ship #walkingtheplankforlife #Iwillgodownwiththisship. But there’s something that’s definitely there, from the way Snape tries to be as abrasive as possible, but Lupin is determinedly nice right back, to the reveal of their school-boy … entanglements, let’s say.
And of course we need to talk about Sirius Black-the (supposed) Big Bad of the book. Until we find out he’s been wrongfully imprisoned and Scabbers of all possible characters is actually a, a human in animangi form and b, the real betrayer of James and Lily Potter. I mean, WHAT?! And that scene in the Shrieking Shack, when Pettigrew is turning to each character in succession hoping to find some ally is so disturbing and frightfully well-written. There are some characters Rowling fleshes out with incredible detail, and he is one of them. From what’s been leaked from the Pottermore site, she’s got full backstories for a fair number of characters; it’s too bad she’s kept them fairly one-dimensional for so long.
I don’t think PoA maintains the same level of narrative tension that CoS did. Sure there is the attack on the Fat Lady and the attempted murder of Scabbers once Sirius does manage to get into the Gryffindor dorms. There’s the deal with Buckbeak and Malfoy and there’s always the drama of quidditch (and Harry’s acquisition of a Firebolt), but they don’t seem at all cohesive until the very end, when Dumbledore (Rowling’s favorite agent of plot devices) makes them all connected. And while Harry and Hermione time-traveling is necessary to the end of the book, I do think it robs the book of its thunder a little. There’s this huge emotional resolution to the story when it seems like Sirius will be set free and Harry will get to live with someone who wants to be his family, but then it’s snatched away from us. And if the book had ended there, I think it might’ve been more satisfying. Because by the second time around, you know they’re going to succeed, because you’ve worked it out that time is not strictly linear and that the progression of events happened the way they did because Harry and Hermione, in the future, decided to make them so.
And of course Severus ‘lets slip’ that Lupin is a werewolf. Can’t have that ‘cursed’ position occupied for more than a year. It would throw the plot of the fourth book off.
Pt. IV Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire