Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling. Well, like millions of teenagers around the world, I've spent the last 24 hours reading the new Harry Potter book. This review is really pretty pointless. If you're a Potter fan -- teenager or adult -- you've probably already have this book or will soon. If you aren't a Potter fan, you've spent the last few weeks trying to figure out what the fuss is all about!

I'm really biased here. I do believe that the Potter series is probably the most important book series in the last 100 years. It's done what our high school and college Englishes try so hard to fight -- it's created a generation of readers. Before Rowlings, who'd have ever thought that teenagers in the early 21st century would be lined up at midnight for a book! These kids have learned to love reading and will, in all likelihood, be readers for life. That's an absolutely amazing accomplishment -- Rowling should be sainted!

The book itself definitely isn't the best of the series. Most of the book doesn't have the darkness that made Order of the Phoenix (book 5) so sensational, although the second of the book regains some of that mood. Starting at about the 3/4 mark, this book has better action sequences than some of the past books. In spite of that, this was a great book that I couldn't put down. As I've said in the past, Rowling does not right real children's books. I think that's part of what makes her so popular with teens -- she treats them as sophisticated readers rather than as kids.

There are some good plot twists here. The rumored major character death does occur late in the book and the identity of the "half-blook prince" stays cloaked through most of the book. I won't disclose anything so it doesn't ruin the read. There's a lot of back-story in this book, finally giving us more of the story of how Lord Voldemort, the bad guy, started his life. Because of this, the one warning is that you really need to read the Potter books in order. This holds true for all of them. Each builds on the ones before and they won't make much sense taken out of sequence.