Harry Potter Half Blood Prince Review
I ran across this excellent review on slashdot of the newest Harry Potter book. The book doesn’t come out until tomorrow, and what I’m about to quote will undoubtedly give away the essential plot elements…
Something evil threatens Harry. His friends tag along for the adventure. Malfoy is an asshat. Dumbledore says some words of wisdom. Hagrid gets into some form of trouble but comes good in the end. Ron just about cocks up every spell he trys. Hermione is a swat (but kinda cute). Someone tangles with a mythical beast. It’s a fight to the death but Harry and his friends come good in the end - oh and someone is not who they seem to be …hmmmmmm!
Wow. That sounds great!
(The original topic involved the fact that a store in Canada accidentally sold some of the books earlier this week and then got a judge to issue an injunction baring those who bought it from talking about it……how stupid is that?)
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So, do you plan on reading it this time around?
Amazon delivered my copy yesterday and I finished it this morning.
I liked it.
Sure, it’s formulaic, but it’s a formula that works (for me anyway) and at this point the series is like slipping on on old well-worn pair of slippers or something. Very comfortable.
I’ve read all of the books. I just don’t generally care so much that I have to read it right away. I’ve got a copy sitting right in the other room right now, but I probably won’t get aroiund to reading it for at least a couple of weeks. It’s funny though, because I opened it up and the spacing between the lines is HUGE. I just finished reading a hardcover book last week so it stood right out. I looked at the two of them and they seem to have about the same size font, but the HP book only gets 29 lines to a page while the other could fit 40….Of course it’s nice to have a little bit of extra room though
Yeah, the formula works fine. Most series (books, TV, movies sometimes even) follow some sort of formula like that. It’s just funny to look back on the books and see it, that’s all.
I noticed how spaced out it was too. In fact, I think it would have used up hundreds less pages if it had traditional spacing. It was a very, very quick read (even Andrew is getting through it pretty quickly).
As for reading it right away, right about now I don’t have anything better to do…I actually wish it had lasted longer.
I didn’t read any spoilers for this one and was definitely surprised a couple of times. I thought a lot of the book was backstory and mundane details and it didn’t really have a lot of excitement until towards the end (hmm, now that I think of it they are all kinda like that, but I thought this one was particulary slow in parts).
Speaking of hundreds of pages less, I did the math when I counted the lines as well…
29 lines per page (Half Blood Prince)
divided by
40 lines per page (”normal” book)
equals .725 normal pages for each harry potter page
Now multiply that factor by the ~650 pages in HBP and you get
~471 pages if the book had normal spacing.
179 pages is close to hundreds…
Now just for fun, figure out 179 pages multiplied by how many tens of millions of copies and figure out how many trees we’ve wasted…
i thought half-blood prince was pretty good, but it did not talk very much about certain main points. it was not as well written as all the other ones. anyways it was k.
i was really disapointed with the half-blod prince. i thought it sounded rushed and the plot wasn’t as inspiring as the other’s. it sounded corny to me at some points, i found the romance throughout the book made it loose its magic. i didn’t really enjoy it. the climax was not as good as i had hoped it would be.
I actually liked HBP, the whole story and the romance part was cute. JKR hadnt mentioned any romance in particular in her other books but I liked how this one was written. I’m just so sad that Dumbledore died, and i feel like murdering that asshole Snape for being responsible. For some reason though, I dont think Dumbledore is gone just yet, he’s the most powerful wizard, I’m sure there is someway to avoid death in times like these where Tom Riddle is taking over though, right now I would much rather have snape die, or be tortured in some horrific way rather than tom (yes..i kno) but snape was a betrayer, responsible for not only Dumbledores death but also the death of James and Lily, along with (though its indirectly) Sirius. Anyways…before i get too carried away (though I think that ship has already sailed), Im gonna bounce, Later GEEKS!!