Tuesday, July 15, 2003
(SPOILERS FOR HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX)
Currently at page 452. Hagrid is back at Hogwarts, Dumbledore is still playing hard to get, Harry is teaching other students Defense Against the Dark Arts and Professor Umbridge is doing all she can to discredit Harry and covertly take over the school.
Professor Umbridge is being appropriately annoying, though at times comes off more as though Rowling has a bone to pick with OFSTED inspectors in much the same way as the journalist character in Goblet of Fire was there to settle personal scores. The punishment pen was a more genuinely chilling moment.
Draco Malfoy is being inappropriately annoying. He bores me intensely and I wish he'd just corner Harry in the toilets and admit he's crazy about him. The fact that we have yet another book with Malfoy and his goons being nasty to Harry and friends when he's not actually someone that matters results in another couple of dull chapters. And more quidditch... we need new ideas.
I'm still waiting eagerly for the scene promised on the back of the book, which I'm worried isn't going to actually happen until the last chapter. I wonder if the Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons are going to end in a kind of Buffy 'Graduation Day'-style charge at the OWL results announcing. And on the subject of Buffy, I find Harry teaching other students as believable as when it happened in the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Halfway through now I'm interested to see where it's going but I feel there's still an awful lot of padding in this book.
Currently at page 452. Hagrid is back at Hogwarts, Dumbledore is still playing hard to get, Harry is teaching other students Defense Against the Dark Arts and Professor Umbridge is doing all she can to discredit Harry and covertly take over the school.
Professor Umbridge is being appropriately annoying, though at times comes off more as though Rowling has a bone to pick with OFSTED inspectors in much the same way as the journalist character in Goblet of Fire was there to settle personal scores. The punishment pen was a more genuinely chilling moment.
Draco Malfoy is being inappropriately annoying. He bores me intensely and I wish he'd just corner Harry in the toilets and admit he's crazy about him. The fact that we have yet another book with Malfoy and his goons being nasty to Harry and friends when he's not actually someone that matters results in another couple of dull chapters. And more quidditch... we need new ideas.
I'm still waiting eagerly for the scene promised on the back of the book, which I'm worried isn't going to actually happen until the last chapter. I wonder if the Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons are going to end in a kind of Buffy 'Graduation Day'-style charge at the OWL results announcing. And on the subject of Buffy, I find Harry teaching other students as believable as when it happened in the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Halfway through now I'm interested to see where it's going but I feel there's still an awful lot of padding in this book.
