I obtained Harry Potter 6: The Half-Blood Prince yesterday and finished it today. At 652 pages, it’s shorter than the last two books which took me a bit longer to read.
Well, like all of the books in the series, this one is also very good. The writing style is not very complex so it makes the reading childish (which it is supposed to do), but that does not detract from the excellent storytelling and the dialogue.
I suppose I’m a bit shocked after finishing the book. I would bet that other people, upon finishing, reacted in the same manner. Not to give out any spoilers since I hate spoilers, the book gets a bit dark towards the end. In a way, most of the events in the book are foreshadowed early on in the book except for the “biggest” event at the end. I had the unfortunate luck to glance at a Slashdot comment header that gave the ending away so I was kind of dismissing it as a joke since I didn’t believe Rowling would do such a thing. I still think in the next book something miraculous will happen where this certain event will be reversed. I also glanced at a blog where a since sentence spelled out who Harry really likes. Bad. Bad people to reveal the story!
Well, too bad I was only able to start reading it yesterday!
8 Comments
Ahhh, so good.
The ending was definitely shocking! I was so surprised! Rumor has it, though, that the younger of the two perpetrators will be punished severely in the next book, and some even believe that the older perpetrator was supposed to do it at the command of the person affected.
There are a *lot* of people claiming, like you said, that it will be “reversed”– although that character did once say that even with magic, that’s impossible. I’m not sure which side I’m on, but some cite the symbolism of the animal most closely associated with said person as evidence of the possibility of the event’s reversal, and I will admit they have a point.
Vague enough for ya? No spoilers here, unless people think about what I said really hard, and well… then they obviously *want* it to be spoiled.
Hehe, vague enough, but perfect for getting the point across. I was trying to talk about the ending but I didn’t know a good way to write about the perpetrators like you did. I’m one of those believing that the “older perpetrator was supposed to do it at the command of the person affected” especially since the ending was very fishy. The person “affected” seemed wise enough to believe in the “older” perpetrator that there must be something going on that we don’t know.
Well, when I mean “reversed” I was thinking about some kind of doppleganger trick. It seems impossible to reverse the event, but if that wasn’t the real “affected” person then…well…
How could it have been anyone other than the real one, though? After what the two travelers had just come back from? I don’t think anyone but the real one would have gone through that for the other traveler.
The popular opinion is that the event will be reversed in some way relating to the animal, though. What do you think of that?
Fishy, yes. Especially what the older perpetrator said to the younger traveler, it seemed to be a lot like advice, and the perpetrator definitely had the opportunity to do a lot more than was done.
I agree that the person affected didn’t seem dumb enough to make such a mistake, but there was a line in the book also that addressed the magnitude of mistakes that seemed to foreshadow it.
The pairings at the end made me wicked happy too.
HP6 ebook at http://arcanus.ath.cx/HPHBP/tableofcontents.html
Hm, pretty nice but illegal :). You reading it from there?
No, I’m not going to read it. I already heard the ending…(warning: possible spoiler) dumbledorf (the fat hairy guy) gets murdered or something.
heh heh, you might get some hits from people searching for “hp6 ebook”
Wow, that sucks. To general public: Please note that I’m not responsible for what Eugene posts on this blog.