Harry Potter: a post mortem

Alright. It's over, done, finished. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince..........fucking balls, man.

For anyone who cares, here's what I think about that whole business.

WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS!!!!!

First of all, not my favorite book by far. The first two chapters were amazing, particularly "Spinner's End" as were the last 3-4 chapters; those are worth reading the entire book for. The rest of it lacked motivation for me, though. I realize that this book is more of a "now we're going to answer a lot of questions" thing, and that's fine, but I think the story suffered because of that (which it's bound to do when you're trying to give a lot of backstory). In the previous books, there was always a definitive story that was being told, and you knew what where things were going, and what was driving the plot, this time you don't. It's more of a "year in the life of" story, there's a lot of everyday life. No one central theme going throughout, really, but a lot of smaller stories that you can tell are going to be brought further together in Book 7. You get the feeling that Rowling was thinking, "alright, I've got a ton of things to explain, and only 2 more chances to do it, so open the floodgates." I think this one will be very easy to make into a movie.

A lot of the plot was spread really thin to make room for more explanations, so when everything was wrapped up at the end, you get a mild sense of deus ex machina. As in Hermione just happens to uncover all these things about Snape's parentage, the R.A.B. business (which undoubtedly will be explained later), etc. In the rest of the series, there was always an "ooohhhh" moment where everything from the rest of the book comes together, and this didn't have that. Not that it has to, she could be going for something different this time. But, I still wanted more support for things that happened at the end.

There has never been so much sex at Hogwarts. Man, oh man. When the Fat Lady changes the password to "abstinence" you know something's up. I fully expected Harry and Ron to become more involved with girls, but I think that this was a bit of overkill. I never wanted Harry and Ginny to be together. It was just too perfect. And I knew he was going to play the "we can't be together because you'll be at higher risk" card; I thought Rowling could pull it off as not beng clichéd, but she failed. And Ron and Hermione still aren't together. I never really wanted them to be, either, but I'll accept them more than I will Harry and Ginny.

Harry's no longer a whiny, emo bitch. Thank God.

We got less of Ron and Hermione, this time. Dont' think Hermione's character really grew at all, and Ron's did only in the aspect that he finally got a boner.

During Order of the Phoenix I didn't cry after Sirius's fall. I got really angry and upset, but I never crued. This time, though.......whoa. I cried. As in bawled. Tears of anguish. Mostly because of the way it was done; it wasn't just Dumbledore's death, it was his death at the hands of someone he trusted, someone he begged to let him live, and Harry was there watching it. I have seriously never felt so betrayed in my life; I was so sure that Snape was on Dumbledore's side, that no matter what he might appear to be, Dumbledore's trust was well placed. I'm still trying to rationalize what he did. I want to think he was under the Imperious, or confunded, or something. Rowling has some major explaining to do next time. At the same time, I'm a bit amused by the fact that, yet again, we're going to need a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

I'm still wondering what's going on with Wormtail. He's been conspicuously absent for way too long.

And the mysterious R.A.B.......possibly Regulus Black?