Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

A few days ago I finished reading the latest Harry Potter book; Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It is the sixth of the seven previously promised books in the series. For those of you who haven't read it yet: don't worry, I'm not going to have any spoilers in this post.

To begin with and somewhat off topic I should say that I didn't stand in line to get this book in the day it was released. I preordered it from Amazon UK which turned out to be a real bargain. I paid 130 SEK including shipping when the price for the book in Swedish bookstores was 199 SEK. I'm finding it very hard to go to a bookstore to buy a book these days when it's that much cheaper to buy over the net.

Okay. What about the book then? I must say I didn't find it as exciting as the previous books. The book was still an easy and fast read but it lacked some magic which the other books had. Maybe this is just because I'm getting to know the format of the books. All the books have pretty much the same general chain of event and it's getting a little too familiar. But the end of the Half Blood Prince promises that the seventh book will be quite different.

As to my theory about Draco Malfoy which I posted about earlier, the Half Blood Prince had some very interesting turnes of events. I think the events in the very end of the book and Draco's behavior there shows that I might be on the right track. But it is by no means certain. It has occurred to me that Rowling (the author of the HP books) uses Draco as the antithesis of Harry Potter and maybe she wants to maintain that all the way to the end. It'll be exciting to see what she does in the last book.

One theme which has been constant throughout the books has been the mystery surrounding Severus Snape. I have long though that he is one of the most interesting and mysterious character in the books. It was a little surprising to me to see that the secrets surrounding Snape, why Dumbledore trusts him, the reasons for his various behavior and his true allegiance was revealed already in the sixth book. But I don't say it is a bad decision, I was just surprised. One of the reasons for the early disclosure of this mystery is perhaps that there are a great many things which need to be explained and finalized in the seventh book that it was more or less necessary to get this particular thing out of the way. It also gives room for some exciting drama in the final book.

So despite the fact that I wasn't overly thrilled with the Half Blood Prince I am (as you probably can tell by now) already looking forward to the seventh and final Harry Potter book. The way the Half Blood Prince builds up to the finale in the last book shows great promise.