Simplified Series - Harry Potter 5-7

As you can see the covers for the last few are much less visually busy.

My feverish pursuit of MOAR content brought forth this feature: Simplified Series. Here's the pitch: quick synopses (I'll try and keep them spoiler-free, but, you know, most of these are past the statute of limitations on spoilers) of the entries in a series followed by the reasons you should or shouldn't read it. This week:

The Harry Potter heptalogy, part 2 by J.K. Rowling

Background Info: So, after putting out one book a year from 1997 to 2000, Rowling spent a little more time working on the final three books in the series. They're also longer than the first four (that's a lie, book six is shorter than book 4). I've always jokingly said it's because after the runaway success of the series Rowling's publishers no longer had the leverage to suggest that she make another pass and trim away more of the fat, but the truth is that the series remains enjoyable. However, this post-millenium trilogy does contain my least favorite entry in the series, so there's that. Also, in these books, Hermione takes a strange turn toward machiavellian behavior.

Wait, I thought you liked Hermione.

Oh, Hypothetical Reader, welcome to Thursday Features.

In your last HP roundup you were talking about how Hermione would be a better protagonist than Harry.

No, I said she's a better detective than Harry. Anyway, my theory is that when the other wizards all ridiculed her for opposing slavery, something cracked inside her and she realized that she couldn't trust anyone to make decisions for themselves.

This does not bode well.

Quiet, you!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003) - "NOBODY UNDERSTAAA-AAAA-AAANDS ME!"  Screams Harry throughout. Now, granted, given that Lord Voldemort has A) returned and is 2) hellbent on murdering him (sidenote: what is it with the villains in kids' media being so obsessed with murdering teens and pre-teens: Captain Hook, the Wicked Witch of the West, Admiral Zhao and Firelord Ozai, Count Olaf, Slade, the guy driving the van that's about to ram a bunch of kids on bikes in E.T., etc.), Harry actually has several valid complaints about life in general, but it's all a bit much. Oh, and the new McCarthy-esque Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is (surprise, surprise) the secondary villain of the book. Meanwhile, Hermione takes a dark turn when she has a bunch of other students sign a piece of paper without telling them they do so at the risk of permanent facial disfigurement. And Ron is . . . also in the book.  On the one hand, this is my least favorite book in the series because Harry spends so much time whining in all caps (also there's a go-nowhere subplot about how the half-giant Hagrid is keeping his full-giant half-brother in the forest), on the other hand it introduces my favorite side character, oddball Ravenclaw Luna Lovegood. Can the reformed Order of the Phoenix defeat Voldemort? Will the Ministry of Magic ever accept that Voldemort has actually returned? Wait, is this going to turn into another one of those Chosen One prophecy fantasy series?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) - Towards the beginning of this book, Rowling breaks her usually tight focus on Harry to show that Snape's vowed to help Draco Malfoy do some unspecified Death Eater task. Uh-oh! Even worse, everyone has a crush on everyone, but no one's brave enough to do anything about it. Harry has a crush on Ginny (because of character traits she allegedly possesses), Hermione and Ron have a crush on each other, Lavender Brown has a crush on Ron, and Cormac (let me Google his last name again) McLaggen has a crush on Hermione. Oh, and also, Snape finally got his dream job of being Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, so that means Professor Slughorn gets to be the Potions master and the convenient dispenser of plot tokens so that Harry and Dumbledore can track down one of Voldemort's horcruxes (think of it as a remote backup for your soul that requires you to kill someone). "Who's this Half-Blood Prince who's been helping Harry with potions through the marginalia scribbled all over Harry's second-hand potions textbook?" you may ask. "Is the fact that 'Prince' is capitalized an important clue?" you may ask. Don't worry, there's not enough clues for Harry to sort it out, once again the mystery is solved when the Half-Blood Prince reveals their identity to Harry. How will all these crushes sort themselves out? Will Dumbledore survive through to book 7? Are we still putting up with three quidditch matches in every single book?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007) - Harry, Ron, and Hermione go on two simultaneous fetch quests. In one they have to track down Voldemort's remaining horcruxes so that Harry can kill him for realsies. In the other they have to find out what the Deathly Hallows are. The bad news, this makes the novel more than a little meandering, the good news: no quidditch. Also, Hermione becomes something of a scary control freak when she erases her parents memory of her and makes them move to Australia. I mean, who does that? Sure, she wants to protect them from Voldemort, but they're grown-ups, they know she's a witch, she should be able to explain the situation to them and let them decide what to do for themselves.

Okay, yeah, that is a little messed-up.

Right?

Right.

Anyway, like I was saying, the trio skip school so that they can track down those quest items, spending what might be charitably described as "too much of the book" camping out and bickering with each other. Oh, and Harry finally learns to be nicer to the House Elf (that is to say, slave) that he inherited. Can our heroes destroy all the pieces of Voldemort's soul rendering him mortal once again? Will Ginny ever become interesting? Does Snape being on the right side of history redeem him for a lifetime of envy, spite, and general assholishness?

Why should you read Harry Potter 5-7? Rowling displayed a remarkable talent for making the books and characters grow in maturity along with her audience. While the first couple books were pretty much standard kid detective books, each subsequent entry managed to capture how it feels to be a teenager. Like in book five, where the only thing more terrifying than the thought that your crush doesn't know you exist, is the fact that he or she does know and feels the same way (but it still doesn't work out because you're both fifteen). In any case, they're also solid fantasy adventure stories, and let's be honest, you've probably read them already anyway.

Why shouldn't you read Harry Potter 5-7? So, that whole growing up with the characters thing is a double-edged sword (Yes, this is the Lucas hates and the Order of the Phoenix part of the blog post). In most of the books, Harry Potter is your standard-issue bland fantasy protagonist: nondescript enough that readers can project themselves onto him but not so nondescript that they get bored with him. So, let's talk about and the Order of the Phoenix, where Harry is fifteen and (like most fifteen-year-olds) completely self-absorbed and insufferable. Do you know how much time Harry spends yelling in all caps in this book? I don't, I've never managed to re-read it. It's fine for a character, even a protagonist, to be unlikeable, so long as they aren't also actively dislikable (as in, it isn't enjoyable to spend time reading about their exploits). And what makes it worse is that at the end, when Harry throws a big temper tantrum, Dumbledore apologizes and says that that he shouldn't have treated Harry like a child (for reference, Harry is a child). Whatever, Dumbledore. Also, as I mentioned in the intro, there's some fat that could have been trimmed from these books (I'm looking at you Hagrid's half-brother, Grawp).

UPDATE: (8/17/2020) I know this is like two months too late, but the reason I now no longer suggest that people read Harry Potter is that J.K. Rowling has decided to publicly spread some gross and untrue things about transgender people, and I'm not cool with that. So I guess you can check it out of the library or something if you really, really want to, but at this point J.K. Rowling doesn't need more of your money.

Links:

The website where J.K. Rowling posts her Harry Potter fanfic, if you're into that kinda thing.

I have not seen the sequel play, and the Cursed Child, but I have read the plot synopsis. It sounds pretty bonkers.