Hillside Meditations

I just read the last lines about a quarter of an hour ago. I did not want to rush through the book and yet could not really wait to reach the end, reading speed increasing over the last two or three chapters.

HP is NOT a series of great literature, no doubt, (no, this is NOT up to Tolkien or Terry Brooks or the likes - not that they wrote “great literature” either) but like all the volumes before HBP makes a good read, generates quite an amount of suspense and illusion (after some chapters at the beginning of the book that I found almost a bit boring) and even made me fight with a tear or two at the end.

Somehow I had started out with a bit of aversion towards another volume in a series that made its author really wealthy without being too original - but after the first third I was once again seized by some kind of author´s magic that J.K.Rowlings is able to conjure after all.

As for any message the book has you might have a look at Logtar´s review ; for me another - a bit doubtful - message of the whole series is its “secularity”: we have all kinds of creatures, but no mentioning of a creator, God and religion do not play a role, which leaves me a bit worried although I do not really share too many speculations as to the Potter books corrupting their readers - I rather think they are mirroring the increasingly secular character of our modern world (and I think THAT is a very bad and unhealthy thing, after all).
Whether the Harry Potter series is gnostic in its philosophical basis is discussed by Anna Abbot.

To sum up my HBP reading experience: if you liked HP 1-5 you´ll like 6 - and eagerly wait for the next (and final?) volume (which must have 1200 pages, no doubt, in oder to resolve all the open problems and questions, and tell us all we still want to know about the character´s ways and futures).

PS: I would have liked to write a more detailed review, but I was afraid of finally spoiling things and so refrained.
PS1: HBP is quite a lot (!) shorter than Order of the Phoenix was. I definitely miss the lacking pages and I do think that the distribution of the pages that are there is definitely a bit lopsided - too little school, too much time spent on the time before we arrive at Hogwarts.

HP, Harry+Potter, HarryPotter, HBP, half+blood+prince, half-blood, half-blood+prince, argh, spoiler, Rowling, secular,

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