At the end of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", J. K. Rowling left so many plot threads dangling that there was endless speculation about the next book. Who would be Voldemort's next victim? Would Harry get back together with Cho Chang or were they history? What about Ron and Hermione? Suspense enough to sustain interest at a fever pitch up to publication of the next book. Now that "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" has finally been released to hype unseen in this reviewer's memory, we've found out that Rowling has not only tied up a lot of the dangling threads in OOP, but lets the reader know exactly where she's taking us in the final book, which may or may not be Harry's seventh year at Hogwarts.
HPB opens on an unusually chill summer day which reflects the chill that has crept upon England's usually green and pleasant land. People are disappearing, presumed murdered. Unlikely "hurricanes" have taken a toll on the landscape. And one cold night in July, after Harry has been only two weeks back with the Dursleys, Albus Dumbledore, Hogwart's Headmaster, appears on the Dursley's doorstep to spirit Harry away to The Burrow to spend the rest of the summer with the Weasley family. Dumbledore isn't at all happy with the way the Dursleys have treated Harry all these years and he lets them know it in no uncertain terms. Just one more summer, he tells them, and Harry's out of there for good. It's hard to say who's more delighted by this news, Harry or the Dursleys.
The chill over Muggledom is also evident in the wizarding world, even in the Weasleys' own home. Mrs. Weasley jumps at every strange noise in the night. The Weasleys' clock, with its nine hands representing family members indicating their location, always seem to be pointing at "mortal peril". And there have been changes in Diagon Alley as well. Florian Fortescue's ice cream parlor is boarded up because Fortescue has disappeared, along with old Ollivander the wand-maker. But the Weasley twins' joke shop is doing a booming business and the twins are raking in the Galleons by the bucketful. They even have their eye on expanding into Hogsmeade, right outside Hogwarts. And there's a new Minister of Magic as well; the bumbling Cornelius Fudge has been sacked. But the new Minister isn't much of an improvement; he's arresting innocent wizards right and left and throwing them into Azkaban prison, just for the sake of appearing to be making headway against Voldemort's followers. He also wants Harry to liaise with the ministry, but Harry isn't having it; he remembers all too well how the Ministry tried to slander him the year before and he isn't about to become their poster boy. He tells the Minister to his face to stuff it.
Back at Hogwarts, there's a new staff member in the person of Professor Slughorn, a former Head of Slytherin House who has spent the past year in retirement and on the run from Voldemort who wants to recruit him into the infernal ranks of the Death Eaters. To everyone's shock, it's announced that Slughorn will be the new Potions master, replacing Snape, who has finally landed the plum job he's always coveted, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Is this Dumbledore's way of rewarding Snape for his loyalty over the past few years? Harry doesn't trust Snape around a glass corner and doesn't think he deserves it. But wait up -- the DADA appointment could be a very left-handed gift since no DADA professor has managed to keep the job for more than a year. Is this a set-up or what?
Besides being immersed in classes, Harry is also meeting privately with Dumbledore, who tells him the entire history of Voldemort, his birth to a mother who is one of the last direct descendents of Salazar Slytherin now living in abject filth and poverty, and the handsome young local aristocrat who falls victim to her love potion; fatally, his mother, wanting his father to love her for herself alone, stopped giving him the potion and once his eyes and head cleared, he abandoned not only her but their unborn child as well. Recruited into Hogwarts by Dumbledore himself, honing his skills in magic and the dark arts, and feeding his propensities for cruelty, power and domination, Voldemort graduates from Hogwarts to seek revenge on the father who abandoned him by killing not only him but his paternal grandparents as well. And from there he becomes the Dark Lord, gathering adherents who are too fascinated or too terrified to resist his powers; among them, the Malfoy clan.
Dumbledore tells Harry they must find the location of four of Voldemort's Horcruxes, objects that have been infused with the soul of their possessor. Voldemort is so evil and so obsessed with gaining immortality that he has split his soul into seven pieces, transferring six of them to six different objects and retaining the seventh piece inside his own body. Two of the Horcruxes have already been destroyed: one by Harry in the second book (Tom Riddle's diary), and another by Dumbledore, a black stone ring. Once they find and destroy the other four Horcruxes, they will be able to deal with Voldemort. But all kinds of things transpire in between.
Harry is not only up to his ears in classes, he's also been named Quidditch captain for Gryffindor House, and he's fighting off hordes of girls who are fascinated by his hero status. The kids are growing up and flirtation and romance take up a significant part of this book. We always knew Ron and Hermione would finally become an item, but Hermione has to spend the better part of the year feeling jealous and shunted aside while Ron detours with a possessive airhead named Lavender Brown who has an infuriating habit of calling him "Won-Won" while sending him an outsize gold chain for Christmas that says "My Sweetheart". The more Ron tries to dump her, the tighter she holds on (going out with her is like dating the Giant Squid, he muses to Harry). There's a delightful interlude when Ron falls head over heels in love with one of Harry's groupies after drinking a love potion meant for Harry, with hilarious results. And almost too late, Harry finally wakes up to the fact that Ron's little sister Ginny has become a very desirable young lady, but not before Ginny has become entangled with Dean Thomas. Things get sorted out, and Harry and Ginny have a precious few weeks together until the darkness engulfs all of them and everything comes crashing down.
It's Harry and Dumbledore's quest for the Horcruxes that triggers the tragedy that marks the last few chapters of the book. We know somebody very close to Harry is going to get killed but it's like a kick in the stomach when it actually happens. There's no safe place in the world for Harry any more, not even at Hogwarts. And there's no parent or parent figure to protect him any longer. He'll have to face Voldemort on his own. And he won't endanger Ginny by continuing a relationship with her; Voldemort gets to his enemies through the people they love best. He's completely alone. Well, maybe not completely; Ron and Hermione tell him they'll be with him no matter what happens. Maybe that's one of Harry's advantages over Voldemort; whereas Voldemort only has followers, Harry has friends.
Harry has not only grown older, he's a lot more mature in this book. In OOP he was a querulous fifteen-year-old, touchy and irritable, resenting the bad hand life has dealt him; he didn't ask to be any hero and he didn't ask to have a homicidal wizard on his case. But in HBP he's moved through resentment to resignation to acceptance, and finally to readiness to accept his destiny. He's grown from boyhood to manhood and he's ready to shoulder a man's responsibility. He's going to find and destroy the Horcruxes and Voldemort as well. And anybody who gets in his way, as he intimates about the Half-Blood Prince, better watch out.
Just has Harry has gone through some significant character development, so has his opposite number, Draco Malfoy. We don't see much of Draco in HBP; he's disappearing from the scene for nefarious reasons of his own. At the start of the year he brags to his cohorts that he's moving on to bigger and better things; who needs Hogwarts any more? But Draco has bitten off considerably more than he can chew in selling his soul to Voldemort; we almost feel sorry for this scared kid who realizes with growing terror that he is in Voldemort's thrall for the rest of his life, immersed in evil he can't control, and that refusing or inability to do Voldemort's bidding will cost his parents their lives. And as we see Harry and Draco developing in different ways, we also see Dumbledore growing older and weaker, fatally undone by his own sense of goodness and decency and his misplaced trust in his nemesis, the Half-Blood Prince.
So who is the Half-Blood Prince? Suffice to say it's someone with Voldemort's own background, hating and hiding his Muggle blood, biding his time for the ultimate act of betrayal. At the book's end, he's on the run, along with Draco Malfoy. But we have a feeling the Half-Blood Prince may be living on borrowed time; he'll get what's coming to him in Book 7.
Unlike the end of OOP, where speculation about where the series was going abounded, by the end of HBP we pretty much know what's in store in Book 7. Harry, possibly with the help of Ron and Hermione, will go on a quest for the Horcruxes, and once they are destroyed, it will be a fight to the finish between Harry and Voldemort. Neither can live, we've been told, while the other survives. We can't know yet which will survive, or if Harry will realize his dream of becoming an Auror, or if he will finally settle down to find happiness with Ginny. All we know is that J. K. Rowling will wrap up one of the most fascinating and successful adventure series ever written.
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![Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by [J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/512xFZRDM3L._SY346_.jpg)
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Customer reviews
I liked the order because I’m a Harry Potter fan.
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2020
Logistics:The book arrived on 12/26, which was fast even for Amazon prime since I placed the order on 12/23The book cover/binding was a bit damaged, but that can be expected considering this is paperback.Content:Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is even better than books 1 to 5.There are a lot of new things to be revealed and to happen. Events in book 6 are even more thrilling than what happens at the end of each of the previous years. I think this worth reading many times. For those who might have disliked book #5, please do not let it bias you against #6
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2020
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Niel
Perfect for a potterhead
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on October 6, 2018
Perfect for a potterhead
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on October 6, 2018
This book with fabulous print will take u to the world of fantasy. A well recieved product with a fine binding and good paper quality.
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on October 6, 2018
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John M
A faster-paced and darker episode and with more Voldemort moving the series towards a conclusion
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 15, 2018
Michael J Richardson
If a book could have more than five stars out of five, this would be the one.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 9, 2017
If a book could have more than five stars out of five, this would be the one.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 9, 2017
Oh yes, oh yes oh yes!!!Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 9, 2017
I could hurl a hundred superlatives at this book, most of which you've probably heard before, but they’d all be deserved.
So, Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, and what a year.
I like to think of this one as a history book: not one of those big boring books that goes on and on about a long forgotten civilisation, a King or a Queen, but a book about Harry's past, his connection with Voldemort, and one that delves deep into the Dark Lord’s past, by way of memories in the pensieve in Dumbledore's office; memories that the headmaster has spent many years collecting.
Harry has inherited his god-father's house and the vile elf, Kreacher, who he puts to good use following Draco Malfoy. Harry knows that Draco is up to something, he overheard him threatening the owner of Borgin and Burkes in Knockturn alley, he just doesn't know what.
There are potions to master, (somewhat helped by an old potions book he finds in the spares cupboard, annotated and proclaiming to be the property of the half-blood prince; there's Snape to avoid, quidditch to play and an uncorrupted memory to extract from their new potions master, Professor Horace Slughorn; who taught Tom Riddle before he became Lord Voldemort.
There are girls, there's snogging and there's Ginny Weasley, who Harry is starting to see in a different light.
To top it all, there are Horcruxes to find, hidden objects that contain parts of Voldemort's soul, and this is where these books are so clever. It is here, in book six, that we discover that Tom Riddle's diary - which Harry destroyed in The Chamber of Secrets, (book two) - was in fact a Horcrux. Dumbledore has already destroyed another, Voldemort's grandfather's ring, and with Horace Slughorn relinquishing his untainted memory, they now know that they have four more to find, excluding the part of soul that resides in Voldemort himself.
So, over five hundred pages in and the adventure begins, but Draco has succeeded in his task, Death Eaters have entered the school, the dark mark hangs heavy above the astronomy tower, Dumbledore is disarmed, Harry immobilised, Snape . . .
I know that most of you already know the ending to this book, you've probably seen the film, but I put it to you, that unless you have read this book, you do not know the ending.
The battle between the Death Eaters and The Order, Snape and Malfoy's escape, the burning of Hagrid's hut, and the most moving part of all, Dumbledore's phoenix and its lament, echoing hauntingly through the corridors and classrooms of Hogwarts.
If a book could have more than five stars out of five, this would be the one. Simply put, this book if stunning.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, here I come.
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