I've been a fan of Harry Potter since about the grade school, back when the only books that had been published yet were the first three, when Potter's popularity was still on the rise, when Christian fundamentalists were still catching on to the horrifying idea that a "witchcraft" story was gaining popularity with children, and grade-school teachers were similarly catching on to Harry Potter being a pretty effective tool for getting kids to develop a liking for books. Indeed, that was how I discovered them: my English teacher somewhere in the 6th-to-8th-grade portion of schooling (where my Catholic school shifted to a high-school-like classroom and teacher shuffle to prepare students for the routines public school would involve) introduced me and several other students who were showing less interest and enthusiasm in the class to the Harry Potter novels, actually lending us her own copies of the first three books to get us reading. By the time the much thicker fourth volume, Goblet of Fire, came out, I was so in love in the series that its intimidating size was far more appealing to me than intimidating, like a larger bowl of rocky road ice cream might look appealing.
In the decade-and-a-half since, I've never let go of my love of Harry Potter, even if I have gone long stretches of time without keeping an active eye on the franchise. The recent revival of widespread Potter interest of the appealing-but-flawed sequel stage play ("Harry Potter and the Cursed Child") and an arguably-more-interesting-and consistently-engrossing prequel-sidestory-movie ("Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them") has prompted me to revisit the book series yet again, as well as replace my old worn-down hardcover copies with both the paperback box set and the eBook downloads from Pottermore's e-shop — which are cross-compatible with Kindle accounts and can be transferred over as identical files to the Kindle versions, by the way, even though Amazon doesn't count those files as purchases of the Kindle eBooks, but rather as separate account-exclusive items. Having checked on Audible, this series does not seem to be compatible with Whispersync for Voice no matter where you buy the eBooks as of yet, so audiobook fans who like to read the text while listening may wish to take note of that when deciding whether to buy a physical or eBook versions (this is possibly due to revisions having been made to the text for series consistency in the time since the audiobooks were recorded).
In-depth reviews of the individual books are perhaps best saved for each book's individual page on Amazon, so I will give only a broad-stroke review of the stories here — if you are considering buying the series as a complete box set, it's likely you've already read and enjoyed at least the one of the books. But for the uninitiated, Harry Potter is a series that follows a boy, Harry himself, across a seven-year series of adventures culminating in the return and subsequent war against Lord Voldemort, a terrible Dark wizard who wreaked horrors upon the magical and non-magical communities alike until his unexpected and inexplicable destruction when he killed Harry's parents and then attempted to kill Harry while he was still an infant. Harry, growing up with his non-magical ("Muggle") aunt and uncle, who cruelly neglect and emotionally abuse him, receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when he turns eleven, whereupon he discovers that not only is there a burgeoning community of witches and wizards living and hiding in plain sight in a seemingly-ordinary 1990s British society, but that he is famous among the magical community. They call him the "Boy Who Lived," the cause of Voldemort's disappearance and the end of his reign of terror. But as Harry enters the magical world and begins to learn about this new side of his life and the wonders of magic, he gets drawn into a series of perilous events that lead him closer and closer to his eventual destiny with each passing book, gradually revealing more of the truth behind what happened on the night Harry's parents were murdered and what led to it, among other things.
Harry Potter is a fantastic series. One might be tempted to think it's overblown or over-rated by its enthusiasts. One would, in fact, be forgiven for taking that impression almost exclusively from the movies; they're enjoyable enough in their own right, but suffer problems of less-than-amazing adaptation and fluctuations in creative vision that make the film series feel somewhat disjointed and less-thoughtful than the books they're based on, and have the added problem of the younger actors and actresses often taking a few films to develop the skills to portray their characters naturally (an occupational hazard of a fantasy epic that relies on child actors, really). The Harry Potter novels, meanwhile, provide an arguably smoother introduction and, subsequently, a more fleshed-out experience in Harry's world, with the earlier, shorter books providing a comfortable and more "episodic" early portion that's great for allowing readers to get their feet wet, becoming gradually more involved and complex until the build-up culminates with the fourth and fifth novels, where the story goes all-in on characterization and worldbuilding detail, presuming the writer to be fully invested by that point, and keeping that level of maturity and intensity right up to the ending of the final volume.
It would be remiss of me to call this series perfect, don't mistake the five-star rating for that. J.K. Rowling certainly has her weaknesses as a writer, and it could be accurately said that the novels suffer from a bit of a bloating problem that surfaced around Book Five, where Rowling clearly had more power to say "no" to her editors (incidentally, this is also the point at which the American text just gives up at hiding away a lot of the Britishisms in narration and dialogue, and I will say the books are at least better for that much). This is a clear Your Mileage May Vary kind of point. I personally enjoy the tangential worldbuilding that comes out of it, and consider it worth whatever "bloat" occurs as a result. But then, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is my favorite of the seven novels, and even for some avowed fans of Harry Potter, that book was too long and spent a little too much time on certain things. There's really no way to tell whether that will be a problem for you until you get there and either like it or don't like it. But what problems the Potter novels have are, in the grand scheme, just niggles. It all comes together in a really great way and in spite of the flaws, it's a really great series of books worthy of the classification of "epic."
But one thing that might surprise people unfamiliar with Potter is that this is not a fantasy action-adventure series. It's more of a mystery series coated in a gooey chocolate fantasy syrup. Harry Potter himself tends to fill the role of a combination Frodo Baggins figure and up-and-coming detective character, and the most important plot points are, regardless of who figures out or explains a given part of things, presented as mysteries. Action sequences occur and can be quite intense, particularly in later volumes, but this is not the story of a big, super-cool hero slaying dragons; it's a story of circumstance, figuring out the circumstance, and then reacting to the circumstance. Some readers seem annoyed by the fact that eleven-year-old Harry never matures in this series to a point where by the end of magical high school he's capable of going head-to-head in a duel with a Dark Lord with decades of extensive magical knowledge under his belt, but that is simply not the angle that this series goes for. My comparison of Harry to Frodo Baggins was not an idle-name-drop. Harry's role in this story is very deliberately that of the hero who stands strong against adversity but ultimately triumphs through low-key action behind the scenes of a conflict in which number other, more powerful or more experienced combatants command the bulk of the Dark Lord's attention. And, like Frodo (and his progenitor, Bilbo), sometimes Harry is helped by sheer circumstance, the timely and skillful intervention of one of his friends, or a combination of his own efforts plus those things. The series does give us a fairly clear picture of what an action-centric lead character in this universe might look like, and I think that's where a fair portion of reader disappointment with Harry's more subdued take on heroics comes from, but he is an eleven-year-old who eventually becomes a seventeen-year-old over the course of the story, contending with a villain who has fifty-plus-year lead on experience over him. I think I would have raised an eyebrow had Harry ever bested Voldemort in a straight-up magical fight.
As with everything, this series is something you should read for yourself if you're unsure. There's probably a copy available at your local library if you don't live in a particularly strict area with a stick up its rear about fantasy novels with magic in them. I recommend giving them a shot, and if Book One doesn't jive with you at first, sticking with it at least until the end of Book Two. This is a series that improves as it moves forward, each book adding new layers to the existing world by pacing its narrative in the same way a child might learn more and more about the real world as he or she grows into an adult, which is a large part of Harry Potter's effectiveness as a coming-of-age story. The reader, in a figurative sense, grows with Harry, as many of the original readers grew with Harry alongside the release of each subsequent book. This is as much a narrative tool as a consequence of readers aging as they read the books, because with very rare exceptions scattered through the series, the narrative is locked firmly into whatever it is that Harry Potter himself is seeing, hearing, saying, feeling, or thinking, and the reader's understanding of events and the world around him is often limited to what he knows or notices at any given time.
As for the separate editions of these books. I can't voice for the "Complete Collection" eBook specifically, since I bought the eBooks individually on Pottermore, but assuming the formatting for the Complete Collection is identical, then the digital set relevant to this review is well-put-together and smoothly formatted, just about the best way you'll ever experience Harry Potter digitally without buying the iBooks-and-iOS-exclusive Enhanced Edition eBooks available on Pottermore, which feature animated illustrations and the like. If you have an iPad or iPhone, that is the edition I recommend for digital consumption, but for standard Kindle and Android users, or people who like reading eBooks on PC, this collection and its individual-eBook versions aren't inferior to physical books in any sense other than not having a special font for chapter headings; the U.S. editions of the eBooks even contain the iconic chapter title illustrations, although not the original American cover art (the minimalist cover art of the eBooks makes for a smoother transition between colored screens and black-and-white e-readers, though).
The hardcover collection is one that I can't vouch for as a set, but having owned and read through the series in hardcover in the past, what I can vouch for is that the American hardcover editions are very nice to own. The box set for Hardcover may lack the text revision of the eBooks and more recent paperback printings, however, and while the chapter artwork and font for titles is something I prefer over the U.K. editions, it should be acknowledged that the American hardcovers are of a slightly cheaper construction than the U.K. editions, although also, paradoxically, they have a higher page count due to Scholastic's formatting choices (there are fewer words per page compared to the U.K. versions, and Order of the Phoenix has the formatting oddity of being the only book in the series with narrower margins and line-spacing, due to its much higher word count). Having researched this set, it should be acknowledged that the "trunk" is made of cardboard, so don't expect, you know, an extremely durable box or anything. It's just a stylized container for a box set.
As for the paperback box set, the purchase that prompted this review? It's fantastic. The American version with the characters riding a dragon, specifically: I'm seeing a lot of user pictures in this review second for completely different sets, and it seems there's a motley assortment of mixed sets in the marketplace listings, too. The box itself is quite sturdy and adorned with beautiful artwork by the cover illustrator, Mary GrandPré, depicting a scene from later in the series that puts me in the mind of the old R.A. Salvatore "Cleric Quintet" omnibus cover art (which features a similar scene by what I assume is coincidence). The paperback volumes themselves are of a nice quality that makes them both more durable and less stiff-feeling than some smaller, cheaper mass-market paperbacks, and they even feature raised lettering for the front cover titling, although the paper and print quality are noticeably lesser than the hardcover editions, feeling at a casual touch like the pages would be easier to damage both by bending and by splashing a few drops of a drink in the book's general direction, not up to the quality of some of the better-made paperback novels that I own. Even so, these are paperbacks that should be taken care of and kept for posterity rather than tossed about like a cheapy grocery store throwaway novel that you picked up on a whim during a food-shopping trip, though the thickness of books four through seven may make it difficult to avoid bending the spines.
Having checked certain passages in the books, I can also confirm that the paperback boxed set, bought new, should contained the revised editions of the text, as well, for as minor as those changes are to the overall experience (again, they're really just consistency tweaks).
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Hello
An Important Part of My Childhood, Which I Still Love Over 15 Years Later
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2016
I've been a fan of Harry Potter since about the grade school, back when the only books that had been published yet were the first three, when Potter's popularity was still on the rise, when Christian fundamentalists were still catching on to the horrifying idea that a "witchcraft" story was gaining popularity with children, and grade-school teachers were similarly catching on to Harry Potter being a pretty effective tool for getting kids to develop a liking for books. Indeed, that was how I discovered them: my English teacher somewhere in the 6th-to-8th-grade portion of schooling (where my Catholic school shifted to a high-school-like classroom and teacher shuffle to prepare students for the routines public school would involve) introduced me and several other students who were showing less interest and enthusiasm in the class to the Harry Potter novels, actually lending us her own copies of the first three books to get us reading. By the time the much thicker fourth volume, Goblet of Fire, came out, I was so in love in the series that its intimidating size was far more appealing to me than intimidating, like a larger bowl of rocky road ice cream might look appealing.In the decade-and-a-half since, I've never let go of my love of Harry Potter, even if I have gone long stretches of time without keeping an active eye on the franchise. The recent revival of widespread Potter interest of the appealing-but-flawed sequel stage play ("Harry Potter and the Cursed Child") and an arguably-more-interesting-and consistently-engrossing prequel-sidestory-movie ("Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them") has prompted me to revisit the book series yet again, as well as replace my old worn-down hardcover copies with both the paperback box set and the eBook downloads from Pottermore's e-shop — which are cross-compatible with Kindle accounts and can be transferred over as identical files to the Kindle versions, by the way, even though Amazon doesn't count those files as purchases of the Kindle eBooks, but rather as separate account-exclusive items. Having checked on Audible, this series does not seem to be compatible with Whispersync for Voice no matter where you buy the eBooks as of yet, so audiobook fans who like to read the text while listening may wish to take note of that when deciding whether to buy a physical or eBook versions (this is possibly due to revisions having been made to the text for series consistency in the time since the audiobooks were recorded).In-depth reviews of the individual books are perhaps best saved for each book's individual page on Amazon, so I will give only a broad-stroke review of the stories here — if you are considering buying the series as a complete box set, it's likely you've already read and enjoyed at least the one of the books. But for the uninitiated, Harry Potter is a series that follows a boy, Harry himself, across a seven-year series of adventures culminating in the return and subsequent war against Lord Voldemort, a terrible Dark wizard who wreaked horrors upon the magical and non-magical communities alike until his unexpected and inexplicable destruction when he killed Harry's parents and then attempted to kill Harry while he was still an infant. Harry, growing up with his non-magical ("Muggle") aunt and uncle, who cruelly neglect and emotionally abuse him, receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when he turns eleven, whereupon he discovers that not only is there a burgeoning community of witches and wizards living and hiding in plain sight in a seemingly-ordinary 1990s British society, but that he is famous among the magical community. They call him the "Boy Who Lived," the cause of Voldemort's disappearance and the end of his reign of terror. But as Harry enters the magical world and begins to learn about this new side of his life and the wonders of magic, he gets drawn into a series of perilous events that lead him closer and closer to his eventual destiny with each passing book, gradually revealing more of the truth behind what happened on the night Harry's parents were murdered and what led to it, among other things.Harry Potter is a fantastic series. One might be tempted to think it's overblown or over-rated by its enthusiasts. One would, in fact, be forgiven for taking that impression almost exclusively from the movies; they're enjoyable enough in their own right, but suffer problems of less-than-amazing adaptation and fluctuations in creative vision that make the film series feel somewhat disjointed and less-thoughtful than the books they're based on, and have the added problem of the younger actors and actresses often taking a few films to develop the skills to portray their characters naturally (an occupational hazard of a fantasy epic that relies on child actors, really). The Harry Potter novels, meanwhile, provide an arguably smoother introduction and, subsequently, a more fleshed-out experience in Harry's world, with the earlier, shorter books providing a comfortable and more "episodic" early portion that's great for allowing readers to get their feet wet, becoming gradually more involved and complex until the build-up culminates with the fourth and fifth novels, where the story goes all-in on characterization and worldbuilding detail, presuming the writer to be fully invested by that point, and keeping that level of maturity and intensity right up to the ending of the final volume.It would be remiss of me to call this series perfect, don't mistake the five-star rating for that. J.K. Rowling certainly has her weaknesses as a writer, and it could be accurately said that the novels suffer from a bit of a bloating problem that surfaced around Book Five, where Rowling clearly had more power to say "no" to her editors (incidentally, this is also the point at which the American text just gives up at hiding away a lot of the Britishisms in narration and dialogue, and I will say the books are at least better for that much). This is a clear Your Mileage May Vary kind of point. I personally enjoy the tangential worldbuilding that comes out of it, and consider it worth whatever "bloat" occurs as a result. But then, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is my favorite of the seven novels, and even for some avowed fans of Harry Potter, that book was too long and spent a little too much time on certain things. There's really no way to tell whether that will be a problem for you until you get there and either like it or don't like it. But what problems the Potter novels have are, in the grand scheme, just niggles. It all comes together in a really great way and in spite of the flaws, it's a really great series of books worthy of the classification of "epic."But one thing that might surprise people unfamiliar with Potter is that this is not a fantasy action-adventure series. It's more of a mystery series coated in a gooey chocolate fantasy syrup. Harry Potter himself tends to fill the role of a combination Frodo Baggins figure and up-and-coming detective character, and the most important plot points are, regardless of who figures out or explains a given part of things, presented as mysteries. Action sequences occur and can be quite intense, particularly in later volumes, but this is not the story of a big, super-cool hero slaying dragons; it's a story of circumstance, figuring out the circumstance, and then reacting to the circumstance. Some readers seem annoyed by the fact that eleven-year-old Harry never matures in this series to a point where by the end of magical high school he's capable of going head-to-head in a duel with a Dark Lord with decades of extensive magical knowledge under his belt, but that is simply not the angle that this series goes for. My comparison of Harry to Frodo Baggins was not an idle-name-drop. Harry's role in this story is very deliberately that of the hero who stands strong against adversity but ultimately triumphs through low-key action behind the scenes of a conflict in which number other, more powerful or more experienced combatants command the bulk of the Dark Lord's attention. And, like Frodo (and his progenitor, Bilbo), sometimes Harry is helped by sheer circumstance, the timely and skillful intervention of one of his friends, or a combination of his own efforts plus those things. The series does give us a fairly clear picture of what an action-centric lead character in this universe might look like, and I think that's where a fair portion of reader disappointment with Harry's more subdued take on heroics comes from, but he is an eleven-year-old who eventually becomes a seventeen-year-old over the course of the story, contending with a villain who has fifty-plus-year lead on experience over him. I think I would have raised an eyebrow had Harry ever bested Voldemort in a straight-up magical fight.As with everything, this series is something you should read for yourself if you're unsure. There's probably a copy available at your local library if you don't live in a particularly strict area with a stick up its rear about fantasy novels with magic in them. I recommend giving them a shot, and if Book One doesn't jive with you at first, sticking with it at least until the end of Book Two. This is a series that improves as it moves forward, each book adding new layers to the existing world by pacing its narrative in the same way a child might learn more and more about the real world as he or she grows into an adult, which is a large part of Harry Potter's effectiveness as a coming-of-age story. The reader, in a figurative sense, grows with Harry, as many of the original readers grew with Harry alongside the release of each subsequent book. This is as much a narrative tool as a consequence of readers aging as they read the books, because with very rare exceptions scattered through the series, the narrative is locked firmly into whatever it is that Harry Potter himself is seeing, hearing, saying, feeling, or thinking, and the reader's understanding of events and the world around him is often limited to what he knows or notices at any given time.As for the separate editions of these books. I can't voice for the "Complete Collection" eBook specifically, since I bought the eBooks individually on Pottermore, but assuming the formatting for the Complete Collection is identical, then the digital set relevant to this review is well-put-together and smoothly formatted, just about the best way you'll ever experience Harry Potter digitally without buying the iBooks-and-iOS-exclusive Enhanced Edition eBooks available on Pottermore, which feature animated illustrations and the like. If you have an iPad or iPhone, that is the edition I recommend for digital consumption, but for standard Kindle and Android users, or people who like reading eBooks on PC, this collection and its individual-eBook versions aren't inferior to physical books in any sense other than not having a special font for chapter headings; the U.S. editions of the eBooks even contain the iconic chapter title illustrations, although not the original American cover art (the minimalist cover art of the eBooks makes for a smoother transition between colored screens and black-and-white e-readers, though).The hardcover collection is one that I can't vouch for as a set, but having owned and read through the series in hardcover in the past, what I can vouch for is that the American hardcover editions are very nice to own. The box set for Hardcover may lack the text revision of the eBooks and more recent paperback printings, however, and while the chapter artwork and font for titles is something I prefer over the U.K. editions, it should be acknowledged that the American hardcovers are of a slightly cheaper construction than the U.K. editions, although also, paradoxically, they have a higher page count due to Scholastic's formatting choices (there are fewer words per page compared to the U.K. versions, and Order of the Phoenix has the formatting oddity of being the only book in the series with narrower margins and line-spacing, due to its much higher word count). Having researched this set, it should be acknowledged that the "trunk" is made of cardboard, so don't expect, you know, an extremely durable box or anything. It's just a stylized container for a box set.As for the paperback box set, the purchase that prompted this review? It's fantastic. The American version with the characters riding a dragon, specifically: I'm seeing a lot of user pictures in this review second for completely different sets, and it seems there's a motley assortment of mixed sets in the marketplace listings, too. The box itself is quite sturdy and adorned with beautiful artwork by the cover illustrator, Mary GrandPré, depicting a scene from later in the series that puts me in the mind of the old R.A. Salvatore "Cleric Quintet" omnibus cover art (which features a similar scene by what I assume is coincidence). The paperback volumes themselves are of a nice quality that makes them both more durable and less stiff-feeling than some smaller, cheaper mass-market paperbacks, and they even feature raised lettering for the front cover titling, although the paper and print quality are noticeably lesser than the hardcover editions, feeling at a casual touch like the pages would be easier to damage both by bending and by splashing a few drops of a drink in the book's general direction, not up to the quality of some of the better-made paperback novels that I own. Even so, these are paperbacks that should be taken care of and kept for posterity rather than tossed about like a cheapy grocery store throwaway novel that you picked up on a whim during a food-shopping trip, though the thickness of books four through seven may make it difficult to avoid bending the spines.Having checked certain passages in the books, I can also confirm that the paperback boxed set, bought new, should contained the revised editions of the text, as well, for as minor as those changes are to the overall experience (again, they're really just consistency tweaks).
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2016
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 4, 2016
In the decade-and-a-half since, I've never let go of my love of Harry Potter, even if I have gone long stretches of time without keeping an active eye on the franchise. The recent revival of widespread Potter interest of the appealing-but-flawed sequel stage play ("Harry Potter and the Cursed Child") and an arguably-more-interesting-and consistently-engrossing prequel-sidestory-movie ("Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them") has prompted me to revisit the book series yet again, as well as replace my old worn-down hardcover copies with both the paperback box set and the eBook downloads from Pottermore's e-shop — which are cross-compatible with Kindle accounts and can be transferred over as identical files to the Kindle versions, by the way, even though Amazon doesn't count those files as purchases of the Kindle eBooks, but rather as separate account-exclusive items. Having checked on Audible, this series does not seem to be compatible with Whispersync for Voice no matter where you buy the eBooks as of yet, so audiobook fans who like to read the text while listening may wish to take note of that when deciding whether to buy a physical or eBook versions (this is possibly due to revisions having been made to the text for series consistency in the time since the audiobooks were recorded).
In-depth reviews of the individual books are perhaps best saved for each book's individual page on Amazon, so I will give only a broad-stroke review of the stories here — if you are considering buying the series as a complete box set, it's likely you've already read and enjoyed at least the one of the books. But for the uninitiated, Harry Potter is a series that follows a boy, Harry himself, across a seven-year series of adventures culminating in the return and subsequent war against Lord Voldemort, a terrible Dark wizard who wreaked horrors upon the magical and non-magical communities alike until his unexpected and inexplicable destruction when he killed Harry's parents and then attempted to kill Harry while he was still an infant. Harry, growing up with his non-magical ("Muggle") aunt and uncle, who cruelly neglect and emotionally abuse him, receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when he turns eleven, whereupon he discovers that not only is there a burgeoning community of witches and wizards living and hiding in plain sight in a seemingly-ordinary 1990s British society, but that he is famous among the magical community. They call him the "Boy Who Lived," the cause of Voldemort's disappearance and the end of his reign of terror. But as Harry enters the magical world and begins to learn about this new side of his life and the wonders of magic, he gets drawn into a series of perilous events that lead him closer and closer to his eventual destiny with each passing book, gradually revealing more of the truth behind what happened on the night Harry's parents were murdered and what led to it, among other things.
Harry Potter is a fantastic series. One might be tempted to think it's overblown or over-rated by its enthusiasts. One would, in fact, be forgiven for taking that impression almost exclusively from the movies; they're enjoyable enough in their own right, but suffer problems of less-than-amazing adaptation and fluctuations in creative vision that make the film series feel somewhat disjointed and less-thoughtful than the books they're based on, and have the added problem of the younger actors and actresses often taking a few films to develop the skills to portray their characters naturally (an occupational hazard of a fantasy epic that relies on child actors, really). The Harry Potter novels, meanwhile, provide an arguably smoother introduction and, subsequently, a more fleshed-out experience in Harry's world, with the earlier, shorter books providing a comfortable and more "episodic" early portion that's great for allowing readers to get their feet wet, becoming gradually more involved and complex until the build-up culminates with the fourth and fifth novels, where the story goes all-in on characterization and worldbuilding detail, presuming the writer to be fully invested by that point, and keeping that level of maturity and intensity right up to the ending of the final volume.
It would be remiss of me to call this series perfect, don't mistake the five-star rating for that. J.K. Rowling certainly has her weaknesses as a writer, and it could be accurately said that the novels suffer from a bit of a bloating problem that surfaced around Book Five, where Rowling clearly had more power to say "no" to her editors (incidentally, this is also the point at which the American text just gives up at hiding away a lot of the Britishisms in narration and dialogue, and I will say the books are at least better for that much). This is a clear Your Mileage May Vary kind of point. I personally enjoy the tangential worldbuilding that comes out of it, and consider it worth whatever "bloat" occurs as a result. But then, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is my favorite of the seven novels, and even for some avowed fans of Harry Potter, that book was too long and spent a little too much time on certain things. There's really no way to tell whether that will be a problem for you until you get there and either like it or don't like it. But what problems the Potter novels have are, in the grand scheme, just niggles. It all comes together in a really great way and in spite of the flaws, it's a really great series of books worthy of the classification of "epic."
But one thing that might surprise people unfamiliar with Potter is that this is not a fantasy action-adventure series. It's more of a mystery series coated in a gooey chocolate fantasy syrup. Harry Potter himself tends to fill the role of a combination Frodo Baggins figure and up-and-coming detective character, and the most important plot points are, regardless of who figures out or explains a given part of things, presented as mysteries. Action sequences occur and can be quite intense, particularly in later volumes, but this is not the story of a big, super-cool hero slaying dragons; it's a story of circumstance, figuring out the circumstance, and then reacting to the circumstance. Some readers seem annoyed by the fact that eleven-year-old Harry never matures in this series to a point where by the end of magical high school he's capable of going head-to-head in a duel with a Dark Lord with decades of extensive magical knowledge under his belt, but that is simply not the angle that this series goes for. My comparison of Harry to Frodo Baggins was not an idle-name-drop. Harry's role in this story is very deliberately that of the hero who stands strong against adversity but ultimately triumphs through low-key action behind the scenes of a conflict in which number other, more powerful or more experienced combatants command the bulk of the Dark Lord's attention. And, like Frodo (and his progenitor, Bilbo), sometimes Harry is helped by sheer circumstance, the timely and skillful intervention of one of his friends, or a combination of his own efforts plus those things. The series does give us a fairly clear picture of what an action-centric lead character in this universe might look like, and I think that's where a fair portion of reader disappointment with Harry's more subdued take on heroics comes from, but he is an eleven-year-old who eventually becomes a seventeen-year-old over the course of the story, contending with a villain who has fifty-plus-year lead on experience over him. I think I would have raised an eyebrow had Harry ever bested Voldemort in a straight-up magical fight.
As with everything, this series is something you should read for yourself if you're unsure. There's probably a copy available at your local library if you don't live in a particularly strict area with a stick up its rear about fantasy novels with magic in them. I recommend giving them a shot, and if Book One doesn't jive with you at first, sticking with it at least until the end of Book Two. This is a series that improves as it moves forward, each book adding new layers to the existing world by pacing its narrative in the same way a child might learn more and more about the real world as he or she grows into an adult, which is a large part of Harry Potter's effectiveness as a coming-of-age story. The reader, in a figurative sense, grows with Harry, as many of the original readers grew with Harry alongside the release of each subsequent book. This is as much a narrative tool as a consequence of readers aging as they read the books, because with very rare exceptions scattered through the series, the narrative is locked firmly into whatever it is that Harry Potter himself is seeing, hearing, saying, feeling, or thinking, and the reader's understanding of events and the world around him is often limited to what he knows or notices at any given time.
As for the separate editions of these books. I can't voice for the "Complete Collection" eBook specifically, since I bought the eBooks individually on Pottermore, but assuming the formatting for the Complete Collection is identical, then the digital set relevant to this review is well-put-together and smoothly formatted, just about the best way you'll ever experience Harry Potter digitally without buying the iBooks-and-iOS-exclusive Enhanced Edition eBooks available on Pottermore, which feature animated illustrations and the like. If you have an iPad or iPhone, that is the edition I recommend for digital consumption, but for standard Kindle and Android users, or people who like reading eBooks on PC, this collection and its individual-eBook versions aren't inferior to physical books in any sense other than not having a special font for chapter headings; the U.S. editions of the eBooks even contain the iconic chapter title illustrations, although not the original American cover art (the minimalist cover art of the eBooks makes for a smoother transition between colored screens and black-and-white e-readers, though).
The hardcover collection is one that I can't vouch for as a set, but having owned and read through the series in hardcover in the past, what I can vouch for is that the American hardcover editions are very nice to own. The box set for Hardcover may lack the text revision of the eBooks and more recent paperback printings, however, and while the chapter artwork and font for titles is something I prefer over the U.K. editions, it should be acknowledged that the American hardcovers are of a slightly cheaper construction than the U.K. editions, although also, paradoxically, they have a higher page count due to Scholastic's formatting choices (there are fewer words per page compared to the U.K. versions, and Order of the Phoenix has the formatting oddity of being the only book in the series with narrower margins and line-spacing, due to its much higher word count). Having researched this set, it should be acknowledged that the "trunk" is made of cardboard, so don't expect, you know, an extremely durable box or anything. It's just a stylized container for a box set.
As for the paperback box set, the purchase that prompted this review? It's fantastic. The American version with the characters riding a dragon, specifically: I'm seeing a lot of user pictures in this review second for completely different sets, and it seems there's a motley assortment of mixed sets in the marketplace listings, too. The box itself is quite sturdy and adorned with beautiful artwork by the cover illustrator, Mary GrandPré, depicting a scene from later in the series that puts me in the mind of the old R.A. Salvatore "Cleric Quintet" omnibus cover art (which features a similar scene by what I assume is coincidence). The paperback volumes themselves are of a nice quality that makes them both more durable and less stiff-feeling than some smaller, cheaper mass-market paperbacks, and they even feature raised lettering for the front cover titling, although the paper and print quality are noticeably lesser than the hardcover editions, feeling at a casual touch like the pages would be easier to damage both by bending and by splashing a few drops of a drink in the book's general direction, not up to the quality of some of the better-made paperback novels that I own. Even so, these are paperbacks that should be taken care of and kept for posterity rather than tossed about like a cheapy grocery store throwaway novel that you picked up on a whim during a food-shopping trip, though the thickness of books four through seven may make it difficult to avoid bending the spines.
Having checked certain passages in the books, I can also confirm that the paperback boxed set, bought new, should contained the revised editions of the text, as well, for as minor as those changes are to the overall experience (again, they're really just consistency tweaks).
An Important Part of My Childhood, Which I Still Love Over 15 Years Later
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 4, 2016
I've been a fan of Harry Potter since about the grade school, back when the only books that had been published yet were the first three, when Potter's popularity was still on the rise, when Christian fundamentalists were still catching on to the horrifying idea that a "witchcraft" story was gaining popularity with children, and grade-school teachers were similarly catching on to Harry Potter being a pretty effective tool for getting kids to develop a liking for books. Indeed, that was how I discovered them: my English teacher somewhere in the 6th-to-8th-grade portion of schooling (where my Catholic school shifted to a high-school-like classroom and teacher shuffle to prepare students for the routines public school would involve) introduced me and several other students who were showing less interest and enthusiasm in the class to the Harry Potter novels, actually lending us her own copies of the first three books to get us reading. By the time the much thicker fourth volume, Goblet of Fire, came out, I was so in love in the series that its intimidating size was far more appealing to me than intimidating, like a larger bowl of rocky road ice cream might look appealing.Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 4, 2016
In the decade-and-a-half since, I've never let go of my love of Harry Potter, even if I have gone long stretches of time without keeping an active eye on the franchise. The recent revival of widespread Potter interest of the appealing-but-flawed sequel stage play ("Harry Potter and the Cursed Child") and an arguably-more-interesting-and consistently-engrossing prequel-sidestory-movie ("Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them") has prompted me to revisit the book series yet again, as well as replace my old worn-down hardcover copies with both the paperback box set and the eBook downloads from Pottermore's e-shop — which are cross-compatible with Kindle accounts and can be transferred over as identical files to the Kindle versions, by the way, even though Amazon doesn't count those files as purchases of the Kindle eBooks, but rather as separate account-exclusive items. Having checked on Audible, this series does not seem to be compatible with Whispersync for Voice no matter where you buy the eBooks as of yet, so audiobook fans who like to read the text while listening may wish to take note of that when deciding whether to buy a physical or eBook versions (this is possibly due to revisions having been made to the text for series consistency in the time since the audiobooks were recorded).
In-depth reviews of the individual books are perhaps best saved for each book's individual page on Amazon, so I will give only a broad-stroke review of the stories here — if you are considering buying the series as a complete box set, it's likely you've already read and enjoyed at least the one of the books. But for the uninitiated, Harry Potter is a series that follows a boy, Harry himself, across a seven-year series of adventures culminating in the return and subsequent war against Lord Voldemort, a terrible Dark wizard who wreaked horrors upon the magical and non-magical communities alike until his unexpected and inexplicable destruction when he killed Harry's parents and then attempted to kill Harry while he was still an infant. Harry, growing up with his non-magical ("Muggle") aunt and uncle, who cruelly neglect and emotionally abuse him, receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when he turns eleven, whereupon he discovers that not only is there a burgeoning community of witches and wizards living and hiding in plain sight in a seemingly-ordinary 1990s British society, but that he is famous among the magical community. They call him the "Boy Who Lived," the cause of Voldemort's disappearance and the end of his reign of terror. But as Harry enters the magical world and begins to learn about this new side of his life and the wonders of magic, he gets drawn into a series of perilous events that lead him closer and closer to his eventual destiny with each passing book, gradually revealing more of the truth behind what happened on the night Harry's parents were murdered and what led to it, among other things.
Harry Potter is a fantastic series. One might be tempted to think it's overblown or over-rated by its enthusiasts. One would, in fact, be forgiven for taking that impression almost exclusively from the movies; they're enjoyable enough in their own right, but suffer problems of less-than-amazing adaptation and fluctuations in creative vision that make the film series feel somewhat disjointed and less-thoughtful than the books they're based on, and have the added problem of the younger actors and actresses often taking a few films to develop the skills to portray their characters naturally (an occupational hazard of a fantasy epic that relies on child actors, really). The Harry Potter novels, meanwhile, provide an arguably smoother introduction and, subsequently, a more fleshed-out experience in Harry's world, with the earlier, shorter books providing a comfortable and more "episodic" early portion that's great for allowing readers to get their feet wet, becoming gradually more involved and complex until the build-up culminates with the fourth and fifth novels, where the story goes all-in on characterization and worldbuilding detail, presuming the writer to be fully invested by that point, and keeping that level of maturity and intensity right up to the ending of the final volume.
It would be remiss of me to call this series perfect, don't mistake the five-star rating for that. J.K. Rowling certainly has her weaknesses as a writer, and it could be accurately said that the novels suffer from a bit of a bloating problem that surfaced around Book Five, where Rowling clearly had more power to say "no" to her editors (incidentally, this is also the point at which the American text just gives up at hiding away a lot of the Britishisms in narration and dialogue, and I will say the books are at least better for that much). This is a clear Your Mileage May Vary kind of point. I personally enjoy the tangential worldbuilding that comes out of it, and consider it worth whatever "bloat" occurs as a result. But then, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is my favorite of the seven novels, and even for some avowed fans of Harry Potter, that book was too long and spent a little too much time on certain things. There's really no way to tell whether that will be a problem for you until you get there and either like it or don't like it. But what problems the Potter novels have are, in the grand scheme, just niggles. It all comes together in a really great way and in spite of the flaws, it's a really great series of books worthy of the classification of "epic."
But one thing that might surprise people unfamiliar with Potter is that this is not a fantasy action-adventure series. It's more of a mystery series coated in a gooey chocolate fantasy syrup. Harry Potter himself tends to fill the role of a combination Frodo Baggins figure and up-and-coming detective character, and the most important plot points are, regardless of who figures out or explains a given part of things, presented as mysteries. Action sequences occur and can be quite intense, particularly in later volumes, but this is not the story of a big, super-cool hero slaying dragons; it's a story of circumstance, figuring out the circumstance, and then reacting to the circumstance. Some readers seem annoyed by the fact that eleven-year-old Harry never matures in this series to a point where by the end of magical high school he's capable of going head-to-head in a duel with a Dark Lord with decades of extensive magical knowledge under his belt, but that is simply not the angle that this series goes for. My comparison of Harry to Frodo Baggins was not an idle-name-drop. Harry's role in this story is very deliberately that of the hero who stands strong against adversity but ultimately triumphs through low-key action behind the scenes of a conflict in which number other, more powerful or more experienced combatants command the bulk of the Dark Lord's attention. And, like Frodo (and his progenitor, Bilbo), sometimes Harry is helped by sheer circumstance, the timely and skillful intervention of one of his friends, or a combination of his own efforts plus those things. The series does give us a fairly clear picture of what an action-centric lead character in this universe might look like, and I think that's where a fair portion of reader disappointment with Harry's more subdued take on heroics comes from, but he is an eleven-year-old who eventually becomes a seventeen-year-old over the course of the story, contending with a villain who has fifty-plus-year lead on experience over him. I think I would have raised an eyebrow had Harry ever bested Voldemort in a straight-up magical fight.
As with everything, this series is something you should read for yourself if you're unsure. There's probably a copy available at your local library if you don't live in a particularly strict area with a stick up its rear about fantasy novels with magic in them. I recommend giving them a shot, and if Book One doesn't jive with you at first, sticking with it at least until the end of Book Two. This is a series that improves as it moves forward, each book adding new layers to the existing world by pacing its narrative in the same way a child might learn more and more about the real world as he or she grows into an adult, which is a large part of Harry Potter's effectiveness as a coming-of-age story. The reader, in a figurative sense, grows with Harry, as many of the original readers grew with Harry alongside the release of each subsequent book. This is as much a narrative tool as a consequence of readers aging as they read the books, because with very rare exceptions scattered through the series, the narrative is locked firmly into whatever it is that Harry Potter himself is seeing, hearing, saying, feeling, or thinking, and the reader's understanding of events and the world around him is often limited to what he knows or notices at any given time.
As for the separate editions of these books. I can't voice for the "Complete Collection" eBook specifically, since I bought the eBooks individually on Pottermore, but assuming the formatting for the Complete Collection is identical, then the digital set relevant to this review is well-put-together and smoothly formatted, just about the best way you'll ever experience Harry Potter digitally without buying the iBooks-and-iOS-exclusive Enhanced Edition eBooks available on Pottermore, which feature animated illustrations and the like. If you have an iPad or iPhone, that is the edition I recommend for digital consumption, but for standard Kindle and Android users, or people who like reading eBooks on PC, this collection and its individual-eBook versions aren't inferior to physical books in any sense other than not having a special font for chapter headings; the U.S. editions of the eBooks even contain the iconic chapter title illustrations, although not the original American cover art (the minimalist cover art of the eBooks makes for a smoother transition between colored screens and black-and-white e-readers, though).
The hardcover collection is one that I can't vouch for as a set, but having owned and read through the series in hardcover in the past, what I can vouch for is that the American hardcover editions are very nice to own. The box set for Hardcover may lack the text revision of the eBooks and more recent paperback printings, however, and while the chapter artwork and font for titles is something I prefer over the U.K. editions, it should be acknowledged that the American hardcovers are of a slightly cheaper construction than the U.K. editions, although also, paradoxically, they have a higher page count due to Scholastic's formatting choices (there are fewer words per page compared to the U.K. versions, and Order of the Phoenix has the formatting oddity of being the only book in the series with narrower margins and line-spacing, due to its much higher word count). Having researched this set, it should be acknowledged that the "trunk" is made of cardboard, so don't expect, you know, an extremely durable box or anything. It's just a stylized container for a box set.
As for the paperback box set, the purchase that prompted this review? It's fantastic. The American version with the characters riding a dragon, specifically: I'm seeing a lot of user pictures in this review second for completely different sets, and it seems there's a motley assortment of mixed sets in the marketplace listings, too. The box itself is quite sturdy and adorned with beautiful artwork by the cover illustrator, Mary GrandPré, depicting a scene from later in the series that puts me in the mind of the old R.A. Salvatore "Cleric Quintet" omnibus cover art (which features a similar scene by what I assume is coincidence). The paperback volumes themselves are of a nice quality that makes them both more durable and less stiff-feeling than some smaller, cheaper mass-market paperbacks, and they even feature raised lettering for the front cover titling, although the paper and print quality are noticeably lesser than the hardcover editions, feeling at a casual touch like the pages would be easier to damage both by bending and by splashing a few drops of a drink in the book's general direction, not up to the quality of some of the better-made paperback novels that I own. Even so, these are paperbacks that should be taken care of and kept for posterity rather than tossed about like a cheapy grocery store throwaway novel that you picked up on a whim during a food-shopping trip, though the thickness of books four through seven may make it difficult to avoid bending the spines.
Having checked certain passages in the books, I can also confirm that the paperback boxed set, bought new, should contained the revised editions of the text, as well, for as minor as those changes are to the overall experience (again, they're really just consistency tweaks).
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 12, 2023
Found this set for a replacement for my hard covers since my hard covers are a display piece in my collection. I got these so my significant other and I could read again since we are big Potter fans. Some mixed reviews with pages missing, chapters missing, and messed up pages. I checked every book. Every chapter. Every page. Nothing missing at all! For the price of these and the quality, this can’t be beat! Love having them now in hard back and paper back. I highly recommend this set to anyone! Shipping was quick and everything was in perfect brand new condition!
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 25, 2017
Top reviews from other countries
Manan Barjatya
Missing pages and cover wearing off
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on October 9, 2018
Manan Barjatya
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on October 9, 2018
Images in this review
Sonia
Pages falling out
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 27, 2018
Sonia
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 27, 2018
She opened the first book and when turning the first page, the binding came apart and the pages started to fall out. There doesn't appear to be an option for me to return this as It has passed the return date. Not happy at all
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Sam
Desapontado
Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on June 5, 2020
Sam
Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on June 5, 2020
2) Mas os livros têm uma qualidade DECEPCIONANTE.
Edições estrangeiras costumam ser frágeis, mas essas alcançam um nível inesperado (ainda mais pra uma edição especial de colecionador).
Todos os livros são difíceis de ler sem causar danos.
É difícil sequer abrir totalmente o mapa de Hogwarts, nas primeiras páginas, sem imediatamente marcar a capa e a lombada.
A partir de “A Câmara Secreta”, os livros ficam rígidos e as páginas se deformam perto da cola quando abertas, característica de livros muito baratos no Brasil.
Livros devem ser experiências confortáveis. É incômodo que um box tão caro e especial seja delicado assim, e não algo resistente que dure na estante.
Images in this review
Aditi
Loved the series
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on January 31, 2018
Aditi
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on January 31, 2018
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