Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling. Because I'm a total sheep, and just can't bear to not have read the current book-of-the-moment.

I'll keep this fairly general and reasonably spoiler-free. If you want detailed blow-by-blow commentary examining all the minute details of the plot, well, throw a rock in the air, and it'll land on somebody who has a website listing all the latest Harry Potter buzz.

Unless you've spent the last several years living in a cave, you know that this is Book Five of the Harry Potter saga (and if you have been living in a cave, allow me to recommend sunscreen...). The first three books were enjoyable fluff-- a nicely whimsical style, a good dollop of inventiveness, and just enough creepy atmospherics to tie it all together. The sub-Roald Dahl antics of the Dursleys were a little bit off-putting, but those sections were dispensed with fairly quickly, and the Hogwarts bits were good fun. In the fourth book, however, the plot took a distinct turn, with an actual death among the cast, and some suggestions of greater depth to come, as the struggle against Lord Voldemort moves toward open war.

Unfortunately, this book, like Harry himself, is caught in a sort of awkward adolescent state, partway between the pure fluff of the first book, and the darker world of more adult fantasy. It's not exactly a step back in the progression of the series, but it doesn't really move forward, either.

A large part of the problem has to do with the structure of the plot. The first four books were all driven by a lack of communication-- they had to be, because all the problems could've been wrapped up in a matter of moments had any of the child protagonists bothered to talk to an adult. This is not a problem unique to Harry Potter, of course-- it afflicts all YA books to one degree or another. The protagonists are almost always children, and constructing an interesting book for the target audience pretty much requires that they be instrumental in solving the problems of the plot, which in turn requires that adults somehow be removed from the picture. There are lots of ways of doing this, ranging from having the adults be entirely absent during the crucial action (the approach used in Coraline and The Wee Free Men), to having them be utterly ineffectual buffoons (the Lemony Snicket approach).

These all get sort of tiresome after a while, though, and I had hoped that the next Harry Potter book would break out of the idiot plot rut-- Harry being more and more A, and less YA, as it were. Sadly, Rowling departs from the previous formula only in finding a new reason for Harry to stupidly refuse to tell any adults about his problems: a magical transformation into Petulant Adolescent Boy. Harry spend much of this book in a snit at being kept in the dark, and as a result won't talk to anybody.

This doesn't make for especially enjoyable reading, from either the plot or character ends. I did appreciate the fact that, at the end, some blame is assigned to the adults as well for failing to treat Harry better, but that doesn't really make up for the preceding eight hundred-odd pages.

Which is not to say that it was a bad book, just that I'd hoped for better. There's some good stuff here, and a few interesting character developments, but Rowling overshot on the teenage angst front, and the results were fairly disappointing. I'll still read the next two volumes as soon as they come out, but I think an opportunity was missed with this one.

(Originally posted to The Library of Babel.)

Article Author: Chad Orzel

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