Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Yes, I took this crummy photo, deal with it. From left we have Kentucky state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo, who almost beat Jim Bunning for the U.S. Senate last fall, Tony Miller, the congressional candidate from Louisville for whom I press secretaried last year, some woman I don't recognize, then another former employer, U.S. Senator and personal hero John Edwards, visiting Louisville for a rally and fundraiser and speaking with Kentucky state Sen. and all-around good guy Gerald Neal. Nice group of folks; plus, if you're wondering who Edwards is blocking in this shot, just know that I expect to write a disparaging essay about him next year. See, I love introducing new questions just as I'm answering others. I'll tell you what I mean.

I have yet to meet anyone who didn't enjoy the Harry Potter books. Sure I have met plenty of people who think the Harry Potter books are stupid, and the worldwide phenomenon thereof is pointless, but those people have never read Harry Potter. Everyone who's read them thinks they're great.

I think the naysayers expect something like this, a run-of-the-mill book about evil prophecies and the third full moon and the secret society of No One Gives A Shit. So believe me, I understand when you think this will be yet another book about the supernatural that's been so done to death that it's just impossible to care anymore, and the only people who would read it are people desperate for something similar to Harry Potter before the next Harry Potter comes out. If Harry Potter were like that, I'd be complaining too. Of course, I'd have tried reading one of the books first.

Fortunately, if you haven't read one of the books first, Harry Potter is better than you can imagine. The Harry Potter series, in a nutshell, is exactly what you wish fantasy books had been like when you were growing up. Sure, the magical elements always add to the plot and the atmosphere, never a quick trick created solely as a one-time plot device. In fact, as noted in a great New York Times review today, the Harry Potter series works because of its perfect combination of whimsy and humanity: how endless imagination is mixed with real life. You've got your hidden magical platform at King's Cross, a map that can tell you where everyone is in the castle, a hat that can peer into your soul, and both stairways and paintings that move, but you've also got dorm rooms, showing up for class unprepared, friends sulking at each other, unfair detentions and finally making the sports team only to lose the match when you fall off your broom and wake up in the hospital. J.K. Rowling isn't setting you up here for disappointment: the ominous-sounding titles aren't just dumb concepts made up to sound scary. Rather, each book is named after a central theme in a well-developed plotline that forces Harry into events and discoveries that increase his (and the reader's) understanding of the magical world and Harry's eventual showdown with an increasingly evil antagonist. Put another way, you're not getting ripped off here.

But more than anything, what I love about the Harry Potter books is how easily J.K. Rowling can embrace elements of fantasy with no apparent hindrance. I know if I were writing about an invented magical sport, or entire academic disciplines based on imaginary concepts, or even instantaneously appearing dinners, I would spend all my time hesitating about whether my ideas are creative enough or if I'm writing myself into a corner. Somehow, Rowling just seems to run with it and have the characters react as if they were normal human beings, leaving the rest (I assume) to a really terrific continuity editor. All told, the Harry Potter books are fun and inventive, but more than anything they're really fulfilling. If you've ever thought about ghosts, spells, or magicians, steaming cauldrons, forbidden woods, or mysterious evils, this is what you've been waiting for.

So that's why Harrison's being such an idiot. For everyone who didn't miss the train at 9 3/4, now we can discuss what I thought of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. First I'll run through my impressions of the previous five books, in relation to each other:

Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone: Great!

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Also great, but not as good as the first.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Best one yet!

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Even better than the third. An exciting concept with a thrilling, completely unexpected ending that changed the way I anticipated the next three books.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Okay, this one was disappointing; I thought Rowling made a major misstep with the plot here. Personally, I would have had the magical world react to the events at the end of the fourth book in a completely opposite way than they did, i.e. how they wound up doing by the beginning of the sixth book. We all knew we'd be going down this road eventually, so I thought these prevailing attitudes here made it kind of a waste of a book. This is the only time in the Harry Potter series where I've thought, "oh come on, let's get on with it." Also, you can't tell me this book wasn't too long.

So after Order of the Phoenix I was a mite concerned Rowling had lost her touch, and fortunately that's not at all the case. It's hard to say this early out whether Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the best book in the series to date, but darned if it isn't close. The plot, which again I thought had been stalled for a while, becomes genuinely intriguing almost immediately and goes strong the whole way through. The "who dies" issue basically went as it should have to set up the final book, but the way Rowling made it happen is just fantastic, raising more questions than it answers. I certainly can't wait for the final book, but I'm also thrilled I got to read this one. Harry Potter books are great.

I tell people that I liked The Da Vinci Code so much because Dan Brown does such a good job of continually resolving mysteries while introducing new ones and still leaving open the great central questions of his book until the very end. I should give Rowling credit for doing the same in the Harry Potter books too. In each episode we learn more about Harry or Voldemort or the secret past of major characters, all while the one-shot plotline of each book develops and ends. As a result, I leave every Harry Potter book glad I read it and eager to read more. What am I going to do after the next one?