Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

[angelophile]

There's a certain addictiveness with the Harry Potter books that's hard to deny. It's a sensible move that the novels mature with their audience, so by the time we get to this, the fifth book in the series, it's more in-depth, more teen-angsty than the previous outings with a nice line in dark and twisted moments.

However, in other ways it's a disappointment. The book's hard to put down and doesn't feel its length, but it's hard to deny there's an awful lot of prose that doesn't really add a lot to the plot. There's not as much pure filler as the last novel, with Hermione's house elf obsession thankfully shuffled to one side this time around, but there's undoubtedly a lot of time devoted to certain plotlines that, in the end, don't really tie into the novel's climax. Again. And what's all that repetition needed for? How many time does Harry have to lose his temper and yell at his friends? How many times does his stomach have to jump to show that he's somewhat in love with Cho? And how many punishments and disappointments does he have to suffer to show that his fifth year at Hogwarts is not an easy one? How many scrapes do Fred and George have to get into?

And all the extra wordage doesn't always help the characterisations. Take for example, Delores Umbridge. In the movie version I found her to be a wonderful, rather satirical villain. In the novel less so, since she's so obviously described as repulsive a toad-like and pantomime-villainous from the first rather than the semi-subtlety of Imelda Staunton's performance. Given her presence throughout the novel, I was expecting some kind of tie-in to the climax - instead she's a hindrance throughout and then is not-so-neatly shuffled aside to make room for the real villain to appear.

Then there's the disappointing way some of the old characters are used. While Snape and Neville finally get further developed and Hermione gets to demonstrate she's wise as well as smart, Ron is given nothing of interest to do and doesn't contribute to the plot at all, while Hagrid and Dumbledore are screwed over rather, with the former's repeated oblivious tendency to put his friends in mortal peril and the latter's unsympathetic and illogical reasons for being a jerk to Harry for most of the novel. And Sirius is pretty much only tolerable because of remembrance of Gary Oldman's charismatic performances in the movies rather than the portrayal in the novel.

Of course, Harry's whiny bad temper would be off-putting by itself, but since I've never found him particularly sympathetic anyway, I can't say it bothered me too much. In one way I rather liked that the heroes demonstrated more shades of grey and Harry wasn't portrayed as being the perfect, lucky bastard of previous novels and he and his friends aren't saved by some magical doohicky at the end of the book and there are losses. It's especially nice to see his "heroic" father and god-father had plenty of darkness in their souls and Rowling isn't afraid to show Harry himself as a typical teenager - making him aggressive, loud, irritating and out and out obnoxious at times. Whether there's much fun in that depends on your mileage, though.

So some good, mixed with the bad. The trouble is, while the earlier novels were light on detail, I found this one went the opposite way. I didn't care about the ins and outs of the quiddich teams or a daily breakdown of the character's revision timetables. And 25 pages of exposition at the end of the novel is rather too many, let's face it.

In fairness, however, despite its length and the amount of unnecessary storylines tagged onto the central plot, I didn't feel like putting the book down at any point. In fact, I found it rather addictive and read it a lot quicker and easier than I was expecting why I first picked it up. However, I couldn't help but feel that the tempo should have picked up rather more than it did - the return of Voldemort apparently meant nothing more than a few bad dreams for Harry and him attempting to hear a prophesy. Hardly the terrifying weapon we'd been hearing about and the confrontation with Voldemort isn't exactly gripping. For book five I was expecting a more climactic plot than I got.

From what I hear, and from the movie adaptation, I can look forward to more teenage soap opera in the next book and very little plot, but if the book's as easy to read as this was, despite its numerous flaws, I won't mind that much.

Comments

[kirke-novak.livejournal.com]

It's especially nice to see his "heroic" father and god-father had plenty of darkness in their souls

I think my favorite part of HP had always been that even the most "awesome" and heroic people are, just and only, people. The fact that Snape's rocky relationship with the Marauders had been so terribly slaughtered in the movies is my biggest woe.

but if the book's as easy to read as this was

Nope.

[parsimonia.livejournal.com]

In the movie version I found her to be a wonderful, rather satirical villain. In the novel less so, since she's so obviously described as repulsive a toad-like and pantomime-villainous from the first rather than the semi-subtlety of Imelda Staunton's performance.

Interesting. Having read the book before I saw the movie, I felt like Staunton picked up the character exactly as I saw her in the books.

From what I hear, and from the movie adaptation, I can look forward to more teenage soap opera in the next book and very little plot

Heh, yeah. Half-Blood Prince is not my favourite book, because half of it is like Degrassi and the other half is Story Time with Dumbledore, and then shit happens at the end. It felt like JKR didn't budget the content of the last three books properly, and HBP was the one that suffered the most because of it.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

I thought the Imelda Staunton performance was superior because in the books there's so much descriptive prose given to how physically repulsive she is, how horrible she seems. In the novel immediately you see her she's described as toad-like and in almost every appearance thereafter, which means that the looks match the character. I rather preferred Imelda Staunton's appearance, where she looked like a simpering, maiden aunt and had the viciousness of Herman Goering over the novel's repeated descriptions of her looking like Goering squeezed into a pink cardigan.

Characterwise, the actions were the same, but it was the lightness in looks and the sickly-sweet personality which made her more compelling than constantly being reminded in the descriptive prose what a monster she is.

[parsimonia.livejournal.com]

Well, any character who is unlikable in some way, personality-wise tends to get described as ugly in some way, I've noticed. Whereas the characters who are, objectively by common standards of attractiveness, not good-looking but are considered by Harry to be good people, tend to get more favourably described.

I think all the prose is also supposed to be reflecting the things that Harry thinks about her, even if not always consciously, when he sees her.