Opinion

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Written by: J K Rowling
Published by Bloomsbury

Since Harry Potter witnessed the return of the dark wizard Voldemort at the end of his fourth year at Hogwarts School, life has not gone quite as he had expected. Returned to his aunt and uncle's house, he desperately tries to gain any information he can about what Voldemort is up to. After an almost fatal encounter one evening forces him to use magic in self-defence, he is faced with the possibility of being banned from the school and the company of his friends. But his friends have been uncommunicative anyway, and Harry increasingly finds his anger at being left out of things affecting his judgement and potentially causing him to make dangerous mistakes.

Well that was....disappointing.

After reading the fourth of Rowling's Potter books, one of my observations was that I was impressed at the way she had suddenly sprung a significant shift in the nature of the overall story she is telling on the reader, and made it all look so obvious. From a series which showed every sign of being about the trials of a boy wizard learning his art and enduring a run-in with his arch-nemsis each summer term, the story apparently changed to be about the return of a supremely-powerful wizard and the war against him. At the end of book four, Voldemort had returned, Harry had escaped him and let his return be known, and even in the light of official obstruction, the battle against him was about to be joined. Book five showed every likelihood of leaving the school-focus behind and moving out into the real world.

In reality, book five is probably the most school-focused volume to date, and in terms of the overall plot, the only significant movement between the ends of books four and five is that 'the establishment' now accepts Voldemort's return. Otherwise, there's a lot of attention paid to the pupils' upcoming exams, the appointment of a new teacher, and the emergence of a few new facts about events of many years earlier. As a part of the whole, it's therefor disappointing.

So how about by itself? Well, never let it be said that Rowling doesn't take risks. Here for instance, she's taken the significant risk of making her hero almost 100% unlikeable and irritating for almost 100% of the book. The Harry of this volume is a whining brat, constantly arguing with those around him and flying off the handle at every opportunity, creating trouble for himself and everyone else. In many ways it's as if most of the events of the first few books didn't happen. None of those whose advice or opinion he should have learned from experience to value are heeded, and while an eagerness to know what is going on is entirely in character, the expression of its frustration is extremely wearing. Be prepared not to like Harry much by the end of this one.

Otherwise, Rowling displays her usual facility for invention with many of the concepts she presents, and she does very effectively darken the whole mood of the story. She also shifts a number of the players around, creating new alliances and relocating some with a distinct sense of putting pieces in place for what is still to come. There's too much dwelling on events from past books for my taste (faces from previous books reappear, in at least one case for no other reason than to get Harry and friends into a particular room), and protracted sections that really do no more than re-establish what has gone before, which may be designed to address the long gap between the previous book and this one, b ut which seriously underestimate the audience's powers of recall.

And yet strangely, I can't say I disliked the whole. It's a heavy read, both physically and stylistically, but it also picks you up and carries you along as all the previous books did. I read it until I was literally falling asleep over it.

As widely reported there's a death (in fact there are several, but there's one in particular we're supposed to care about), and some well-placed red herrings regarding who it's going to be, but in the end I didn't really feel much for the character in question's demise, partly because of its nature, and partly because of the way the character had been developed in this book.

And considering the title of the book, The Order of the Phoenix has very little impact on the story itself.

I'm not sure how to rate this - it clearly need to be read by those who've followed the series, but I definitly feel it was a let-down after such a long wait and so much build-up. I definitely hope that the next two books manage to take the series somewhere really new and challenging, because this one has a distinct sense of running on the spot about it.