The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3)

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them”.

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is the final installment of the well known trilogy. Like the previous two parts, this one continues with the intrepid group of heroes still moving forward with their individual quests. Filled with drama, adventure and plenty of cliffhangers, The Return of the king is a worthy climax of this epic saga. Like the Two Towers, here also the book runs in two parts; one explaining the adventures outside Mordor, and the other describing the adventures of Frodo and Sam.

41KGl2FqeALTo give a brief summary about the plot, Gandalf and Pippin are making their way to Minas Tirith to try to convince Denethor, the city’s Steward to join their fight to defeat Sauron. Frodo and Sam along with the treacherous Gollum as their guide, are continuing their long journey to Mount Doom, where they hope to destroy the Ring, once and for all. Aragorn accompanied by Legolas and Gimli is taking the legendary Paths of the Dead to Gondor, with the hopes of recruiting an enormous army of Sleepless Dead. Simultaneously, Lady Eowyn and Merry lead their forces against those of Mordor. And After improbable struggles where odds were always stacked against them, the evil Sauron is defeated by the forces of good. The book ends with Aragorn, now King and Arwen join in marriage and usher in a new age of peace and prosperity whereas the Hobbits return to the Shire to rebuild their beloved home against fading might of Saruman. The final chapter has Frodo deciding to leave the Shire and his friends and sailing away over the Great Sea with Bilbo, Gandalf, and the other Ring bearers to the beautiful and peaceful paradise in the West.

I just loved this series. The final installment is the most fast paced of the three books. The quality of Tolkien’s writing is so high that you can’t help but feel immersed in the book and can actually feel yourself travelling along with the hobbits, experiencing every bit of peril and hopelessness that they too must have been feeling on the final stages of their trek to Mount Doom. As with the first two books, I find it extremely difficult to write a review that actually does justice to the magnificent detail of the plot, the characters and the world of Middle Earth in general.

Return of the King is a fitting finale of this hugely engrossing saga. Written at a very high standard, I would strongly recommend this series to anyone who is able to commit to a book, interested in fantasy and looks forward to complicated ideas and vocabulary. This book is relatively shorter than the previous two but what really makes up for it is detailed specific details of each category; Hobbits, Elf, Dwarves, Men etc at the end of the book. So many new similar sounding names can often be confusing but that’s the fun part. J.R.R.Tolkien is a master storyteller, and it really shows in this fantasy trilogy of deceitfulness, faith, courage and heart. What really appeals to your reading sense is the writer’s relentless narration of quest, the heroic journey, the Numinous Object, the conflict between Good and Evil while at the same time satisfying our sense of historical and social reality. To create an imaginary world of such magnitude is no mean task. Once you finish this trilogy, perhaps you would be knowing more about different aspects of Middle Earth than you would be knowing about the actual world you are living in. It’s not just fantasy; its sheer intelligence and brilliance. A must read         

The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)

The Two Towers’ is part 2 of Tolkien’s epic trilogy and comprises of ‘books’ three and four.

Book three follows the adventures of the fellowship after Frodo and Sam depart. At the end of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring,’ the orcs have attacked. Aragorn is up at the high seat where Frodo and Boromir conversed before he tried to take the ring from the hobbit. Aragorn hears Boromir’s horn, but arrives too late. Boromir is hanging on to life and after a few words, he dies in Aragorn’s arms. Gimli and Legolas show up and they discover that Merry and Pippin have disappeared. Aragorn tells them that the orcs have them and they make quick pursuit.

They follow the orcs (who were slain by Éomer and company) to Fangorn. In the forest, they discover that Gandalf is still alive and that the hobbits are alive and well. Gandalf goes with the trio to Edoras to meet with Théoden, King of the Mark. There they find the king’s mind poisoned by Wormtongue. Wormtongue’s hold is destroyed and he flees back to Isengard, to Saruman.

It is decided to go to Isengard and strike down Saruman and end his evil campaign. On the way, they are detoured to Helm’s Deep where a massive battle ensues. Miraculously, the armies of Isengard are defeated and then destroyed by the mysterious forest (a horde of Ents) that appears.

They leave Helm’s Deep and continue on to Isengard where they find it ravaged. After the armies had left, other Ents attacked and trapped Saruman and Wormtongue in Orthanc. They also find Merry and Pippin quite safe and sound. After they had escaped the slaughter of the Orcs, they had ran across Treebeard (Fangorn is his forest) who took them with him to a council of ents were they decided to go to war against Isengard.

When the company finally go and speak with Saruman, Gandalf destroys Saruman’s staff. Then Wormtongue nearly hits Gandalf with an orb he threw from one of the higher windows. What he threw was a palantir, one of seven stones used for communication many centuries prior (and how Saruman communicated with Sauron). On their way back, Pippin lets his curiosity take over and holds the orb. He communicates with Sauron, but doesn’t give anything away. They see one of the Nazgûl and Gandalf instructs the others to go to Helm’s Deep, while he takes Pippin and leaves for Minas Tirith.

Across the river, Sam and Frodo are trying to make their way to Mordor. Before they get out of Emyn Muil, they capture Gollum (also called Sméagol) who they thought they’d lost. Gollum leads them across the dead marshes and to the Black Gate, but it is closed, guarded, and has too much foot traffic. Gollum tells them of a secret way further south near Minas Morgul. Sam (who doesn’t trust Gollum) isn’t keen on the idea, but Frodo knows there really isn’t another choice.

As they pass through Ithilien, they meet with Faramir (Boromir’s brother) who takes them with him and his soldiers. Once he learns of their mission, he allows them to go (and doesn’t kill Gollum). They continue down through Ithilien and eventually pass Minas Morgul and up through Cirith Ungol. Gollum then leads them through the tunnels and his betrayal is learned when they are attacked by Shelob, a giant spider. Sam and Frodo get separated and when Sam finds him again, Frodo appears to have been killed. He takes the ring to continue the journey, but some orcs appear and he learns that Frodo is still alive. He follows the orcs to where they take him, but arrives too late and is stuck standing outside the gate.

I was considering watching the film again to make sure I correctly mentioned some of the scenes, but got annoyed so I turned it off. It is a no brainer that the book is better than the film. As I’ve been reading the three books, I’ve been amazed at the liberties Peter Jackson took when making the films. When they first came out, I remember people saying how close they were to the books. Sorry to say, but not really. I’ll highlight some of the major scenes as citing them all would take ages.

Alright, here are some changes from book 3. So the whole scene about how the Ents were going to war was totally incorrect. Sure their meeting took a long time, but they were keen on going to war and already knew about what Saruman had done to the trees. Next, Théoden wasn’t being controlled by Saruman. His mind was poisoned by Wormtongue. Then the whole scene at Isengard was so wrong that it would take ages to convey all the differences (for one Saruman never dies). Book 4 had tons as well. Gollum never started to become good. He pretended. Frodo wasn’t bothered by the ring until they passed Minas Morgul. The interaction with Faramir was totally different and they were never taken to Osgiliath. And Frodo wasn’t poisoned against Sam whilst climbing Cirith Ungol. They’ve been cool the entire time.

I’ll just straight into my qualms with the characters. Faramir is such an amazing character and Jackson made him into a joke. When I read about him, all I could think about was how noble a person he was. The ring was within his grasp and he knew taking it was wrong. He knew that even with good intentions the ring would bring about evil. The people loved him because he was wise, kind, and a great leader. He was none of those things in the film. It was so infuriating. Not to mention that Frodo is so much stronger in the books than the films. They turn him into a weakling as well. It is so aggravating. The characters are so great and unique. There was no need to change them.

I found the book very exciting. My problem was that it was more interesting following Frodo and Sam than the rest of the fellowship. There is a lot of description going on with the fellowship and everything they are doing. With the hobbits it is much more linear. I found it easier because you were following feelings and journey of two people rather than the goings on of a large group. It is more intimate. Plus their journey is wrought with more danger (and who doesn’t like reading about dangerous adventures).

Overall, of course I think you should read it. It is an epic fantasy that has earned that classification. Yes, it can be difficult to get though and some of the sentences will need to be reread a couple times as they can be quite confusing (some seriously don’t actually make any sense). But if you can get through it, you will be glad you did. It is worth the read. Enjoy

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

Bilbo, after the events from The Hobbit, has settled down to a nice slightly eccentric life. He adopts one of his nephews, Frodo, as his heir and begins to write his memoirs. On his One Hundred and Eleventieth birthday, Bilbo disappears and leaves everything to Frodo. Only Gandalf knows that Bilbo has gone to Rivendell.

Several decades later Gandalf visits Frodo and reveals that the little gold ring that allowed Bilbo to turn invisible, and that he left to Frodo, is actually a ring of great power, possibly The One Ring that was made by Sauron to control all the other rings of power. Gandalf tells Frodo he needs to go to Rivendell to take counsel and that he, Gandalf, will return in a year to help guide him there.

A year passes and no word of Gandalf. Frodo has been preparing and his cover story is that he is moving to Buckland, another settlement of hobbits. Two of his cousins, Merry and Pippin, along with Frodo’s gardener Sam, have all been helping him move. On the way to Buckland, Frodo runs into a black rider that inspires complete unreasoning terror in his heart. No longer knowing who to trust, Frodo and his companions begin their trek to Rivendell.

Having several adventures, the hobbits meet up with Strider, a human ranger who Gandalf trusted. They all head for Rivendell, doing their best to avoid the attention of the Black Riders, who Strider reveals are Ringwraiths, Sauron’s powerful underlings. The Group makes it to Rivendell and Gandalf shows up. He tells them that the head of the Wizard’s Council, Saruman the White, has been corrupted by a lust for power. Now the world must deal with Sauron and Sarumon, both who want the One Ring for the power it contains. Elrond, the elven lord of Rivendell, tells that the Ring will corrupt any being who uses it and that it must be destroyed. The only way to destroy it is to cast it back into the fiery Mount Doom from which it was created.

A Company is gathered. They set out. Hindered in many ways, they must eventually decide what they are going to do with the Ring. Gandalf perishes defending them from a Balrog, a being almost equal in power to Sauron himself. Eventually, one of the Companions, a human named Boromir, falls under the influence of the Ring and tries to take it from Frodo.

Frodo flees, along with Sam and heads off on his own towards Mt Doom. The book ends with the Fellowship breaking apart and heading their own ways.


My Thoughts:

This is going to be a lot shorter of a review than my 2012 one.

I enjoyed this but was not raving about it. A thoroughly good story that is at once personal and cozy and yet epic in scope all at the same time. It is no wonder that this trilogy ended up spawning the Fantasy Genre as we know it today.

The reason this doesn’t get more than 4stars from, and never will, is all the blasted songs and poetry. Sometimes they contained pertinent information to the current story and other times they were simply a history lesson and at others they were just an expression by the character. You never knew which. I ended up just skipping them, plot points be forsaken.         

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I’ve always liked the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, if largely for the sheer spectacle of the Triwizard Tournament. Unlike its predecessors, the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is very different from the book – necessitated in part because the book is almost twice the length of Prisoner of Azkaban.

Goblet of Fire contains an entire subplot about House-elf rights not even referenced in the films. It’s an interesting social commentary and adds another layer of moral complexity to the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, the characters’ responses to the House-elves plight puzzles me, to say the least.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron learn that Dobby now works at Hogwarts as a free Elf. However, they also learn that hundreds of House-elves work in Hogwarts, basically as slaves. This immediately strains credibility. Harry, Hermione, and Ron have all snuck around Hogwarts at night. In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry even learns about the secret passageways. I simply cannot believe that they’d never spotted any House-elves during their three years at the school. Up to this point. Hermione seemed to know every minute detail about the school and its history. Perhaps they were simply never curious and, like many kids, never wondered about the domestic help who cleaned up after them.

Hermione takes a strong interest in the plight of the House-elves and decides to form the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare (S.P.E.W.) to advocate for Elf rights. Despite her best efforts, neither Harry nor Ron join her crusade. In fact, they seem blasé about the House-elf situation and believe that the Elves are happy to work at Hogwarts. Harry even seems a tad insensitive; for Christmas, he gives Dobby – who risked his life for Harry in Chamber of Secrets – an old sock. Meanwhile, Ron teases Hermione for being obsessed with S.P.E.W.

I’m all for letting Harry and Ron’s characters wade into morally ambiguous territory, but this setup doesn’t quite ring true. If anything, given his backgrounds, Harry should have been more sympathetic to the plight of House-elves than Hermione. When we first met him in Sorcerer’s Stone, the Dursleys basically treated Harry like a House-elf, forcing him to do chores and otherwise stay out of sight. In Chamber of Secrets, he actually developed a friendship with Dobby, and thus should have had a personal stake in the House-elf question.

As any social activist knows, personal appeals are often the most effective. I kept waiting for Hermione to say something like: “Harry, did you like the way your uncle and aunt treated you? Living under that staircase? Didn’t they order you to act happy in front of guests? Imagine your life if Hagrid hadn’t come to rescue you. How different is your situation from the House-elves, really? Except they don’t have a Hagrid.” Even if such an appeal didn’t convince Harry to wholeheartedly join S.P.E.W., I think the character really need to confront the fact that he was turning his back on individuals in a situation similar to what he experienced under the Dursleys.

Maybe Hermione should have written a book about the House-elves, "Uncle Dobby's Cabin"

Believability aside, the House-elf subplot adds an interesting twist by suggesting that the world readers saw simply as “magical” in Sorcerer’s Stone actually runs on slave labor. Again, as Harry grows up, the world is no longer black and white. As Sirius Black says, “If you want to know what a man’s really like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors…” At the same time, Rowling strikes a delicate balance. Despite Hermione’s pleading, the plight of the House-elves isn’t so desperate that readers become disgusted with Harry or Ron. The House-elves have always been somewhat comical figures and do seem to genuinely prefer servitude. We might admire Dobby’s Braveheart-like passion for freedom, and we be frustrated by the limits of Harry’s compassion, but I doubt many readers come away from Goblet of Fire thinking that Harry condones slavery.

If anything, Goblet of Fire seems to use the House-elf subplot as social commentary on society’s blind neglect of societal injustice. We know that problems exist in the world but rarely do we do anything about them. Most of us – and Rowling’s largely Western, middle-class readership – never dig too deeply into the lives janitors, waiters, bus drivers, etc. A news article about Asian companies using slaves to catch seafood might jolt some readers, but will probably prevent few from taking action – if they even remember the following day. Goblet of Fire doesn’t seem to imply that, in accepting House-elf servitude, Harry – or readers who engage in similar blind neglect – is becoming like Voldemort. It does make clear though that Harry will have to learn pity before he can become a truly admirable adult.

For all my discussion about the House-elves, they’re a small part of Goblet of Fire. The later Harry Potter books continue the House-elf subplot. There’s some payoff for Harry and Ron’s character development, but oddly the larger issue of House-elf rights remains unresolved by the final book. Perhaps this is meant to convey the difficult of social change? In any case, the House-elf question provides an interesting subplot throughout he series, but I wish the characters had had more meaningful and personal conversations about the subject.         

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

In some ways, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix marks the true beginning of Harry’s maturation as a character and as a person. As I noted in my review of Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledore misrepresented the nature of Harry’s character arc by focusing on moral choices. Even in this book, Harry is never confronted with a choice between good and evil, much less to join Voldemort’s Death Eaters.

Order of the Phoenix does three crucial things for Harry’s character. First, the book forces him to confront his emotions. Second, it challenges his preconceptions about friendship. Finally, it forces him to confront death.

Harry begins Order of the Phoenix in a darker place. He’s moody, angry at the world, and doesn’t want to sit next to the unpopular kids (i.e., Neville Longbottom) on the train to Hogwarts. In short, he’s a teenager. Some Harry Potter fans disliked Harry’s darker turn (calling him “EMO-Harry”). Although that’s not entirely unfair, Harry’s character needed to go in this direction. I found Harry’s unadulterated goodness in the first four books somewhat tiresome and unrealistic. After all Harry has suffered, I’m surprised he has so few emotional issues. I found Harry’s happy-go-lucky goodness in the first four books somewhat tiresome and unrealistic. Moreover, Harry has faced problems that presented physically, mentally, and magically, but never one that challenged him emotionally.

Harry’s emotional turmoil deepens as his faith in his friends and mentors suffers. Ron and Hermione keep secrets from him and don’t write to him during the summer. Dumbledore refuses to speak to him. The entire wizarding government turns on him as the Ministry of Magic rejects Harry’s claims about Voldemort. Perhaps most importantly, through occlumency lessons, Harry sees Snape’s memories of his father James Potter and godfather Sirius Black as bullies. If the lesson of Prisoner of Azkaban was that sometimes society shuns and wrongly condemns good people, Order of the Phoenix tells Harry that even his dearest friends and role models have flaws.

On top of that, Order of the Phoenix kills one of Harry’s key mentors. Ironically, for all the danger Harry has experienced at Hogwarts, nobody close to him had ever died (Cedric Diggory in Goblet of Fire was at best an acquaintance, never a close friend). Nor have any of the adults in Harry’s life died. Harry’s parents died when he was too young to remember, and by Sorcerer’s Stone he had no firsthand memories of them. When Bellatrix Lestrange kills Sirius Black at the end of Order of the Phoenix, we see how Harry reacts to loss for the first time.

Harry goes through the classic phases of grief. He denies that Sirius is truly gone, even asking a resident Hogwarts ghost if perhaps Sirius could reappear in ghost form. He lashes out in anger at those around him. When Dumbledore tries to console Harry by telling him that “This pain is part of being human,” Harry responds, “Then I don’t want to be human!” This is the closest Harry ever comes to Voldemort. Harry would never knowingly join the Death Eaters, but, like Voldemort, his initial instinct is to want to use his power to overcome (i.e., “eat”) death (in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, we learn how far Voldemort takes this obsession).

To some extent, Harry resolves the first two problems by learning to trust in those who have shown loyalty and can admit their flaws. Dumbledore, Sirius Black, and Harry’s friends are all able to admit their mistakes. Dumbledore had valid reasons for not talking to Harry – he feared Voldemort’s connection to Harry’s mind – but realizes that his actions hurt Harry. When Neville, Ginny Weasley, and Luna Lovegood volunteer to help Harry rescue Sirius at the Ministry of Magic, they join Harry’s inner circle of friends (on the train ride back to London, he sits with them).

Those characters who refuse to reflect on their flaws lose Harry’s trust. It’s telling that Harry’s relationship with Cho Chang dissolves because she is unable to admit that her best friend, Marietta Edgecombe, acted improperly in exposing Dumbledore’s Army. Even when centaurs threaten to carry off Dolores Umbridge, she never apologizes to Harry or appeals to his conscience; Harry in turn refuses to rescue her. In short, Harry figures out when he can overlook character flaws and when they indicate deeper personal weakness.

Although Harry doesn’t quite come to accept death in this novel (that won’t come until Deathly Hallows), at least by the end of the book he focuses more on the problems of the living than the dead. I particularly liked how Harry is pulled out of his depression – or at least distracted – when he sees Luna searching for her clothes. Luna tells Harry about her deceased mother and her hopes that they’ll meet again in the afterlife. By helping his friends, focusing on the living, Harry receives some comfort and consolation – something he wouldn’t have gotten had he followed Voldemort’s path in trying to cheat death.

Order of the Phoenix isn’t perfect – I found the satire of public education via Dolores Umbridge a bit heavy-handed, and the book suffers from numerous plot contrivances – but it takes real risks with Harry’s character, most of which work. Although Harry does begin the novel as an angsty teen, he emerges with a greater capacity for compassion and humility. Unfortunately, the film adaptation seemed unable or unwilling to convey the depths of Harry’s emotional turmoil. Perhaps “EMO-Harry” proved too controversial for fans; indeed the subsequent novels never challenge Harry emotionally to quite this extent.

Next week, I review Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in the Harry Potter series…         

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban continues the process by introducing layers of complexity and shades of grey. The book challenges Harry’s – and readers’ – preconceptions about Harry’s world.

In the previous Harry Potter books, adults were at best distant authority figures, like Dumbledore, and at worst arbitrary bullies, like Vernon Dursley. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets began to demystify adult authority figures by deconstructing the celebrity Gilderoy Lockhart and proving Hagrid’s innocence. Prisoner of Azkaban allows Harry to develop meaningful relationships with adult characters and to see them as friends.

For the first time, Harry finds a mentor and confidant in the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin. Previously, Harry’s instinct had always been to mistrust adults and refuse to share his concerns with them. At one point, Lupin asks Harry if anything is bothering him. At first, Harry lies and responds, “no,” but then immediately changes his mind and says, “yes.” He then asks Lupin why he had prevented Harry from confronting the Boggart during one of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes. It’s an important moment because Harry makes himself vulnerable by opening up to an adult. He realizes that he doesn’t have all of the answers and that he can turn to adults for help – at least some adults

Harry also develops an unexpected relationship with Sirius Black. At the beginning of Prisoner of Azkaban, the Ministry of Magic warns that convicted mass murderer Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban Prison. The book builds Sirius up as a major threat, especially after Harry overhears a conversation in which a Ministry official claims Sirius killed Harry’s parents. Then, near the end, the book pulls the rug from under readers by revealing that Sirius is innocent and is in fact Harry’s godfather. However, it’s important that Sirius never treats Harry as just a kid; Sirius always seemed more like Harry’s cool older brother than a parental figure. In a way, he acts as a bridge figure in Harry’s interactions with adults.

Prisoner of Azkaban trains readers to not trust first impressions. Everything in the first three-quarters of this book – the Ministry of Magic, Hogwarts professors, the media – tells Harry and the reader to fear Sirius. Only Sirius and Lupin’s word – and Harry’s instincts – suggest otherwise. It’s a sign of Harry’s maturity that he’s able to abandon his preconceptions when confronted with new evidence and accept Sirius. This twist also helps prepare readers for more dramatic reveals about major characters later in the series.

That said, I felt the ending cheated a bit. Harry and Hermione to use a Time-Turner to travel back in time and rescue both the Hypogriff Buckbeak and Sirius Black. Time travel stories are always problematic because of paradoxes. If somebody goes back in time and changes the past, then wouldn’t that remove the initial reason for that person to originally go back to the past in the first place? Prisoner of Azkaban cleverly acknowledges this by not actually having Harry and Hermione change the past, but rather fulfill actions in the past that were simply “off-screen.” It turns out that future versions of Harry and Hermione had already rescued Buckbeak and Sirius; we the reader just didn’t realize it. However, this then opens the question of why the characters couldn’t just use the Time-Turner to solve almost every problem they encounter (as spoofed by How It Should Have Ended).

Ultimately, time travel stories can’t get around these problems, which is why the best time travel stories use time travel as a device to tell a story, rather than merely as a device to solve a problem in the story. My favorite time travel stories put familiar characters in an unfamiliar time and place, the classic “fish out of water” scenario. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home did this effectively, not only providing laughs as the Enterprise crew wanders around San Fransisco during the 1980s, but also warning against overexploitation of natural resources. Back to the Future, arguably the most famous time travel movie, is really a movie about characters, with time travel simply an excuse for Marty McFly to meet his parents as teenagers. Stories that use time travel too freely, such as Looper, tend to get bogged down in internal inconsistencies and plot holes.

Unfortunately, Prisoner of Azkaban uses time travel as a plot contrivance to get Harry out of an impossible situation. Not only does it create plot holes, but it also undermines the themes of the book. By enabling Harry to save both Buckbeak and Sirius, time travel conveniently allows the heroes to have their cake and eat it too. This seems contrary to the idea layered complexity and moral ambiguity that the book introduces. I give the Harry Potter series credit for not relying too heavily on gimmicks and magical devices to resolve the characters’ problems The later books don’t shy away from forcing the heroes to make sacrifices. Perhaps Prisoner of Azkaban is meant to be one last hurrah for easy answers to tough problems.

Next week, I review Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in the Harry Potter series…         

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

** spoiler alert ** Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince should have been called Harry Potter and You-Know-Who because the primary plot gives Harry – and the readers – a glimpse into Voldemort’s backstory. Dumbledore schedules private lessons in which he uses the Pensieve to show Harry memories from key moments in Voldemort’s life.

Up to this point, the Harry Potter series had primarily presented Voldemort as an ominous threat. Other wizards so fear him that they dare not speak his name. For the first time, Half-Blood Prince shows Voldemort as an actual character. However, this doesn’t necessarily humanize him. On the contrary, it demonstrates a different facet of Voldemort’s inhumane evil.

There’s a dilemma for any writer who wants to create a strong villain. On the one hand, the villain must present a worthy threat for the hero. A good story requires the hero to overcome obstacles to defeat the villain. This means the villain must be – or at least appear to be – smarter and/or more powerful than the hero. The most intimidating villains can inspire fear just through their reputations. Mystery helps to build such reputations; villains – like real-world dictators – seek to control and manipulate personal information. Villains want other characters to talk about their strengths in order to distract them from their weaknesses (learning about a villain’s high school love poems would probably reduce the intimidation factor).

On the other hand, smart writers recognize that evil has a pathetic side as well. Both in real life and in fantasy, evil actions suggests a lack of maturation and moral development. In doing research for The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick was taken aback by the lack of empathy a Nazi official showed in his private diary when describing Jews. People who pursue morally questionable choices often do so because they cannot or will not form healthy human connections to friends and family. They pursue greater wealth or power because they cannot find happiness. Their lives are defined by deficiency rather than by contentment.

Better authors find a way to explore both facets of evil. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien created two villains – Sauron and Saruman – to embody different aspects of evil.* The two are clearly linked, not only by the similarity of their names, but also by their desire for the One Ring and world domination. Yet, throughout the books, readers learn little about Sauron, other than that he is a godlike being who commands vast armies. The narrative never provides the Hobbits with a Sauron “origin story” (although The Silmarillion reveals more); indeed, we never actually see Sauron firsthand in the novel. The heroes do not even attempt to fight him directly and instead rely upon subterfuge. Sauron appears intimidating and unbeatable right until his final defeat in Return of the King.

By contrast, readers learn much about Saruman’s history and his personality. We see Saruman directly several times. Each time, he is defanged by the protagonists. In The Two Towers, King Théoden resists Saruman’s entreaties and Gandalf breaks his staff. At the end of The Return of the King, Saruman chooses to enact petty revenge against the Hobbits by wrecking havoc upon the Shire. The man who sought to rule Middle-earth is reduced to bullying little people. Ultimately, Frodo takes pity on Saruman and refuses to kill him. In a backstory Tolkien wrote (published in Unfinished Tales), Saruman appears even more pitiable and consumed by jealousy of Gandal

In Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling combines intimidating and pathetic into Voldemort, as if Sauron and Saruman were a single character. It’s tricky because those two character traits work against each other. Before Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort was so successful at managing his reputation that few wizards even dared to speak his name aloud. Only a handful of wizards realize that in his youth Voldemort was Tom Riddle, and only Dumbledore seems to have pieced together his backstory. We only saw Voldemort a few times, and whenever he appeared somebody usually died. In Goblet of Fire, he demonstrates his casual disregard for life by telling Peter Pettigrew to “kill the spare” [Cedric Diggory].

After Half-Blood Prince, readers learn that Tom Riddle’s hatred of muggles all comes down to daddy issues. Riddle’s mother tricked his muggle father into loving her, only to leave her when the spell wore off. Riddle’s mother died after childbirth, leaving young Tom in an orphanage. The book strips away the cool, cruel image that Voldemort created for himself and reveals him to be deeply insecure and emotional. With the veil of mystery lifted, Voldemort becomes less scary and more pathetic. In fact, if the young Tom Riddle weren’t such a creep, I suspect many readers would have felt bad for him.

But readers don’t get to feel sympathetic for Voldemort because the backstory never actually “humanizes” the character. In my review of Chamber of Secrets, I claimed that Voldemort was inherently evil, and nothing in his backstory changes my assessment. There’s no tragedy about Tom Riddle, no sense of missed opportunities, no possibility of redemption. We never get the sense that Voldemort had good in him, or that he might have turned from evil had his mom and dad loved him. When Dumbledore first meets Tom in the orphanage, he already bullies other kids and steals from them.

Ultimately, Half-Blood Prince manages to leave Voldemort’s evilness intact even after removing some of the mystery; it’s just a different type of evil. It’s a good balance that makes Voldemort just enough of a threat for Deathly Hallows. Voldemort is still scary, but he’s also a loser. Unfortunately, Voldemort is still a very one-dimensional character, inherently evil. I think it might have been more interesting had Rowling given him a few positive virtues.** That said, even if Voldemort doesn’t rank amongst my favorite villains, I give Rowling a lot of credit for exploring different facets of evil.         

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

I know many fans find Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows disappointing. In one sense, I understand the feeling. The book differs drastically from its predecessors in both structure and tone. This is not simply “year seven” at boarding school. Harry, Ron, and Hermione have left Hogwarts to embark upon a more traditional epic fantasy quest to find magical artifacts.

Although Deathly Hallows probably could never have satisfied the fevered expectations of fans in 2007, the book does suffer from introducing too much plot too late in the series. Almost everything the heroes needed to do in order to defeat Voldemort they learn and accomplish in this book. It makes the book and the series as a whole feel unbalanced.

In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore discovers that Voldemort created seven Horcruxes in order to preserve his soul. One – Tom Riddle’s diary – was destroyed in Chamber of Secrets, while Dumbledore destroyed another – Marvolo’s Ring – sometime before Half-Blood Prince. That means Harry, Ron, and Hermione still have to find and destroy five additional Horcruxes in this final book. In theory, the Horcruxes could be anywhere and anything. That alone would pose a huge obstacle, enough for most epic fantasy novels.

Because the task is so daunting, Deathly Hallows – rightly – tries to make the process of searching for Horcruxes seem difficult. We needed to see Harry, Ron, and Hermione wandering in the woods at a loss for what to do. Yet, because none of the previous six books featured Horcruxes, Deathly Hallows bears this burden alone. In other words, this one book – which supposedly finishes the series – also acts as the beginning, middle, and end of the Horcrux subplot. Thus, it feels like a cheat when Harry, Ron, and Hermione manage to destroy all of them (with an assist from Neville Longbottom) so quickly. It’s quite convenient that Voldemort hid all five Horcruxes in the greater London metropolitan area rather than, say, in a junkyard in China or in a deep ocean trench.


On top of that, halfway into Deathly Hallows, the book adds yet another artifact quest.* Harry, Ron, and Hermione must not only destroy Horcruxes, but also stop Voldemort from obtaining the Deathly Hallows. I actually like the concept behind the Deathly Hallows. In my discussion of Order of the Phoenix, I said Harry still needed to learn to truly accept death as a part of human life. However, you’d think that by book seven in the series the characters would basically know what they have to do and have already started doing it. Because the book needs to spend so much time on exposition for these additional quests, it has less time to spend exploring the implications of these plot developments.

Deathly Hallows feels more like the end of the beginning than the end, or even the beginning of the end.

For example, there’s a moment when Harry briefly considers pursuing the Deathly Hallows for himself. He already has the Resurrection Stone and Invisibility Cloak, and he knows where to find the Eldar Wand. With these three, he would become master over death and supposedly have the power to bring the dead back to life. Even with everything Harry has learned up to this point, I still think this was – or should have been – a difficult choice. Wouldn’t he have been tempted to bring his parents back? Even Dumbledore couldn’t resist trying to use the Resurrection Stone to resurrect his sister. Harry’s decision should have been a crucial moment for the character, but the book barely touched upon it. I felt that we as readers needed to see Harry struggle at least a bit to make the right choice.

And yet, even if the denouement feels rushed, emotionally Deathly Hallows works as a story about accepting death. “The Tale of Three Brothers,” with the youngest brother who wore the invisibility cloak and then welcomes death as an old friend, is a beautiful metaphor for passing on gracefully. Harry’s walk through the Forbidden Forest to meet his own death at Voldemort’s hands reflects a mature acceptance and acknowledgment of the human condition (a far cry from “I don’t want to be human!”). I’m sure many readers cried when the ghosts of James and Lily Potter, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin appeared to comfort Harry.

I wouldn’t consider Deathly Hallows to be the greatest book in the series, but I’m also not disappointed. It has some good ideas and the slower parts – the character development, exposition, even the wandering in the forest – were necessary to obtain the emotional payoff at the end. I just wish J.K. Rowling had spread a bit more of the plot and exposition amongst the other six books. Deathly Hallows doesn’t feel like the final installment of a seven-book series building to a climax. In fact, taking the Harry Potter series as a whole, I’d say Deathly Hallows contains around 80% of the crucial plot and character development, making the previous six books feel like glorified backstory.

Epilogue

The epilogue of Deathly Hallows has become infamous. Deservedly so. The final book in a series should provide a sense of closure. The Deathly Hallows epilogue really only reveals the marital status of the main characters, which readers probably could have guessed (Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny). It does not resolve the many remaining questions. Did Hermione succeed in promoting Elfish welfare? Did Harry ever become an Auror? Did Draco Malfoy find redemption – or is he still a shady Slytherin? How did wizarding society achieve peace and reconciliation after such a bloody civil war? After all, many wizards, such as Dolores Umbridge, willingly supported Voldemort’s anti-muggle policies.

Apparently, the Pottermore website has short stories about the lives of the main characters after Deathly Hallows. I’d like to check it out. At the same time, readers shouldn’t have to do extracurricular homework just to get a sense of closure.