HBP - in depth thoughts and review
17 Jul 2005 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kangeikoPeople appear confused that I didn't like the sixth book.
Short version:
It's something that hit me as Snape revealed that he was the half-blood prince - this is a play on words that has me groaning. Whatever JK Rowling is setting up re: Harry and Snape and Dumbledore's death, I cannot be 100% sure that it's going to be twisty as a pretzel and involve deep cover!Snape, because she gave us a pun, instead of plot. That is my problem with the book.
Long version:
In my opinion, we have two concurrent plots running through The Half-Blood Prince: Plot A, where Harry tries to find who the Half-Blood Prince is, and Plot B, where Dumbledore dies and te Horcruxes come into play. Those two are, in my opinion, not related at all. I say this after a preliminary reading and reserve the right to spin fanwaked theories afterwards. But, on the surface of it - although Harry's obsession almost makes it appear otherwise - the two are unconnected. Sure, both plots involve Harry and Snape, but that's like saying that all Snarry fanfic ever is connected through those two characters. Not if you want it to add up to a coherent whole, it isn't. There is next to no cross-over, sans Snape's importance to both.
Now. Dumbledore's death hit me hard as I was completely unspoiled for it. I was half-expecting it, but I wasn't sure and had absolutely no idea that Snape would do it. Part of me was demanding that Snape reveal his true allegiance and save Dumbledore through his magic Mind-Ray (tm), but I think it was the Gryffindor part. The more realistic part had a migraine and was asleep. Anyway, when Snape did what he did, I had the immediate, horrified reaction - JK has decided to screw us over. Because, quite simply, the resolution to Plot B of "Snape is a bad guy", which is Harry's take on it, was so completely out of character for absolutely everybody that my small brain imploded and my migraine got worse (this is also the only time a book has succeeded in making my physically sick).
Many people had this reaction: Snape=evil makes no sense for Snape or Dumbledore's characterisation (especially in light of the fact that Snape is only defending himself as Harry attacks him later, and is still giving him advice), ergo Snape is deep under cover. Therefore, this is Deep and Interesting, especially wrt Draco and also because of Snape and Dumbledore's relationship. Think of the angs and the character development, and also Snape in deep cover as an evillibertine Death eater! Mmmm, plotty.
Maybe these people read books differently. Maybe they compartmentalssie the different storylines, or maybe I just got too used to Rowling's earlier books and therefore misread this one, because I, on the other hand, was still looking for coherence. I needed the Half-Blood Prince - his identity, the book, the whole damn thing - to be significant. More so than the Philosopher's Stone or Riddle's Diary (which, in retrospect=significant), more so than Sirius's escape or anything else. This is the penultimate book, and the A Plot needed to be significant.
You can imagine my horror at discovering that the Half-Blood Prince was a pun. I literally - and I am not kidding here - hit myself in the head with the book because there was no other way of my showing my horror that wouldn't spoil it for people around me. I railed and quaked silently. It made my migraine worse. Puns cause me physical pain. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wingsmith, take note.) In the midst of Dumbledore's death and my swirling emotions, I needed something more than a cheap shot. Snape as the half-blood prince is fine. Snape as the halfblood son of Prince is enough to spork out my own eyeballs. When Hermione brings up the idea, Harry is horrified and amused at the play on words. It's just not done. It's petty.
And Snape going for such a stupid nickname is horribly reminiscent of Arnold 'Ace' Rimmer, picking his own 'Iron Duke' nickname and having everyone call him 'Bonehead'. Snape wants to be called 'the half-blood Prince? No wonder he ended up with 'Snivellus'. Yes, he was young, but it doesn't make it any less stupid or childish, which is why I didn't expect him to go into a hissy fit about status and power and his damn nickname (a la movie!Riddle) like a crazed megalomaniac. "You will call me Dr Evil! I didn't go to Evil Medical School to become Mister, thank you very much!"
It was ridiculous. I couldn't imagine Snape ever, ever referring to himself as the HBP (which is more than I can say for James:
"I," James said, striking a pose under the apple-tree in the gardens, "shall be known from this day on as - the Half-Blood Prince!" The sun was setting behind him as he held the heroic pose for a good minute and a half, whilst Sirius and Remus looked at him, open-mouthed. Even Peter looked taken aback.
"Er, Prongs?" Sirius finally ventured. "Have you lost your bleeding mind?").
For that matter, given the heavy-handed allegory of Death Eaters=Nazis, how well do you think that the HBP would have come off in the Slytherin common room? I'm guessing about as well as a "the mixed-race stormtrooper".
I don't want to belabour the point, but I want to stress how ridiculous I found the title initially, and, later, how stupid the whole play on words seemed to me. The clash between the drama of Dumbledore's death and the pettiness of the identity of the HBP made the ending seem completely unbalanced.
I'm not talking here about what I wanted for the characters, or where I wanted the book to go, or even my opinion of the plot. I am talking about narrative weight and the problems of giving equal weight to what is essentially a joke at Harry's expense (this guy you thought was so great? Guess what? If you remove his hood, you will see that it was in fact the greasy old potions master! And he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you pesky kids!) and a war.
You know, I had this same thought. It was going to be for an X-Men fanfic, and would involve mind-control and the inhumanity of what we do to the military, and would also be held together by a play on words, where a failsafe would malfunction as an insult "eat me!" is misinterpreted as an order. Cannibalism would ensue, and we would have Deep Thoughts on the military mind and man's inhumanity to man at the same time. Luckily, I came to my senses and realised that hanging legitimate plot around a protracted pun with a really, really stupid punchline was quite possibly the worst mistake I could make with that particular fic. It invalidates the weight of the plot. It makes the narrative seem petty in comparison. Your reader is headdesking whilst your characters are dying.
I can buy that the HBP plot (plot A) was from the second-book. It feels like the C plot of one of the earlier books, because it would have made a nice filler page here or there. It would have had about the same weight as Percy's girlfriend, or Harry finding out that Tom Riddle is actually - gasp! - Lord Voldemort. It would have shared space, perhaps, with the revelations about the Shrieking Shack in PoA, or even that James Potter saved Snape's life in PS/SS. It would have been a throw-away line or two, and would have made people gasp and be amused, and then would have been factored in to people's thoughts on the characters and it would have been fine.
Except, of course, that JK didn't set it up like that. Instead, the C-plot of an earlier, lighter book is made into the A plot of the penultimate book.
Why did I dislike the book? It wasn't because she took Snape in a direction I didn't want, or that Hr/R displeased me or that Tonks and Remus happened. I disliked the book because, as a piece of literature, I felt that it was poorly set out and felt that its narrative weight was unbalanced in the second half. During the first half, when the identity of the HBP could have tied plots A and B together, the balance seemed appropriate. However, as I became more and more convinced that this was the case, the expectations of the last few chapters built and built. There has to be something tying them together or it doesn't make sense in my head. It's disconnected. It's basically Babylon 5, season 5 - you plotted poorly, and you ended up with too few things to talk about, so the important things got as much screen/book time as the unimportant little points. It's not that I didn't like the content so much as I didn't think much of the structure. It is sloppy. And it shows.
Take the first chapter for example. It is completely unnecessary. The second chapter is vital, but the first is superfluous and simply JK's indulgence of herself. The HP world did not need a caricature of Tony Blair, and, to be honest, having spent the book expecting it to come to something, I'm mighty annoyed that she did nothing with it. It's plot-points could have been three extra lines in the third chapter. Maybe it's vital to book 7. Why, then, is it in book 6? It's sloppy. I don't like sloppy in my literature.
I'm not a great writer, and I make millions of mistakes and have much to learn about structure and pacing. But I am a qualified reader, in as much as a reader can be qualified, and I feel that my opinion is at least somewhat informed when it comes to these things. I know what doesn't work, and I know well enough to ask for an editor before committing things to a publisher or examiner. This book feels unedited and self-indulgent. That is my problem with it.
That said - and I said much in the way of negativity - there was much I liked about the book, mainly in terms of content:
1) Harry: I actually really liked the characterisation of Harry. I felt that it was in fitting with what we know of Harry, and it progressed him to a point where he is actually all grown up. There is much for him to still realise - not to take things at face value, for one thing, and I bet that the realisations about Snape's role are going to be vital in book 7 - but he grows by leaps and bounds here. I especially liked him feeling sorry for Draco, and his Ginny obsession. Also? "You don't have to call me sir, Professor." OMG, I love the Harry/Snape gift, right there. Harry's all grown up now. They are equals and they can now snark and bait each other properly. *flails*
2) Ginny: Some people have ranted that Ginny is Mary Sue-fied because she's pretty and popular. Er. What? She's sassy, self-confident, she has her family's Quidditch talent (that's, what, all except Percy and Bill on the team?), and she's pretty. Amazingly, as girls hit puberty, they sprout hips and breasts. I am not surprised that Harry started to notice Ginny. If there was a bright, sassy redhead playing Quidditch (or football) around me in high school, I'd have noticed her too. She doesn't follow Harry around. She dates people she wants to date, deals with over-protective brothers who are amazingly prudish about such things (five boys on the go? Thanks, Ron, yeah, calling your sister a slut helps her self-esteem a great deal, I'm sure - but I wasn't sure about JK stressing every so often how un-slutty Ginny was, it seemed a little forced), and hangs out with her friends. To be honest, she sounds genuinely lovely, rather than Mary Sue-fied.
3) Ron/Hermione: this had me amused, as the whole 'make the other one jealous' was so puerile and yet so them. Harry's worries about his friends getting together and breaking up - or, worse, not breaking up - were also spot-on.
4) Riddle: I liked all the insights we had into him, especially the Horcrux idea. However, I wasn't so keen on Riddle as an evil child (just because I find the idea incredibly problematic, that evil is born - or that certain are evil - rather than the idea that I subscribe to, which is that anyone has the capacity to do horrible things, you just have to give them the right motivation and conditions).
5) Draco cursed: the whole Draco subplot was lovely and I enjoyed the Snape involved with it as well. I was especially pleased with Harry cursing Draco - and the horribleness of the curse. Harry works Dark Magic and doesn't realise. Draco is sliced open horribly. And Snape - Snape is fantastic, as he tends to Draco, as he's obeyed by Harry unconditionally, as Harry lies through his teeth to protect himself (really, Harry, you're that pure a hero, hmm? Better than your father, right?), and finally Snape dishes out a fairly lenient punishment that feeds the dirty little minds of slasher like moi everywhere. Oh, yes, the whole episode was fantastic.
6) Crabbe and Goyle as girls: this just made me laugh, because, yes, that's exactly the thing to do!
All in all, I liked individual aspects of the content - a bit here, a bit there - but I have to combine this with my impressions above. That is, my view is that this book provides lots of canon, lots of character development and lots of potential for fic (especially good and plotty Harry/Snape), but I found it personally very disappointing as a coherent novel. So, having slept on it and considered things a little more I am unlikely to leave the fandom (and, indeed, may start writing for it again), I am going to have to give Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the thumbs down vis-a-vis reviewing it as a book, rather than a collection of new facts and isolated fun scenes.
Hope that makes things a little clearer. Thoughts?
ETA: One of my theories turned out to be closer to the truth than I originally thought. Some dismissed it as coincidence, but 'tis not so. Not quite what I had speculated one year ago, but my main point about double standards still stands. Some spoilers, maybe, in the speculation.
ETA 2: have a look at this theory - food for thought.
Short version:
It's something that hit me as Snape revealed that he was the half-blood prince - this is a play on words that has me groaning. Whatever JK Rowling is setting up re: Harry and Snape and Dumbledore's death, I cannot be 100% sure that it's going to be twisty as a pretzel and involve deep cover!Snape, because she gave us a pun, instead of plot. That is my problem with the book.
Long version:
In my opinion, we have two concurrent plots running through The Half-Blood Prince: Plot A, where Harry tries to find who the Half-Blood Prince is, and Plot B, where Dumbledore dies and te Horcruxes come into play. Those two are, in my opinion, not related at all. I say this after a preliminary reading and reserve the right to spin fanwaked theories afterwards. But, on the surface of it - although Harry's obsession almost makes it appear otherwise - the two are unconnected. Sure, both plots involve Harry and Snape, but that's like saying that all Snarry fanfic ever is connected through those two characters. Not if you want it to add up to a coherent whole, it isn't. There is next to no cross-over, sans Snape's importance to both.
Now. Dumbledore's death hit me hard as I was completely unspoiled for it. I was half-expecting it, but I wasn't sure and had absolutely no idea that Snape would do it. Part of me was demanding that Snape reveal his true allegiance and save Dumbledore through his magic Mind-Ray (tm), but I think it was the Gryffindor part. The more realistic part had a migraine and was asleep. Anyway, when Snape did what he did, I had the immediate, horrified reaction - JK has decided to screw us over. Because, quite simply, the resolution to Plot B of "Snape is a bad guy", which is Harry's take on it, was so completely out of character for absolutely everybody that my small brain imploded and my migraine got worse (this is also the only time a book has succeeded in making my physically sick).
Many people had this reaction: Snape=evil makes no sense for Snape or Dumbledore's characterisation (especially in light of the fact that Snape is only defending himself as Harry attacks him later, and is still giving him advice), ergo Snape is deep under cover. Therefore, this is Deep and Interesting, especially wrt Draco and also because of Snape and Dumbledore's relationship. Think of the angs and the character development, and also Snape in deep cover as an evil
Maybe these people read books differently. Maybe they compartmentalssie the different storylines, or maybe I just got too used to Rowling's earlier books and therefore misread this one, because I, on the other hand, was still looking for coherence. I needed the Half-Blood Prince - his identity, the book, the whole damn thing - to be significant. More so than the Philosopher's Stone or Riddle's Diary (which, in retrospect=significant), more so than Sirius's escape or anything else. This is the penultimate book, and the A Plot needed to be significant.
You can imagine my horror at discovering that the Half-Blood Prince was a pun. I literally - and I am not kidding here - hit myself in the head with the book because there was no other way of my showing my horror that wouldn't spoil it for people around me. I railed and quaked silently. It made my migraine worse. Puns cause me physical pain. (
wingsmith, take note.) In the midst of Dumbledore's death and my swirling emotions, I needed something more than a cheap shot. Snape as the half-blood prince is fine. Snape as the halfblood son of Prince is enough to spork out my own eyeballs. When Hermione brings up the idea, Harry is horrified and amused at the play on words. It's just not done. It's petty.And Snape going for such a stupid nickname is horribly reminiscent of Arnold 'Ace' Rimmer, picking his own 'Iron Duke' nickname and having everyone call him 'Bonehead'. Snape wants to be called 'the half-blood Prince? No wonder he ended up with 'Snivellus'. Yes, he was young, but it doesn't make it any less stupid or childish, which is why I didn't expect him to go into a hissy fit about status and power and his damn nickname (a la movie!Riddle) like a crazed megalomaniac. "You will call me Dr Evil! I didn't go to Evil Medical School to become Mister, thank you very much!"
It was ridiculous. I couldn't imagine Snape ever, ever referring to himself as the HBP (which is more than I can say for James:
"I," James said, striking a pose under the apple-tree in the gardens, "shall be known from this day on as - the Half-Blood Prince!" The sun was setting behind him as he held the heroic pose for a good minute and a half, whilst Sirius and Remus looked at him, open-mouthed. Even Peter looked taken aback.
"Er, Prongs?" Sirius finally ventured. "Have you lost your bleeding mind?").
For that matter, given the heavy-handed allegory of Death Eaters=Nazis, how well do you think that the HBP would have come off in the Slytherin common room? I'm guessing about as well as a "the mixed-race stormtrooper".
I don't want to belabour the point, but I want to stress how ridiculous I found the title initially, and, later, how stupid the whole play on words seemed to me. The clash between the drama of Dumbledore's death and the pettiness of the identity of the HBP made the ending seem completely unbalanced.
I'm not talking here about what I wanted for the characters, or where I wanted the book to go, or even my opinion of the plot. I am talking about narrative weight and the problems of giving equal weight to what is essentially a joke at Harry's expense (this guy you thought was so great? Guess what? If you remove his hood, you will see that it was in fact the greasy old potions master! And he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you pesky kids!) and a war.
You know, I had this same thought. It was going to be for an X-Men fanfic, and would involve mind-control and the inhumanity of what we do to the military, and would also be held together by a play on words, where a failsafe would malfunction as an insult "eat me!" is misinterpreted as an order. Cannibalism would ensue, and we would have Deep Thoughts on the military mind and man's inhumanity to man at the same time. Luckily, I came to my senses and realised that hanging legitimate plot around a protracted pun with a really, really stupid punchline was quite possibly the worst mistake I could make with that particular fic. It invalidates the weight of the plot. It makes the narrative seem petty in comparison. Your reader is headdesking whilst your characters are dying.
I can buy that the HBP plot (plot A) was from the second-book. It feels like the C plot of one of the earlier books, because it would have made a nice filler page here or there. It would have had about the same weight as Percy's girlfriend, or Harry finding out that Tom Riddle is actually - gasp! - Lord Voldemort. It would have shared space, perhaps, with the revelations about the Shrieking Shack in PoA, or even that James Potter saved Snape's life in PS/SS. It would have been a throw-away line or two, and would have made people gasp and be amused, and then would have been factored in to people's thoughts on the characters and it would have been fine.
Except, of course, that JK didn't set it up like that. Instead, the C-plot of an earlier, lighter book is made into the A plot of the penultimate book.
Why did I dislike the book? It wasn't because she took Snape in a direction I didn't want, or that Hr/R displeased me or that Tonks and Remus happened. I disliked the book because, as a piece of literature, I felt that it was poorly set out and felt that its narrative weight was unbalanced in the second half. During the first half, when the identity of the HBP could have tied plots A and B together, the balance seemed appropriate. However, as I became more and more convinced that this was the case, the expectations of the last few chapters built and built. There has to be something tying them together or it doesn't make sense in my head. It's disconnected. It's basically Babylon 5, season 5 - you plotted poorly, and you ended up with too few things to talk about, so the important things got as much screen/book time as the unimportant little points. It's not that I didn't like the content so much as I didn't think much of the structure. It is sloppy. And it shows.
Take the first chapter for example. It is completely unnecessary. The second chapter is vital, but the first is superfluous and simply JK's indulgence of herself. The HP world did not need a caricature of Tony Blair, and, to be honest, having spent the book expecting it to come to something, I'm mighty annoyed that she did nothing with it. It's plot-points could have been three extra lines in the third chapter. Maybe it's vital to book 7. Why, then, is it in book 6? It's sloppy. I don't like sloppy in my literature.
I'm not a great writer, and I make millions of mistakes and have much to learn about structure and pacing. But I am a qualified reader, in as much as a reader can be qualified, and I feel that my opinion is at least somewhat informed when it comes to these things. I know what doesn't work, and I know well enough to ask for an editor before committing things to a publisher or examiner. This book feels unedited and self-indulgent. That is my problem with it.
That said - and I said much in the way of negativity - there was much I liked about the book, mainly in terms of content:
1) Harry: I actually really liked the characterisation of Harry. I felt that it was in fitting with what we know of Harry, and it progressed him to a point where he is actually all grown up. There is much for him to still realise - not to take things at face value, for one thing, and I bet that the realisations about Snape's role are going to be vital in book 7 - but he grows by leaps and bounds here. I especially liked him feeling sorry for Draco, and his Ginny obsession. Also? "You don't have to call me sir, Professor." OMG, I love the Harry/Snape gift, right there. Harry's all grown up now. They are equals and they can now snark and bait each other properly. *flails*
2) Ginny: Some people have ranted that Ginny is Mary Sue-fied because she's pretty and popular. Er. What? She's sassy, self-confident, she has her family's Quidditch talent (that's, what, all except Percy and Bill on the team?), and she's pretty. Amazingly, as girls hit puberty, they sprout hips and breasts. I am not surprised that Harry started to notice Ginny. If there was a bright, sassy redhead playing Quidditch (or football) around me in high school, I'd have noticed her too. She doesn't follow Harry around. She dates people she wants to date, deals with over-protective brothers who are amazingly prudish about such things (five boys on the go? Thanks, Ron, yeah, calling your sister a slut helps her self-esteem a great deal, I'm sure - but I wasn't sure about JK stressing every so often how un-slutty Ginny was, it seemed a little forced), and hangs out with her friends. To be honest, she sounds genuinely lovely, rather than Mary Sue-fied.
3) Ron/Hermione: this had me amused, as the whole 'make the other one jealous' was so puerile and yet so them. Harry's worries about his friends getting together and breaking up - or, worse, not breaking up - were also spot-on.
4) Riddle: I liked all the insights we had into him, especially the Horcrux idea. However, I wasn't so keen on Riddle as an evil child (just because I find the idea incredibly problematic, that evil is born - or that certain are evil - rather than the idea that I subscribe to, which is that anyone has the capacity to do horrible things, you just have to give them the right motivation and conditions).
5) Draco cursed: the whole Draco subplot was lovely and I enjoyed the Snape involved with it as well. I was especially pleased with Harry cursing Draco - and the horribleness of the curse. Harry works Dark Magic and doesn't realise. Draco is sliced open horribly. And Snape - Snape is fantastic, as he tends to Draco, as he's obeyed by Harry unconditionally, as Harry lies through his teeth to protect himself (really, Harry, you're that pure a hero, hmm? Better than your father, right?), and finally Snape dishes out a fairly lenient punishment that feeds the dirty little minds of slasher like moi everywhere. Oh, yes, the whole episode was fantastic.
6) Crabbe and Goyle as girls: this just made me laugh, because, yes, that's exactly the thing to do!
All in all, I liked individual aspects of the content - a bit here, a bit there - but I have to combine this with my impressions above. That is, my view is that this book provides lots of canon, lots of character development and lots of potential for fic (especially good and plotty Harry/Snape), but I found it personally very disappointing as a coherent novel. So, having slept on it and considered things a little more I am unlikely to leave the fandom (and, indeed, may start writing for it again), I am going to have to give Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the thumbs down vis-a-vis reviewing it as a book, rather than a collection of new facts and isolated fun scenes.
Hope that makes things a little clearer. Thoughts?
ETA: One of my theories turned out to be closer to the truth than I originally thought. Some dismissed it as coincidence, but 'tis not so. Not quite what I had speculated one year ago, but my main point about double standards still stands. Some spoilers, maybe, in the speculation.
ETA 2: have a look at this theory - food for thought.
