Harry Potter and the Never-Ending Story

[etherial]

#5 is down. This one was somewhat disappointing. There were things going on, and they were important, but it wasn't linked together very well. The various subplots had no cohesion. The new teacher at school had nothing to do with the Order of the Phoenix, and neither had anything to do with most of the interpersonal tensions.

I read the first several chapters with tears in my eyes. The frustration he felt, the anger, it was all real, I know exactly what he was going through. But when the adventures set in, and he started romancing Cho Chang, I could still imagine what he was going through, but I couldn't feel it. It's like I've lived half a life, the bad half.

I mean, I've only ever had one boyfriend, and I've only ever kissed one girl, and she's on my Short List. The Short List of people who I shouldn't be around. Yeah, that's something to be proud of. I had a sort of schoolboyish relationship once. I spent several hundred dollars talking on the phone to Kim, but we don't talk much anymore. But I never open my eyes and see something nicer than her.

Comments

Sounds more like bad editing to me.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Unchecked story length, lack of cohesion, overuse of all-caps, These are all things that were just fine in Harry Potter and the Allusion but have been growing in the later books.

Re: Sounds more like bad editing to me.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

*shrug* They're certainly fun books, but Rowling is at best a mediocre writer. She's got no ear for language at all, her characters are the standard-issue plucky schoolchildren of most British children's literature, and her plots are done to death. Not that there's nothing wrong with workmanlike fiction. I've observed before that she needs a merciless blue-penciling to drag her from the bad to the good side of average.