New 'Harry Potter' is Worth the Wait
Don Hettinga, Professor of English, Calvin College
The Grand Rapids Press

Monday, July 18, 2005

Harry Potter fans who have endured the two-year wait for the sixth installment of J.K. Rowling's record-breaking fantasy series won't be disappointed by "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

In a novel that's tighter and more exciting than the previous one, Rowling continues to raise the stakes for the young wizard-in-training and his friends.

In fact, younger readers should be forewarned about the novel's intensity and about the death of a major character.

Harry, now 16, has become a celebrity because of his previous success in battling Voldemort, the evil wizard who has returned to power and who is, in a manner suggestive of contemporary real-world events, terrorizing both wizards and Muggles (Rowling's term for non-magical humans).

Even as the tabloid press makes much of a prophecy that points to Harry as the only wizard capable of defeating Voldemort, Harry discovers the magnitude and the loneliness of that task.

Politicians try to draft him as a public-relations figurehead; girls at school create love-potions to try to snag him as a date.

It doesn't help that Harry has the extra pressure of being captain of his Quidditch team or that he experiences the typical teen confusion that arises when romance complicates friendships.

When overwhelmed, Harry can turn to his mentor, Albus Dumbledore, the school's headmaster, for advice, and the Hogwarts principal proves himself as savvy about teenagers as he is about magic, though he does, at one point, have to remind Harry that saving the world probably should take priority over friendships, detentions and Quidditch.

With the introduction of the plot that gives the novel its title, Rowling also makes readers wonder whether Harry's character is displaying a hubris that may endanger himself, his friends and his mission.

Much to the dismay of Harry's good friend Hermione, a character whose sensibilities readers have come to appreciate, Harry follows the handwritten spells in an old text book that once belonged to someone who called himself "the half-blood prince."

Despite Dumbledore's warning to bring any unusual objects to the headmaster's attention, Harry keeps the textbook a secret, and while the handwritten advice brings Harry top grades in potions class, his use of it keeps readers on the edges of their seats throughout the novel.

The real tension, of course, comes from the imminent conflict with the Dark Lord himself.

Dumbledore prepares Harry in private tutorials that also help to bring readers up to speed on the Dark Lord's history.

Yet the forces of evil have also been preparing for conflict, and readers wonder along with Harry about whether Voldemort's Death Eaters have somehow infiltrated Hogwarts.

It's to Rowling's credit that she manages to sustain this mystery up to the dramatic conclusion of the novel.

As in the earlier novels in the series, some of the clues to the mystery that seem as if they must be red herrings, turn out to be authentic clues, and some of the most probable clues turn out to be red herrings.

And it's that pattern of Rowling's technique that raises the intriguing question of whether maybe, just maybe, the death at the end of "The Half-Blood Prince" isn't quite as real as it seems to be.

But of course if the death is real, the fact we want it not to be real is another measure of Rowling's ability to create characters that readers truly care about.

If the release of book seven is similar to the previous releases, the answer won't be available until 12:05 a.m. on some future July morning.

In the mean time, we can re-read "The Half-Blood Prince" to see if just perhaps there's something we missed the first time through.

Don Hettinga is an English professor at Calvin College. He can be reached at yourlife@grpress.com.

Copyright 2005 The Grand Rapids Press. All rights reserved. Used with permission.