2023 EDIT: Part of my 2023 clear-up, of books I no longer like, or am no longer interested in, or remember well as standing out, or find as special anymore, or I otherwise will not miss.
[I think I have finally outgrown this series and fandom, and I can no longer in good conscience support it, thanks to She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. My once-love of the franchise has turned sour; I am disenchanted, disinterested, and I can't look at it fondly anymore. I will always have the memories, but not the books.]
Final Score: 4/5
2020 EDIT: Even better on a second read, so many years later. So engaging, exciting, imaginative, magical and charming, I couldn't put it down. It is much funnier than I remember it, as well; I actually laughed out loud a few times (Take this passage: 'Ron had already had a big argument with Dean Thomas, who shared their dormitory, about football. Ron couldn't see what was exciting about a game with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly. Harry had caught Ron prodding Dean's poster of West Ham football team, trying to make the players move.' - page 107). In retrospective it is too short (and the Philosopher's Stone itself isn't even mentioned until page 161, not that belated references to the subtitle, small in subject compared to the whole story, is unusual in a 'Harry Potter' book), but the sequels will certainly fix that! and the series will become much more complex and dark.
'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' - a childhood fantasy gem that can be read in a day.
Final Score: 4/5
Original Review:
Harry Potter Reviews
Book 1: 'The Philosopher's Stone'
If there is one book that has captured the imaginations of readers from all over the world since 1997; one book that people - growing up around the time of the new millennium - can say is the epitome of their childhood; one book that, despite easily being labelled and brushed off as only for children, many adults read today as part of a life-affirming, magical and groundbreaking series; it is 'Harry Potter'. More specifically, the first in a series of seven which started it all, 'The Philosopher's Stone'.
Harry Potter - the orphan, the hero, the Boy Who Lived. The literary legend.
The first-time author used the name of J.K. Rowling, despite not having a middle name (the K stands for Kathleen, after her grandmother), because her publishers were afraid that young boys would not want to read a book about a boy wizard off on exciting adventures and discoveries if it's clearly written by a woman. Sadly this sexist marketing technique is still being practised - having been used since humankind first learned the written word in fact, with men taking credit for women's work. (Just look at Jo's pseudonym for her latest adult crime series, 'Cormoran Strike'). Also, in the United States, the book's title was changed to 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone', because of more ludicrous reasons like "Philosopher" being misleading when the book isn't a fact-based work on philosophy (because the title, 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone', totally makes me think of a textbook, not a fantasy fiction piece), and that children are dull and uninspired nitwits who won't read anything with the word "Philosopher" in it.
But anyway, after dealing with various complications in her personal life and in the world of publishing, Jo Rowling's debut sold millions of copies, and by mid-2008 was translated into 67 languages. The six sequels - 'The Chamber of Secrets', 'The Prisoner of Azkaban', 'The Goblet of Fire', 'The Order of the Phoenix', 'The Half-Blood Prince', and 'The Deathly Hallows' - published up until 2007, were just as if not more successful. Popular culture in the medium of film as well as in literature would not be the same without that black-haired, bespectacled little boy.
And having read all seven 'Harry Potter' books, I find it is not hard to see why there are so universally beloved. Jo's imagination is outstanding: with her naming of characters, places and objects, her intricate plotting, the way she writes such compelling suspense, and how she writes real people with mad-yet-believable flaws in an otherwise magical world.
But what about 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' itself? Well, I'll start with a synopsis that everyone probably already knows about but I will write it anyway:
Harry James Potter is a ten-year-old orphan with a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. He lives in the cupboard under the stairs at Four Privet Drive, with the horrible and snobbish Dursleys: his Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and cousin Dudley. Vernon has been burning letters addressed to poor Harry, and a boa constrictor talks to the boy at a zoo. As midnight announces Harry's eleventh birthday, when he's hiding in a shack with the paranoid Dursleys, a giant named Rubeus Hagrid stomps into his life, and tells him he's a wizard.
The letters Harry's uncle had kept from him are acceptances to Hogwarts, a school for young wizards and witches in training. The Dursleys, who are his Muggle (non-magical folk) family from his mother's side, have been keeping this extraordinary secret from him ever since he was first left on their doorstep as a one-year-old.
Now Harry's life is changed forever. He finds out that, in the bizarre wizarding world, he is famously known as "The Boy Who Lived", and that his parents were not killed in a car crash like the Dursleys told him, but were murdered by a dark wizard. This formidable wizard is known as Lord Voldemort, but he is feared so much even after his supposed death that he is mainly referred to as "You-Know-Who". He has disappeared, and it is widely said that he has been destroyed by the baby Harry on the night the Dark Lord murdered James and Lily Potter; thus why the boy wizard has such a strange scar on his forehead, and why he is famous even before he knows his true identity.
On the Hogwarts Express train from Platform Nine and three-quarters, Harry meets Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, the two people who will become his dearest and most trusted friends in all his trials and obstacles. In his first adventure and path to self-discovery, Harry is given his wand, a cloak, and an owl named Hedwig. He encounters eccentric teachers - including the Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore and the sinister Severus Snape - and a jealous rival by the name of Draco Malfoy. Plus there's the Sorting Hat, the poltergeist Peeves, the sport Quidditch, a troll in the girls' toilets, the Invisibility Cloak, the Mirror of Erised, Fluffy the Cerberus, and a mystery surrounding the famous philosopher Nicolas Flamel, said to have created a stone which gives its owner immortality...
All his life Harry had been wishing for his parents, and waiting for someone to take him away from the Dursleys. His wish has been granted, but not in the way he expected or wanted. While he grows to love Hogwarts like his first real home, he soon realises the dark side to becoming a wizard and getting to know the people and places of a world he could never have imagined before. His parents' demise is still shrouded in mystery as well as in misery and pain, and the Dark Lord's influential presence lingers. The Boy Who Lived, merely a child, is in terrible danger...
Really, I don't think I need to go on. Within the external world of 'Harry Potter' are so many internal elements, symbols and touches that it would be futile to include even half of them in one review. 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' is a short book (the shortest of all the 'Harry Potter' books) - my copy is 223 pages long - however it is filled to the cauldron's brim with excitement and magic. Magic from an English boarding school in an ancient castle, and the untoward secrets and dangers lurking in nearly every corridor.
The tone of 'The Philosopher's Stone' is not quite as whimsical as you might expect. The scenes heading towards the thrilling and twisted climax are bleak and dark, but the novel's charm and the timelessness of its themes - focusing on the ethical importance of love and the evils of power - balance it out.
The large cast of characters each read like living and breathing people, and are very distinctive in appearance and dialogue. Hagrid's written dialect is greatly charming and matches his personality of a giant who is rough but possesses a gentle heart.
Here are a few more character profile descriptions:
Harry Potter himself. He is eleven and comes from an abusive background, and even though he keeps certain thoughts and emotions to himself, he gets angry at the right moments of the story. He possesses a dry sense of humour and is much wittier and funnier than he is portrayed in the film versions. He's also quite insightful, especially when he's thinking about his parents, which are the saddest parts of 'The Philosopher's Stone' and indeed in the other books. The Mirror of Erised chapter is beautifully written; grief from a child's point of view is a heartbreaking thing to read.
I also like the fact that Harry isn't treated any differently from other Hogwarts students, in spite of his "heroism" status. He has to work as hard as everyone else in his lessons. Any pressure put on him because of his fame is shown as a negative thing. Many reviewers seem to ignore or not acknowledge this aspect of Harry's character. Some teachers, like Snape, may hate him, but that's for deeply personal reasons, and Snape treats all students who are not in the Slytherin House horribly.
Ron is hilarious. Deeply flawed but lovable; the comic relief who is much more entertaining than pitiful. I've known boys like him back at school, and I also adore redheads. While he may read like a simple, insecure youngest of seven brothers (his inferiority complex becomes more apparent in the later books), Ron's skill at chess displays his many layers; more than the reader first realises. Towards the climax, his self-sacrificing nature shines through, and Brave Sir Ronald doesn't sound like such a joke.
Hermione starts off as a typical teacher's pet; swotty, bossy, a perfectionist, and impatient of those she considers less dedicated and talented than herself (i.e. Ron). She has exceedingly poor social skills, but deep down she is insecure and does want to be liked. When Harry and Ron save her from a gigantic troll, Hermione learns about something that is in no textbook: the importance of the bonds of friendship. She can still be bossy towards her friends, but more often than not this attitude, within dire situations, is justified. That she is a Muggle-born witch further adds to her complex character, and I felt more amazed than jealous of her intelligence. Hermione uses her studies and her well-learned nature to great effect throughout the entire series; she is cunning and resourceful and saves Harry's life enough times to count rosary beads on two bracelets. Smart yet humble, sensitive but tough when need be, Hermione Jean Granger is a brilliantly admirable feminist character much needed in the fantasy genre, in my opinion.
At this stage in the series, Professor Dumbledore is very strange, but clearly this is a front and he actually has a loving and glowing heart. Professor Snape is one of the most awful characters to be called a good guy I've ever come across in fiction - he bullies his students and almost never gets punished for it, and his favouritism and double standards leave much to be desired. In the following books Snape's motivations are revealed to be, in my opinion, rather pathetic and unjustifiable, but I'll explain my reasons for thinking so in my future reviews, to avoid spoilers. Draco Malfoy is a very typical rich and bigoted bully in the first few books, who is then shown to be capable of both evil and restraint as a result of his sheltered, privileged and magical-family-supremacist-empowered upbringing. Then there's the strict but reasonable Professor Minerva McGonagall, and Neville Longbottom, who's an even bigger Butt Monkey than Ron, but much braver than he thinks he is, to name a few more noteworthy characters.
The 'Harry Potter' book series contains many universal themes: self-sacrifice, friendship, family, social acceptance, the evils of prejudice, the good and bad in human nature, and how love is not something that can be controlled or destroyed. These themes are only a fraction of what 'Harry Potter' has to offer. They are important for children - and adults - to learn and grasp. Fantasy can have the power to teach us about how we live in the real world and how we abstractly go about our everyday existence, and the 'Harry Potter' series epitomises this.
But one element I will comment on in this review of the first book is the childlike wonder that Ms Rowling has captured, and thereby heightening its appeal. What I believe to be one of the reasons for 'Harry Potter''s success is the imaginations of the children reading the books, who see themselves as Harry Potter - young, bored, dispirited, and waiting to be sent a letter to go to a magical school and get sorted into Houses. They love imagining that they're getting their very own wand, pet (choice of owls, cats, newts or rats) and a riding broom for Quidditch, and learning about potions, charms, magical creatures, Dark Arts defences, and the Forbidden Forest. They want to have exciting adventures at Hogwarts and become the best wizards they can be. No wonder 'Harry Potter' has such a large Fanfiction following. My university Writing Fantasy tutor touched on this aspect of the series, and I can definitely see how it holds up. I'd loved to have gone to Hogwarts as a child, despite the dangers. What lonely, boarding school-loving outsider wouldn't want this fully-realised wizarding world to be factual? I wanted magic to be real because J.K. Rowling made it seem real. In her writing she spoke to the child in all of us, who would like to believe that anything is possible - like magic, and the strength to defeat evil and overcome adversity.
'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' isn't perfect, of course. It does show a debut writer's tendency to over-describe places and seemingly-unimportant events a little before getting to the plot. The revelations to the mysteries are a bit too contrived and quickly solved, and a few passages of dialogue feel forced and unnatural. However, the writing is nevertheless engaging, with surprisingly dry and sardonic wit for a "children's book", but funny and clever all the same; enough to keep any reader turning the pages.
So that's it, I think. My impression of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone', the start of a journey leading to a spectacular phenomenon, and the birth of a literary icon.
I'll leave this review by saying that the film version is very faithful (especially when compared to the adaptations of the sequels). Not as entertaining as the book (and very long), and the actors who play Harry's dead parents look a lot older than 21, but the movie does the story justice. And Rupert Grint was born to play Ron Weasley.
Harry Potter Book 1:
Final Score: 4/5
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