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: Great reread. A dark, highly emotional suspense mine cart ride. A story that teaches kids the valuable life lesson that you can get anyone to reveal anything if they are drunk enough. Myrtle comforts Draco! Buckbeak is here! Love spells still aren't taken seriously, not even by Hermione of all people! But the last pages are some of the most beautifully written I've ever read.
Final Score: 4.5/5
Original Review:
Harry Potter Reviews
Book 6: 'The Half-Blood Prince'
The Ministry of Magic finally admits the Dark Lord Voldemort's return. War is here, tensions on all sides flare, and as usual Harry Potter is placed at the heart of the mystery - and the solution - of it all. Even the Muggle British Prime Minister is informed of the dangers, because the Death Eaters are attacking the non-magical world as well.
In his sixth year at Hogwarts - still open despite protests from wizard parents - Harry spends more time in Headmaster Dumbledore's company than he has ever done before, for Dumbledore makes it his solemn duty to set Harry up for trips and tasks to learn more about his enemy, Voldemort, aka Tom Riddle Jnr. There is also the secretive duo of Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy to be concerned about; Snape has inexplicably achieved his lifelong ambition of becoming a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. Horace Slughorn, a former Head of the House of Slytherin, is persuaded by Dumbledore in Harry's presence to become the replacement Potions Master. In one Potions lesson Harry discovers an old textbook scribbled with "improved" spells and concoctions. It is signed, "Property of the Half-Blood Prince". And not even the ever-present threat of the resurrected Dark Lord can distract Harry, Ron and Hermione from their love lives. Ron, a Quidditch player, starts dating fellow student Lavender Brown, making Hermione bitterly jealous. Harry suddenly finds himself developing strong feelings for Ginny Weasley. Ginny, his best friend's sister. A group of girls are trying to get Harry - now viewed as the Chosen One of a prophecy to defeat Voldemort - to fall in love with them by mixing love potions into his food (real love and fabricated love are major plot points in this book). The control over one's will is further present at the school when it becomes apparent that the Unforgivable Imperius Curse is deftly at work.
Harry, with the help of Dumbledore and Ron and Hermione, delves deeper into Voldemort's past via a Pensieve. How did Tom Riddle truly become the most feared of all wizards? What are Horcruxes? (Not even Hermione has heard of them). And who is the Half-Blood Prince?
Bonds form and break apart. Bridges collapse. Ties sever. Betrayals are known. More loved ones die and leave nothing and everything behind. Harry will have to decide once and for all who he is and what course of action he should take to stop Voldemort and his myriad of followers from taking over both worlds. He has the ability, the opportunity and the choice to set change. He is growing from the Boy Who Lived to the man who fought and saved others.
But what doesn't change from his first, more innocent year at the wizard school is the trust and companionship of his most beloved friends.
'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' gives its readers the origins of Voldemort; from his conception, his childhood in an orphanage, to his thirst and rise for power upon learning from Dumbledore that magic exists.
Then there is: Harry becoming the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, the Unbreakable Vow, an engagement in the Weasley household, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, the introduction of Fenrir Greyback - the werewolf who bit Remus Lupin, Apparation classes, Draco's ambition to become a Death Eater, the burial of the spider Aragog, the luck potion Felix Felicis, the Inferi - enchanted corpses, and a surprising romance between Lupin and Tonks...
Let's talk about Voldemort.
A power-hungry dictator who, similar to most political party leaders, is a hypocrite. He plans to rid the world of anyone not "pure" or "pure-blooded", when he himself is a half-blood wizard. He is descended from Salazar Slytherin; from his mother Merope, a poor, abused witch. Merope got a Muggle man, Tom Riddle Snr, in her possession via a love potion. She stopped giving Tom the potion when she was pregnant with their child in the hope that he might have grown to love her naturally, or at least stay for the sake of the unborn. But it was all doomed from the start. He left her, and she died in childbirth in a Muggle orphanage. Dumbledore took Tom Riddle Jnr to Hogwarts eleven years later, and the rest is history.
I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the role love potions play in this instalment of the 'Harry Potter' series. Rowling once said that Voldemort has never been able to love anything but power, due to being conceived by a parent under the influence of a love potion. Fabricated or forced love is not real love. Now by all accounts this makes the villain of the franchise a child conceived through rape. Because Merope did force Riddle Snr into a relationship with her - by using the magical equivalent of Rohypnol or other date rape drugs. While I'm sure Rowling did not mean that any child brought into the world by rape will turn out evil, it does lead me to question just why the hell love potions in the magical world exist in the first place.
In fiction in general, I find the concept of a love potion to be bloody terrifying. The idea of someone forcing love or lust on you - so they have complete control over you - has got to be the most unintentionally horrifying thing ever. The victim is no longer his or her own person with a free will. And this type of plot is constantly used in children's programmes! It is rare that, when a love potion (or whatever love MacGuffin) is implemented, the implication and possibility of rape is mentioned. Because forced love can likely lead to such a crime.
So I wonder why, in 'Harry Potter', love spells, hexes, jinxes, and other such evils are not banned or made illegal. Hogwarts students in 'The Half-Blood Prince' attempt to use them on Harry, and no one takes this seriously. It even leads to Ron nearly getting killed on his birthday in one chapter! You'd think the Ministry of Magic would forbid this kind of magic, seeing as it's caused the birth of the most evil wizard of all time. I'd guess they aren't aware of this, but surely Dumbledore would have informed them of the fact? Love potions serve no serious purpose, and they only cause trouble, humiliation and pain. So why teach kids how to make them at schools?
Maybe the wizards really are sadists; good or bad or grey. Or they're just that irresponsible, and like real authority figures they tend to overlook the obvious root to a problem...
But aside from this observation on my part, I love 'The Half-Blood Prince'. It achieves the eloquent order and balancing of magical elements, darkness, suffering, friendship, romance, drama, and adventure. No matter that there is less action than in the other books.
I was immersed in the mystery of the Half-Blood Prince - wizard monarchies don't exist, so who was he? Or she? Does he or she still live? And I absolutely loved reading about the trips into Voldemort's past - where the parallels between the hero and the villain are made plainer for us to read into.
Harry's relationship with Dumbledore is a study of strength in kindness founded through differing experiences - the teachings of the old and the young. Harry relies on Dumbledore as a father figure in 'The Half-Blood Prince' after Sirius dies in the last book, and if anything were to happen to the Hogwarts Headmaster, well, it's quite unthinkable, and not only for Harry.
Since 'The Half-Blood Prince' is also about romance, I would like to talk about the growing relationships between the characters, and how they've developed from childhood innocents to sexually-aware teenagers.
I think that romance is one of the few weakly-written aspects in the series. The quick love between Lupin and Tonks, for example, though they are secondary characters so this can be overlooked. But Harry and Ginny? Oh boy. Ginny did have a crush on Harry from the start - as a ten-year-old girl. But after her major ordeal in 'The Chamber of Secrets', her role becomes less meaningful as the series goes on. She is Harry's true love all of a sudden, because the story says so. It is suggested by Hermione that Ginny has been dating other boys in order to try getting over Harry, or to make him jealous. Harry had feelings for Cho Chang during all this. And when that romance didn't work out, suddenly he sees Ginny as a woman for the first time, when up until now he along with the readers saw her as a little girl. Harry's potent love for Ginny is brought on by jealousy at the sight of her kissing a boy, which never bothered him before. Did Ginny only date a lot of boys to get Harry's attention? (I am not against girls expressing their sexuality in this way; this discussion isn't about slut-shaming, but about male dependence.) Because if so, she is not really a so-called strong, action-orientated female character, because her life is revolved entirely around Harry, her childhood crush.
There isn't a lot I can say about her, even when she appears centrefold in the action of the books. Her "spunk" and "feistiness" don't shine in comparison to Hermione's own strong and fiery presence. And Hermione is useful and contributes so much to Harry's adventures; whilst Ginny never actually does anything worthy of note. She is Ron's younger sister, the only Weasley daughter, a damsel-in-distress in 'The Chamber of Secrets', is very good at Quidditch, dates different boys each year at Hogwarts, joins Dumbledore's Army and the rescue mission at the Ministry in 'The Order of the Phoenix', Harry tells her the cliche that he's too dangerous to be around at the end of 'The Half-Blood Prince'... err... she likes owls... and pygmy puffs... and that's all I really remember about her character. So yes, the idea of Ginny being Harry's "one and only" from the start doesn't ring true to me.
The romance I do like and find believable in 'Harry Potter' is the one between Ron and Hermione. Their's is the most well developed as the books progress. They are polar opposites, and spend most of their time together arguing. Hermione even makes a habit of insulting Ron when she isn't just nagging him. But I see their relationship as being like James and Lily's - the boy has to mature in attitude and mind so as to earn the affections of a smart and temperamental girl. I cannot believe there are fans who think that James used a love potion on Lily to get her to fall for him. The main difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry can love - he wasn't conceived by a fake and forced love like the Dark Lord. I know the reader never actually sees a character growth in James Potter, but that's because the story is told from Harry's point-of-view. He never knew his dead father. I also find it rather offensive that some people find it hard to comprehend that silly and stupid boys can grow up to become mature and responsible adults. It's a disservice to men; the implication that they can't change for the better, for they will always be made of hairs, snails and puppy-dog tails. Ron and Hermione grow up to be an entertaining pair; their snappy dialogue exchanges never get old.
The hunt for Horcruxes - dark magic so powerful and forbidden that high-ranking wizards like Professor Slughorn will do anything to hide their existence - is on. Voldemort used them in the height of his power, and they serve as his terrifying back-up plan. To conjure Horcruxes is to lose one's humanity, and being human is something Voldemort doesn't want, for he wishes to be an immortal wizard. His greatest fear is death.
Speaking of Slughorn, I like how he lavishes attention on wizard students with famous parents and who are from a pure-blooded background, but he is never portrayed as an evil person. He is a simple, superficial man who has made a lot of terrible mistakes in his life; an innocent bigot who doesn't know any better, and who gets scared when his secret mistakes are known. Unlike Gilderoy Lockhart, Slughorn will come to own up to his flaws and follies, and fight for the lives of others regardless of heritage. He is an example of a character with a grey morality and worldview - not everyone in 'Harry Potter' can easily be labelled as "good" and "bad" like in so many other fantasy series' for children.
'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' - great drama, great suspense. The Inferi are profoundly creepy and a force to be reckoned with along with the Dementors - I love them. A great, slow-building story without being irrelevant, uneventful or plodding.
A great final year at Hogwarts as well, with all its teachers, classes and examinations. For the final book of the series will not be mainly set in the school or at its grounds.
Film thoughts: I'm sorry. I really am. But I cannot stand the film adaptation. It's long, it's dragging, and it's tedious - even for a 'Harry Potter' motion picture. Hardly any impressive use of magic and special effects is actually shown in the whole running time (though I admit that Aragog's carcass looks excellent). Harry's motivations and goals are inconsistent - and he is a lot more arrogant than in the book and the previous films. The mystery of the Half-Blood Prince is a subplot that is given too little attention, to the point where once the identity of the Prince is revealed I did not care at all. I mean, it's in the title! Why sacrifice action and magic - not to mention the threat of the antagonist - for boring romantic melodramas and comedic moments that are not funny? Scenes are introduced and dropped as quickly as they come - such as Harry meeting a Muggle waitress in the beginning, and the burning of the Burrow. Lupin and Tonks are already a couple (married? The viewer isn't told) with no explanation or development given - even the book had them arguing over the dangers of loving and marrying a werewolf! The only good things I can say about the movie are: Ginny's character's strong presence, an improvement on Dumbledore as a wise and kind wizard, and Draco losing his sanity over becoming a Death Eater is well written and well acted by Tom Felton. I could go on and on about everything I hate in the film, but this review is long enough and I don't like to keep writing when I'm angry and not thinking straight.
Rant over.
The next book, 'The Deathly Hallows', is Harry Potter's final adventure. This is it. The final battle begins, with more horrifying death and destruction than ever before. Friendships and loyalties will still be tested, and yet more mysteries are to be uncovered.
Good luck to Harry, Ron and Hermione, on their quest for Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes.
Harry Potter Book 6:
Final Score: 4.5/5
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