Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

JK Rowling. 2005.

First and foremost - to this book I say:

No effing way.

Nope.

No sir, I don't believe it.

No effing way.

And that pretty much explains it - for those of you who've read it (and I can't imagine anybody reading this post who hasn't read it) you understand what I'm saying and for those of you chosen few who have not read this latest in the Harry Potter series, well this will be a giant spoiler for you:

I do not believe and I refuse to believe that Snape actually killed Dumbledore.

And yes, I can imagine that this probably causes a lot of late-night conversations among those who live and breathe Harry Potter and I'm certain that there are bound to be various theories about what REALLY happened and some discussion on how Rowling is going to write herself out of this one.

For me, I'm just going to wait. I've come to learn to wait years for each installment.

For me, the Harry Potter series is a growing lesson, and I have stayed with this series long after my own son has grown too "cool" for the books. However, this series for me will always hold a special place in my heart; therefore it is quite impossible for me to write an actual "review" of the book.

Suffice it to say that my personal favourite remains the Goblet of Fire, but I actually consider that one should take the entire series as a whole, such as Lord of the Rings, in which none ever states that they prefer Two Towers to the Return of the King, and so forth, but rather you like it or you don't. Sort of the same as the Chronicles of Narnia - you may like Lion better than Dawn Treader and so forth, but you either like the series as a whole or you do not.

And the reason why I mention these series is that I believe that the Harry Potter series will eventually join the canon of British Fantasy that includes the other aforementioned works. In fact (and I'd need to look this up again) but it seems to me that last year or the year before I read some review by some pretentious prat who absolutely lambasted Rowling for her terrible writing style. For that particular prat, however, nobody had written a sentence worth a damn since Roth's Portnoy's Complaint.

Balderdash. Rowling may not be an elevated "Homme des Lettres" but by God this is a fantastic series, and any series in which each book can force me to read it until I fall asleep at 3 or 4 in the morning is damn good writing with damn good characters that I damn well have grown up with.

In short, I feel passionately about this series in a way that very few other works have, and this brings me back to my two earlier points: One, that I can't write an objective review about this book and Two, that I cannot allow myself to believe that Dumbledore died in such an ignominious fashion, especially after he had so staunchly defended Snape against all his detractors.

It's a set-up. Something will happen. I have faith.

Other than that, I'll simply say that it's a very good book, and if you're already a Harry Potter fan then it's just the thing for you and if you've never read a Harry Potter book before, then don't start with this one, go back to the first, or even the second, and have fun reading them all straight through.

and let me know what YOU think!!!!

VG