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A review by snowbenton
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
2.0
Repeat after me: There is no such thing as a love potion. Those are rape potions. Yet this entire book acts like they are no big deal. Even Hermione says they aren't dark magic. What. The. Fuck.
It is wild to me that six books in we have so many classroom scenes and every teacher is like "here is a complicated task I haven't explained. Go do it." It's a wonder any of these kids have survived this school. None of the adults in this book should be allowed near children. (Especially Hagrid. It gets creepier every book the way they are always in his house. I'm sorry. I used to like him too. But it's creepy.)
I definitely had some nostalgia pangs reading this one. I remember going to the midnight release at Borders and having a sleepover at my friend Julie's house with two other friends who totally passed out, and she and I stayed up all night just so we could finish it, but I was so tired I barely remembered what I read and had to read it all again. Ah, to be newly fifteen again.
But once again the internal inconsistencies pull me out of the story (Hagrid would absolutely have known who Slughorn is because he was the potions teacher when Hagrid was at Hogwarts, Slughorn shows up on the first day of class with Felix Felicis only for it to be revealed later that it takes six months to make (and he was on the run so he definitely wasn't storing it in his house)) and the sheer volume of useless text is a drag. Rowling was so popular when this was published that they just let her write as much as she wanted, which failed for two reasons. One, she is absolutely shit at world-building, and two, half the scenes in this book are reiterations of previous books that do nothing for the plot (Draco is mean, we can't lose the Quidditch match, the trio are fighting with each other, detention, etc).
No lovely quote from Dumbledore to wrap up this review. You know why.
It is wild to me that six books in we have so many classroom scenes and every teacher is like "here is a complicated task I haven't explained. Go do it." It's a wonder any of these kids have survived this school. None of the adults in this book should be allowed near children. (Especially Hagrid. It gets creepier every book the way they are always in his house. I'm sorry. I used to like him too. But it's creepy.)
I definitely had some nostalgia pangs reading this one. I remember going to the midnight release at Borders and having a sleepover at my friend Julie's house with two other friends who totally passed out, and she and I stayed up all night just so we could finish it, but I was so tired I barely remembered what I read and had to read it all again. Ah, to be newly fifteen again.
But once again the internal inconsistencies pull me out of the story (Hagrid would absolutely have known who Slughorn is because he was the potions teacher when Hagrid was at Hogwarts, Slughorn shows up on the first day of class with Felix Felicis only for it to be revealed later that it takes six months to make (and he was on the run so he definitely wasn't storing it in his house)) and the sheer volume of useless text is a drag. Rowling was so popular when this was published that they just let her write as much as she wanted, which failed for two reasons. One, she is absolutely shit at world-building, and two, half the scenes in this book are reiterations of previous books that do nothing for the plot (Draco is mean, we can't lose the Quidditch match, the trio are fighting with each other, detention, etc).
No lovely quote from Dumbledore to wrap up this review. You know why.