Rating: 5/5

Lost References:

Hurley, seeing Sawyer in his new glasses, says, “Dude, looks like someone steamrolled Harry Potter.” Book Three, The Prisoner of Azkaban, is also on Jack’s shelf (the one with time travel).

Thoughts:

Since the final movie just came out earlier this month, it’ll be difficult to avoid comparing books to movies. Except the last one. I’m going to see Deathly Hallows Part Two later this week. As far as the books go… they cover a wide scale of quality and a hefty amount of plot, come to that. I guess that means I’ll be dealing in broad strokes.

One through Three were amazing. These three books make up some of the best literature I have ever read, with Prisoner of Azkaban at the peak of excellence. (Oddly, I find this one the worst of the movies, thanks to poor CGI, directing, and acting. Gary Oldman was a great choice for Sirius, being an incredible character actor, but even he couldn’t save this flick.) Then the books started going downhill. Four and five were readable, but they started the trend of door-stopper novels that abandoned concise storytelling and indiscriminately included extraneous scenes and information. Six was pretty bad. I want to forget Seven ever happened. Plot-wise, it lacks creativity (which is disappointing, since creativity was one of Rowling’s strong suits previously. Essentially, the characters, in the middle of their Book-Six-introduced quest to find a bunch of magical artifacts find out that they have to… find more magical artifacts. The resolution was poor, too. Half the cast died random, weightless deaths. Everyone who survived married each other and had kids named for all the dead people.

But even this blight of a book can not make the first three any less wonderful. The mix of serious plots and lighthearted moments, the originality, the flawless pacing, the fact that children in trouble at least consulted adults, the unique characters, and just the writing, all make these three novels worth the reading. In fact, it’s practically worth reading the whole series to find out what happens. Even if you’re disappointed in the end.