Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Book Review
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The threat of Voldemort is fully realized. The world has descended into chaos. Wizards are living their lives in fear. Students are being kept from going to school for fear of what might happen to the school now that the Dark Lord has returned. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is the last step in the journey before the ultimate conclusion. Darker tones along with answers to mysteries that have been bubbling up since the start of the series get answers. Is this book worth your time to read? Let’s find out.
Introduction to Half Blood Prince
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is the 6th installment to the 7 book series of Harry Potter. This book was published July 15th 2005 by Scholastic. The book contains 652 pages in the US version that are shared between 29 chapters.
The story takes on a darker feel that is also follow several mysteries has Harry Ron and Hermione try to discover who the Half Blood Prince is. At the same time, Harry and Dumbledore try to unlock the secrets to Dumbledore’s work over the last year involving Lord Voldemort, his rise to power and how we were able to continue causing issues in their world.
The story really takes the feel of growing urgency that was created in Order of the Phoenix and amplifies it. When comparing the style of this book back to the beginning of the series we get two different reading experiences. Let’s take a look at what contributes to this.
Story in The Half Blood Prince
The story in the Half Blood Prince was enjoyable and captivating from cover to cover. The book starts out with Harry being visited by Dumbledore as he asks Harry to help him with a task. The task is to recruit a brand new.. Potions teacher. At this point we are all expecting that the new teacher would once again be for Defence against the Dark Arts has it has been refilled for each installment to this series, but we are surprised to find out that the roles have changed.
The Professor Dumbledore is trying to pick up is Horace Slughorn, a previous potions master that had retired. This character is critical to Dumbledore's plans and desire to unlock secrets to Voldemort's past.
Throughout the school year Harry and Dumbledore continue to work to unlock secrets to the past of the Dark Lord to try and uncover how they can defeat him for good.
As usual the events that transpire through this book are all loosely connected to an end goal. Malfoy in particular finally gets his time in the spotlight as Harry is convinced that he has turned to join his family with Lord Voldemort and no one believes him.
Harry’s concern over Malfoy starts very early on after visiting Weasley Wizard Wheezes. The joke shot that has opened up in Diagon Alley by Fred and George. Now that those characters have left school, they have taken harry’s winnings from the TriWizard Tournament and started the business that they worked on for years.
This book also builds on the teen romance between many of the characters we have grown up with. Ginny Weasley is dating Dean Thomas but Harry has developed feelings for her. Ron and Hermione get into several spats as Hermione lets her feelings about Ron become known to Harry. Ron dates Lavender Brown who gets in everyone's face with their mushy interactions.
It makes sense that these interactions would start to become increasingly common in this book as all these kids have been around each other for over 5 years and are now in their 6th year of hogwarts putting them around 16 and 17 years old.
But it’s all these things combined that make for a really compelling and emotional story. We have become aware that death is a real consequence in this series with the past two books.
The climax for this book is legendary in my mind. There were so many unexpected twists as well as a really dark and creepy scene in this book as Harry and Dumbledore continue their adventure together.
The twist at the end of the book caught me by surprise when I first read the book like anyone else that read it which easily cements this book toward the top of the series when trying to list my favorites. I will not go into more on this as I am trying to keep these as spoiler free reviews.
The end of this book sends shockwaves through the reader with no idea what happens next. It was a perfect setup for the final installment to the series.
The Characters In Half Blood Prince
There do not appear to be very many new characters in the Half Blood Prince which gives the existing characters a chance to continue development.
The one new character that stands out the most that was introduced though was Horace Slughorn. His character likes to collect successful relationships which is why he is drawn to Harry. We get to learn how he came to know many different wizard families such as Serious Black’s family and Harry’s parents. His character is played out to be quite the snob though in that he only likes to surround himself with the best and in doing so puts others aside.
Ginny’s character grows slightly. I know many people have issues with the movie version of her character but I feel that the book version of her character grows more realistically and has previous history that can better explain how her character has grown into who she is by the end of Half Blood Prince.
I feel like in this book Ron starts to really develop his own identity that was somewhat lacking in the previous books. He turns 17 in this book and tries to learn to apparat. (Which is the art of teleporting from one place to another). He does not succeed in this even through he takes extra lessons to try and get it down.
His confidence coming out as he is on the Quidditch team this year. Speaking of which, the previous two books were able to omit school quidditch season due to make room for more plot with TriWizard Tournament and the rules applied to break up quidditch groups by Professor Umbridge. It comes back in this book which makes it refreshing without it overstaying its welcome.
Hermione’s character continues to succeed with her abilities as a Witch. She also attempts to learn to apparate. When Ron gets his girlfriend, this makes her Jealous and as a result she hangs out with Ron less since she cannot stand the two together.
Luna Lovegood’s character grows as well as she gets into situations with Harry when he invites her to go to one of the “Slug Club” meetings.
If there are characters that grow the most in this book I would have to say that they are Malfoy and Dumbledore.
Dumbledore shares much more about himself and his failures and frustrations. His mysterious and very important life gets put on center stage for Harry to see in this book and it really begins to crack his character and what makes Dumbledore such a smart and successful wizard. By the end of this book we are very heavily invested in the continued research into Voldemort and the adventure that it takes him and Harry on.
Malfoy’s character has a very large amount of growth in this book. We see this mostly from the eyes of Harry as he follows him around throughout the year. Malfoy finally is more than just a bully character to Harry and the gang when they get into multiple serious fights throughout the book.
Pacing of Half Blood Prince
This book does a good job at stepping the reader in the mystery and has something new hiding around every corner. It’s very hard to put this book down from cover to cover. There is a solid mix of imminent danger even within the castle walls as there are several threats on Dumbledore's life. These threats to the growing intensity of the situation and very real threat of Voldemort’s growing control of the society around the wizarding world.
At the same time, these smaller encounters hark back to the person to person mystery solving that Harry Ron and Hermione would do in the books in the past. J.K Rowling was able to craft a mystery book that did not slog much at all.
Conclusion
Half Blood Prince was easily in the top 3 of the books in the Harry Potter series. The writing feels like it has taken a step up from the previous novels in the series as well it’s ability to captivate the reader. It pays off many plotlines and hinted ideas that have been cleverly placed throughout the entire series.
Even if this was not the original direction that J.K. Rowling had in mind for the series, it plays off really well. Everything that has lead to this book serves a purpose and leads to good payoffs over and over again.
Most importantly, this book really does well in setting up the final chapter for the series. It’s clear what needs to happen next and the lessons that the characters learned not only throughout the course of this book but the entire series will play a role in that final chapter.
If you want to find out where this book ranks in the series you can check out our ranking list for the Harry Potter book series here!
This book is easily worth the read. It cannot be skipped. If you would like to pick up a copy of this book for yourself you can use our affiliate link. Also, be sure to check out the reviews of the rest of the books in the series if you have not already below. Soon to come is the review of the final book in the series. Keep your eye out for that.
What are your thoughts on Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince? Be sure to comment below and let us know.
