false 3 0439554934 9780439554930 290117 11429 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3.Harry_Potter_and_the_Sorcerer_s_Stone 1077326 J.K. Rowling 1676666 67317 2 13 false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Tue Sep 04 08:26:11 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 04 08:47:22 -0700 2007
What bothers me about the Harry Potter universe is its characterization of magic. Why is magic so easy in the Harry Potter universe? It's only moderately a matter of skill to use magic. Magic is mostly saying the correct word with the correct intonation and the correct flourish of the wand and boom! you've done something magical. If it were only for small things I don't think this would bother me so much, but the same works for more serious things, like killing someone.

There is so much that is contrary to logic (and I don't mean science, I mean how reasonable people would behave) in the magic of Harry Potter that it drives me crazy. Why is the magical world so separated from the real world? What is their interaction? If magic works in the muggle world, what is preventing someone like Voldemort from completely taking over the muggle world? What is preventing any character from killing any other character by simpling saying the killing curse at any time? Human decency? Obviously there are a lot of characters in the books that don't have any. This never made any sense to me.

I would like to draw a comparison with (and I'm sure people on a site about reading books will crucify me for mentioning TV, which is obviously incapable of being an art form) Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In Buffy, every time you use magic, you pay for it. For little things, like floating a pencil, you pay for it in concentration, and maybe a little physical energy, but not more than going for a walk. However, the more you take, the more you have to give back in one form or another. The show is not always entirely consistent on this, but the idea makes sense. To bring someone back from the dead, you have to kill something else, or pay some other kind of price. If you want to kill someone, there is a physical price, a mental price. Nothing is free. In Harry Potter, it seems like everything is free.

It's always put me off, and every time a fan tries to explain to me why I'm wrong it sounds like a deus ex machina, or just a plain old stretch.

Also, quidditch is the most pointless sport ever created. Only in 1 game out of 1000 does anything 99% of the action matter to the outcome of the game. Only the seeker and the bludgers mean anything.]]>