Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis in Readers of a Dead Language

Aug 28, 2015 Michael Arnold rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This was ok. It's a children's book - not a bad children's book mind you, but a children's book nonetheless. It's a nice fantasy, and a lot of funny child-like exaggerations that also really stretch the 'suspension of disbelief'. Other than that, what is there to say? It has a very poignant moment with the Mirror of Erised, but other than that this novel doesn't really try to do anything particularly interesting.

The characters are sometimes well-drawn, they can be angry, grumpy, happy, want to This was ok. It's a children's book - not a bad children's book mind you, but a children's book nonetheless. It's a nice fantasy, and a lot of funny child-like exaggerations that also really stretch the 'suspension of disbelief'. Other than that, what is there to say? It has a very poignant moment with the Mirror of Erised, but other than that this novel doesn't really try to do anything particularly interesting.

The characters are sometimes well-drawn, they can be angry, grumpy, happy, want to be alone - Ron stood out as particularly strong actually but when held in comparison the characters only become more flat and less defined. Malfoy is already practically a little nazi, Hermione is only defined by her love of knowledge and she only has two moments ('troll in the dungeon' and the end, with the potions and fire) where she isn't seen with a book in her hands. Neville gets more characterization than her, frankly, and I already quite like that kid.

The story itself - it seems that the kids always know best. And a lot of the time they do actually know best. Which is weird. We are told that the teachers are all geniuses and brilliant wizards, but don't seem to have a spell to combat invisibility cloaks. The only justification we get for why the teachers don't bother is they are 'really rare'. Well, I don't think that's a very good reason, really. Also, they have all these brilliant teachers - and a ghost is teaching History of Magic? That stretches things too a bit for me.

One point of style that really irritated me is that almost every line of dialogue after a while was given a description. It has all been said and done now, Potter seems to be over, but it became increasingly irritating when a character would say something 'importantly', or 'angrily', or 'sharply'. I really wish Rowling didn't do that, it really stands out as bad when reading. Another thing that really irritated me was how she set things up, Rowling has this very bad habit of giving a sentence explaining what the thing was, and then in the next sentence would say the same thing again, only giving slightly more information. The example that most readily comes to mind is the first paragraph:

'Mr. And Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.'

I know the writing needs to cater to the intended audience, children, but these two sentences could have been combined without losing anything, which didn't make the book choppy really, it just meant that it felt like the book was spoonfeeding information which I don't care for. But, since this is a children's book there are worse crimes I suppose.

It's not awful, it's even first rate for the intended audience. But as a work of actual, quality literature it's at best lacking. This is only the first in a series though, so there is time for Rowling to build on this, making the Potter series into something really special. I will be starting 'The Chamber of Secrets' very soon. ...more

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