Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

J.K.Rowling.

Review by Roberto Quinteros, July 20, 2008.

J. K. Rowling is back with the sixth book of her amazing stories about the most famous wizard we have ever known, Harry Potter. As she has already been doing on the previous volumes, Harry is living with his uncles and their son Dudley, waiting to see his friends, Ron and Hermione, on their sixth year at Hogwarts, the school for Witchcraft and Wizardry. But the most expected is to see a new appearance of Voldemort, the eternal villain, and how Harry will defeat him this time.

Although many teenagers and adults have become keen on these stories, this book is directed to children so the style that Rowling uses is very simple and easy to read. It is a very big book for children, people can say, but that is because she passionately spent a lot of words by writing dialogues which are accompanied with descriptions of gestures and feelings, so the readers can make their own film in their head.

In the first chapter, we can notice that there is a big change. Dudley and Harry become friends. They are enjoying a good time celebrating their graduation by having a soda drinking contest. And at the end of it, we surprisingly see that Dudley has the possibility to become a wizard. But the facts that have not changed are the bad treatment towards Harry from his unpleasant uncles who do not like his presence at all, and the addition of a new teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts who is going to be someone whose surname is familiar to Harry.

Rowling cannot contain her excitement about this work and she expresses all that she feels at the end of the book: ‘Wow, two books down! One more to go! I can’t believe I actually did it… wow. This Book Six is just ONE page shorter than Book Five was… ARG! …. But, first, I must say that this book would not have been possible if I had not had the support from all of you fans out there…’

I absolutely recommend this book for those who love fantasy and adventure. The film has not been released on theatres yet, and it depends on you if you prefer that the film shows you the story or you want to know now what is going to happen. In my opinion, this is the perfect moment to read it because then, you can go to the cinema and act as the specialist who knows everything about it. But above all, you can evaluate the movie according to what you have read in order to make out if there are concordances with your personal images. Both ways are good enough to enjoy this story. Don’t miss them, you won’t be let down.