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Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Drama certainly has a way of dogging Harry’s footsteps.

I started the Harry Potter series with the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. For that reason, it is rather special to me, and it is the book that I have read most of the seven. The first time I finished it, I was so blown away by the conclusion that I flipped it over and started it again. I blabbed to all of my friends about this ‘amazing’ book I’d read and got a couple of them going on the series. Hopefully that is what I have managed here as well.

Like its predecessors, Prisoner of Azkaban features a Hogwarts ill at ease and a Harry who is, yet again, at the centre of dramatic events. Unlike its forerunners however, the tension that stalks Hogwarts’ halls is confined not only to the school, but has expanded its wings to enfold the wizarding world at large. Sirius Black, dangerous detainee of Azkaban fortress, has escaped his confines. Known to the wizarding world as Voldemort’s right-hand man and a mass murderer, Black is certainly not the kind of man the Ministry of Magic wants on the loose. They also think they have a shrewd idea of just what, or rather, who he is after: the baby who caused the downfall of his master, Harry Potter.

As you might guess, this doesn’t make for a very auspicious beginning to Harry’s third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. To add to his worries, the dreaded dementors of Azkaban have been stationed around the school to guard against Black. Every time Harry goes near one of these terrible creatures, he is forced to re-live his worst memories and, given the tragedy that marks him, these are very, very draining experiences.

For a thirteen year old boy who’s got enough to worry about – new classes, trials on the Quidditch pitch, bullying from Slytherin and the first whispers of a crush – these are unwelcome additions. Luckily, not all the new things Harry encounters at Hogwarts are terrible. Perhaps most encouraging is the arrival of a new Defence Against the Dark Arts instructor, Professor R. J. Lupin, a man who knows his subject and how to teach it. Of course, much like everything and everyone else in Hogwarts, there is more to Professor Lupin than meets the eye. Is he completely trustworthy, and does he know more about Sirius Black, and Harry himself, than he is letting on?

Prisoner of Azkaban is, in my considered opinion, the most well-constructed of the Potter books. Rowling spins a very tightly woven story, each incident, comment, piece of information carefully placed and leading up to a truly spectacular, cathartic conclusion. Here we see the full blossoming of the skills that Rowling had been developing (absurdly quickly and very well) in the previous books, skills for mystery writing that she continues to display in her avatar as Robert Galbraith in the recently released The Cuckoo’s Calling. The rest of the series deviates considerably from this format, adhering much more strongly to the epic fantasy tradition and the Hero’s Journey identified by Joseph Campbell, so perhaps it is fitting that Rowling signs off on this format with this rather brilliant rendering.

Not only is it a wonderfully plotted novel, but the characters of Azkaban also contribute to the reader’s enjoyment. Professor Lupin is a great addition to a growing cast, warm, encouraging and spiced with just the right amount of mystery. Here, finally, is a teacher that Harry seems to relate to on a personal level, a mentor figure who is accessible to his students and forges a personal connection with our hero. It’s the first time in the books that Harry has someone to go to not just for academic queries, but the larger moral and personal dilemmas that will beset him as he grows older and deals with harsher trials.

Not only does Lupin provide him support in the form of practical instruction, but also a shoulder to lean on, an adult perspective that is exclusively marked for Harry. I think this is an important connection for the young wizard, given that, until this point in the books, he has not had an adult wizard who catered exclusively to his support. Lupin is Harry’s mentor, not Ron or Hermione’s, and this is, I feel, an important development in his journey towards hero-hood.

CONCLUSION: By the close of the book, Harry has taken some very important steps towards adulthood. The tone of Azkaban is dark, like its immediate predecessor, perhaps more literally so because of the presence of the dementors. I concede that the movie adaptation may have done its bit in cementing this impression; Alfonso Cuaron’s rendition of Hogwarts was considerably less cheery (and more chilling) than Christopher Columbus’s. The shadow of death falls early over Azkaban, not only because of the threat represented by the escaped criminal, but also alluded to time and again by another entrant, the Divination professor Sybil Trelawney. Whether any of these signs and portents will result in something concrete is for you to find out.

So what on earth are you waiting for?

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When myself, Joe Martin, and Kenny Soward sat down to create the Dead West series, we had a very simple framework for the story we wanted to tell: zombies in a Wild West setting. That alone was enough to get us excited and ready to work, but if you know any of us you’re probably shaking your head and laughing. Why? Because you’d know damn well we couldn’t possibly leave it at that. No, we had to sit down and rationalize everything we were doing, examine everything remotely similar that had come before, and completely reconstruct our simple idea, renovate it and add on, a hut turned into a metropolis.

We ended up dumping a mixed bag of characters who were guaranteed to create sparks once they were thrown together. From pure blood Indians to half-breeds to railroad bosses and ex-Civil War soldiers, women, and ex-slaves, and reverends, there was simply no way for there not to be bad blood and ulterior motives galore within the dynamic we’d laid out. The best part of that, though, these folks needed each other to survive despite their differences. We built from that.

It started out small, our concept of zombies not being some mass, out of control contagion. We sat down and gave them a purpose, a reason to be up and walking about. In doing so we opened up the door to a whole new angle on the whys and hows and whatnots. A mystical angle. Our zombies don’t just wander the land on instinct, assuaging a need to feed, but they are driven by a malicious, malevolent man who uses them to further his own interests. And once we had that piece of the puzzle, we couldn’t just have some run of the mill bad guy out seeking some simple score. No, robbery or revenge or plain murder wasn’t enough of a drive for a compelling villain given the scale we were building up, so we reached back in time again, the entire story built on a framework of real history. There we found our answer.

The Chinese people play such an important part in the life of the old west, specifically the railroad where our story takes place, it was an easy leap for us to delve into that world, that mythology. The old Kung Fu series helped. We ended up creating a Daoist/Taoist monk whose backstory and life had run afoul of the natural ways, a strange sense of necromancy warping his morality. A need for ultimate power driving him on.

And once we opened that door, it only took another couple more steps for us to add a Lovecraftian feel to the story, great mystical powers and distorted creatures brought into the world, chaos and insanity following in their wake. Now picture our rogue’s gallery of characters caught in the middle of an undead uprising and being hunted by a necromantic sorcerer who’ll go to any length to get what he’s after.

And all that is blended into a brutal and dark story line that’s all action and drama. That’s what the Dead West series is all about.

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Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The first three of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books follow a detective-story pattern: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry faces a problem of some sort, and the plucky young hero and his friends are determined, despite their junior standing and almost complete lack of expertise, to get to the bottom of the matter. The second in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, sticks most faithfully to this tried and tested mystery formula, and it is for this reason, I think, that it is one of my favourites.

Even before he begins his second year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter is warned by a strange visitor that ‘terrible things’ are to take place at the school. Despite his best efforts to find out more, however, he is unsuccessful and it is with nothing more than a cryptic warning that he arrives (dramatically) at Hogwarts, having flown there with Ron in the Weasley family’s Ford Anglia. Unfortunately, this seems to set the tone for the rest of the year, with nothing being quite as it should be in Harry’s considerably more-than-normal school.

Legend tells of a secret chamber built within the castle by one of the school’s four founders, Salazar Slytherin. Within this Chamber of Secrets resides a monster that can be controlled only by the wizard’s heir, who will unleash it in order to purge the school of those that Salazar Slytherin deemed unworthy of a magical education. Namely, Muggleborns (witches or wizards born to non-magical parents). Someone appears to have opened the Chamber this year, and no one, not animal, witch, wizard or even ghost is safe. Harry, Ron and Hermione will once again have to do their best to get to the bottom of this mystery.

I loved Chamber of Secrets. For a very long time, I told people it was my favourite of all the Potter books. This is for many reasons, one of which is that it gives me a thoroughly enjoyable scare every time I read it. I found some sections of the book terrifying (you might know which when you read it); it’s amazing how Rowling manages to evoke that sense of fear with the merest whisper of a suggestion. What is most amazing is that, despite the fact that I know what’s coming, I get frightened anew every time I read the book. Rowling is just that good at what she does.

We meet a host of new characters in this book, some of whom will later turn out to be very important. For instance, readers make the acquaintance of Ginny Weasley, youngest member of the Weasleys and, on the other side of the spectrum, Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy’s sinister, smooth-talking father. We’re also treated to our first extended stay in a wizarding home when Harry spends a good part of his summer holiday with Ron and his family at ‘the Burrow’. Rowling further widens the borders of her world when she takes Harry on an impromptu (and rather shady) trip through the seedier parts of the shopping district called Knockturn Alley; she further illuminates the castle of Hogwarts a little more when our heroes view the Slytherin common room and Harry is summoned (on a separate occasion) to Headmaster Dumbledore’s office.

Besides the chance to explore a little more of the ‘Potterverse’ as fans dub it, Chamber of Secrets offers a slightly darker take on the wizarding world. For the first time, issues of race and equality, which will come to be central themes in the books, are explicitly introduced. Through the categories of ‘Squib’, ‘Muggleborn’, ‘halfblood’ and ‘pureblood’ Rowling highlights the very real differences of treatment and opportunity meted out to people in the ‘real world’. While the purebloods have the inestimable wealth of familiarity with magic and a certain sense of entitlement (at least, the rather extremist ones like the Malfoys do), Muggleborns must make up for their late-coming into this world through hard work and a constant need to prove themselves, most well-evidenced by Hermione Granger, one of Harry’s best friends and the most academically brilliant witch in her year.

Rowling rather simplifies the notions of blood-purity and racial tension by splitting combatants along house lines (Slytherin, as the house founded by the pureblood-crazed wizard, becomes the haven of all those who support his ideas, while the others are more tolerant, seemingly), which leads to vilification of a quarter of the school later in the series. I understand that this is done in order to present a stark good versus evil picture to supposedly less nuanced childish understanding, but as an adult reader, it troubles me.

Whatever her weaknesses be as a moralist, though, there is no denying Rowling’s superb ability to accomplish entertaining things with her characters. Chamber of Secrets harbours one of the most (literally) colourful professors to ever grace Hogwarts’ halls in the form of Gilderoy Lockhart, the charmingly inept Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Lockhart’s absurd vanity, his blinding smile and his paparazzi-prone hi-jinks are a welcome respite after the stuttering non-entity that formed the bulk of his predecessor Quirrell’s screen-time. Lockhart not only provides much of the humor of the book, but he also illustrates an interesting moral dilemma near its climax. What that is, we can pick apart once you’ve read the book.

CONCLUSION: To sum it up, Chamber of Secrets is a darker book than its predecessor. The halls of Hogwarts seem more dangerous, the characters are considerably more devious and even Harry goes through much more soul-searing trials. At one point, most of the school turns its back on him, a glaring contrast to the instant fame and approval he had enjoyed for much of Philosopher’s Stone. For the first time, we see Harry dealing with this kind of widespread societal disapproval, and something tells us that it’s not going to be the last time he’ll face it. It’s clear that Harry’s time in Hogwarts is not going to get any easier as he ages, and we can only hope that he grows enough emotionally, magically, to cope with it.

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OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: It’s hard to write a review for a book that means so much to so many readers. Harry Potter has seen an entire generation of children grow up alongside him, and certainly, the big-budget Warner Bros films have more than done their bit to cement his popularity and make him a byword in the cultural imagination. Nonetheless, I will do my best to deliver an objective assessment of the books purely on their literary merit, so here goes!

"Mr. And Mrs. Dursley of Number Four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

Thus runs the unlikely opening of one of the most beloved books of the past hundred years. J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The first of a seven-part series that follows the adventures of its eponymous hero, Harry Potter, Philosopher’s Stone does a great job laying the groundwork of Rowling’s magical world, a world that has ensnared children and adults across the globe for more than a decade.

Like many of its predecessors in the fantasy genre, Philosopher’s Stone opens with a world gone awry. Owls are swooping about in broad daylight, people dressed in strange clothes are standing about talking animatedly and, perhaps most disconcerting of all to Vernon Dursley, a cat is standing on a neat suburban road ‘reading’ a map.' The reason behind these strange happenings is revealed by the end of the first chapter, and sure enough, it’s something to do with a Dark Lord (You Know Who), tragedy and a hero who doesn’t know the import of his own destiny chiefly because, when he is introduced to us, he is a slumbering baby with a lightning-bolt shaped scar.

This, of course, is Harry Potter, the boy who will go on to steal our hearts and quite obviously, our sympathies. Raised by a cruel set of relatives (his aunt and uncle, the aforementioned Dursleys) and bullied by his cousin, Harry remains nonetheless a quiet, sweet boy. Though he does his best to keep his head down and stay out of trouble, trouble has a way of finding him, as well evidenced by his inexplicable act of vanishing an entire pane of glass at the zoo and unleashing an enormous boa constrictor.

The reasons behind Harry’s uniquely troublesome nature are revealed, finally, on his eleventh birthday when a stranger from another world arrives to spirit him away to his true calling. The stranger is Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the world he ushers Harry into is one where dragons hatch from eggs, goblins run banks and, most importantly, magic is real. Rowling does a fantastic job of blending the classic hero story with the boarding school narrative, complete with house rivalries, schoolyard bullies and friendships and the more common ailments of homework, despicable teachers and detention.

At Hogwarts, Harry not only makes his first and best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, but he also learns that he is special even in this environment. Harry is the only known survivor of an attack by Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard so feared that even now, years after his fall, people are terrified to speak his name. Voldemort’s onslaught felled both Harry’s parents, but when the wizard turned his wand on the baby, his curse rebounded and instead, destroyed him. Harry is known throughout the wizarding world as the Boy Who Lived, his name spoken in reverence and gratitude for his inexplicable defeat of the most feared wizard in a century.

Every good fantasy reader however, knows that apparently defeated Dark Lords seldom remain in such a state. There are dark things happening at Hogwarts, and Harry, now armed with a basic knowledge of spells and sharp instincts, has a bad feeling that Lord Voldemort might be behind it all. Again, true to fantasy form, he sets out to put a stop to it, his loyal friends by his side.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a hugely enjoyable read for everyone, both children and jaded adults. Rowling draws her characters with a sharp pen, managing, through this slim volume (it is the shortest in the series) to create memorable figures who readers feel as though they’ve known their entire lives: the bookish, fussy Hermione; charming, loyal Ron (Harry’s guide & man friday to the wizarding world); snobbish Draco Malfoy and not least, warm, curious Harry Potter.

Even the adult characters are strongly realized, Rowling imparting to the teachers and parents alike a vividness and depth that not many grown up characters in children’s books enjoy. Perhaps this goes a long way in explaining the books’ enduring popularity. Growing up alongside the series, I for one have found myself drawn more and more to the adult characters in this world, seeing facets to them that, previously wrapped up in Harry and his friends, I had never seen before.

CONCLUSION: I don’t know how many readers out there have not had the chance, or the inclination, to begin their journey to Hogwarts. I envy you this chance to step on board the Hogwarts Express for the first time, to discover a world that will certainly suck you in and leave you gasping at its vivid richness. There’s nothing quite like embarking on a new series, and Harry Potter is definitely not one you should miss. To those who are old hands at Hogwarts, I can only say there’s nothing wrong with a re-read. These books are like fine wine; they only get better with age.

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Achala will be reviewing all of the seven Harry Potter books, so enjoy her thoughts as she brings a special focus on the series, characters and world that have enchanted so many of us.