Funk Babblings

Last Friday night I was number 30 in line to get the new Harry Potter book at Borders.... but because I was just standing in for a friend who'd had to leave, I didn't get my own copy until the next day at the grocery store. Over the past week nontacitare and I have been leapfrogging through the book, with her usually stopping exactly a chapter ahead of me -- without knowing where I'd stopped. (I often just remember the chapter or page number rather than marking the page.) However, she had started out with a list of spoilers, and first skimmed the book verifying them all, while I struggled all week to avoid any hint of spoilers.

I finally finished the book tonight. Some of my thoughts along the way....

I didn't get a chance to re-read the previous books before starting this one, so it was a good thing there was lots of review built into the narrative. Going into it I saw two mysteries -- who is the Half-Blood Prince, and what major character dies. I had no prediction on the first question, but I figured Dumbledore would be the most likely death this time.

Chapter one was the best first chapter of any of the HP books.

Chapter two introduced a third mystery -- which side is Snape really on. This of course appears to be resolved at the end, but there's more than enough room for doubt and misdirection.

Actually chapter two also introduced another mystery -- what was Malfoy's task, or (since we can guess the nature of it) who was he tasked to kill. But that seemed a minor detail compared to the question of who would actually die.

When the gang got together at the Weasleys', I started to think Ron might be the big death, since that would have such a huge impact on Harry.

By the end of Harry's first pensieve session with Dumbledore, I thought it was obvious that Voldemort was the Half-Blood Prince. Now it's obvious that that's what JKR wanted us to think. Ah well.

A lot of the book seemed to be mostly just checking off things to hint at or foreshadow, which contributed to a feeling that this was more like a puzzle than a novel.

When Ron and Hermione all but confessed their mutual attraction, then proceeded to stop speaking to each other (because of Ron being an idiot), Hermione became the leading candidate for the big death. Imagine Ron's horror if he were to realize right before or after her death that he'd been wrong to shut her out.... and with Ginny and Luna around, the balance wouldn't get totally out of whack. (Then nontacitare happened to mention, in a conversation about something sirvinegar wrote, that Hermione and Snape getting together isn't totally out of the realm of possibility. Which meant that those two characters survive the book.)

But when Dumbledore reminded Harry that his power over Voldemort was his capacity to love, Ginny became a major candidate as well.

Then I made the mistake of re-reading the table of contents (which I'd barely glanced at when I started), and noticed the penultimate chapter title "The Phoenix Lament", which pretty much sealed it that Dumbledore wouldn't survive past that chapter.

I was still surprised when the Half-Blood Prince revealed himself, though I should have realized that Hermione is always right in some way.

Which brings us back to the question of Snape's loyalty. It seems to me that one rule of thumb in these books is that if Harry asserts something and others believe him, it might not be true, but if Harry asserts something and nobody believes him, then it's probably true. Throughout this book, Harry asserted that Snape was on the other side, and nobody believed him. And sure enough, Snape was Dumbledore's killer at the end.

Yet after that, everyone finally believes Harry that Snape is on the side of the Death Eaters, so according to my rule of thumb, he must not be. braider's and nontacitare's theories make a lot of sense -- it's quite possible (even likely, from a perspective outside the story) that Snape made the best choice he could under the circumstances, and that he will turn out in the end to be a good guy, even a hero.

Meanwhile, the romantic part of me was disappointed to see Ginny cast off so easily yet Ron and Hermione accepted into Harry's quest.

Oh yeah, about R.A.B.... I figure it's gotta be a member of the Black family, most likely Sirius's younger brother Regulus. (And I'm amazed at the amount of info and fanfic there is about him online.)


I hope to write soon about some other books I've been reading lately.