Idle musings on Book Six

[Cindy C.]

No: HPFGUIDX 27751

Luke wrote:

> With all the talk of Book Five, I actually find myself currently 
more 
> curious about Book Six.  You can't up the stakes every book; it's 
just not possible 
> to maintain good pacing.  Which is why you have books like POA, 
that 
> clearly further the storyline, and clearly have considerable impact 
> upon the main focus of the events, but are not epic in the same 
sense. 
>  Between Five and Six, I personally expect Six to be more of the 
> tangential respite.  <

<snipping great discussion of "epic">

> Five, I imagine, will be similarly epic, although in a different 
> fashion.  We will see more of the wizarding world and I suspect the 
> focus will be on preparations for Seven.
> 
> So what about Six?  I find it hard to believe that it will be 
> similarly "preparatory".  Therefore I would expect it to be 
tangential 
> and character-centric (i.e. backstory) like POA was.  A story that 
> clearly impacts the fight against Voldemort, but does not directly 
> involve it.  > 
> Or perhaps I am dead wrong and Five will be the tangential respite, 
> with Six being the increasingly epic.  But if so then I certainly 
have 
> to wonder how JKR is going to achieve that return to a sense of 
> normalcy when it is clear that no normalcy is possible.  And also 
how 
> she will do this without it appearing like she has temporarily 
dropped 
> the Voldemort conflict and not kept the promise she essentially 
makes 
> at the end of GOF for everything to now go into full-gear?  It 
seems 
> to me that this balance would be much easier to achieve if Five 
were 
> the epic and Six the respite.
> 

Thanks for the excellent analysis, Luke.  Hmmm.  I had considered the 
future books a bit differently and from a different perspective, I 
think.

What intrigues me about books 3 and 4 is that the endings are not 
happy.  The good guys definitely do not win in 3 and 4 (particularly 
contrasted with the clean victories Harry scores in the first two 
books, right down to winning the House Cup and freeing Dobby).  I 
find the less happy endings to be more emotionally compelling.  Maybe 
I'm a little bent to see things that way, but there you have it.

So I think (and hope) Book 5 will be like PoA in that it will tell a 
great backstory and won't have a happy ending.  In 5, I hope we'll 
learn a great deal about the prior struggles with Voldemort, focusing 
on the old crowd, Figg, Fletcher and hopefully lots of Lupin and 
Sirius, perhaps as they formulate strategy for Book 7.  I figure 
we'll lose one central character (these days I think it will be 
Sirus, but I could be persuaded to pick Hagrid), and a few minor 
characters (Bagman and Karkarov), just for a diversion.  The point of 
5 might well be that Harry will find out that something isn't as he 
had always been told it was, just the way he found out in 3 that 
Sirius was not who Harry had been told he was.

Then, Book 6 might be the first major engagement of good versus evil 
in the Voldemort II era.  I think Book 6 will be disasterous for our 
side, and JKR will trot out the heavy artillery as Harry and 
Dumbledore lose badly.  Assuming that the good guys will win in the 
end, it will be most interesting for the good guys to take some real 
hits in Book 6 and make them the underdogs.  You know, so they can 
come back from the brink of disaster and all that stuff in 7.  I 
expect to lose Dumbledore in Book 6, so that the resurgence in 7 is 
all the more of a surprise.  Maybe Hagrid can go down with 
Dumbledore, trying to save him to the bitter end.  <*sniff*>

Now (and this is the hard part), how do I tie all this in with what 
Luke said so well?  Mmmm.  I don't think I agree with (or perhaps 
understand) the point about pacing, that is, that JKR can't up the 
ante in each book.  True, she can't have 5 and 6 end with duels 
between Harry and Voldemort.  But another way of upping the ante is 
to have our side take some staggering losses, so that the stakes are 
higher because we are that much closer to going down in defeat.  

But if you think about it, JKR has just two books to set the stage 
for the final confrontation, so she is going to have to bring on the 
conflict in a fast and furious fashion, and she may not have time in 
5 to do a lot of background work like she did in the early chapters 
of GoF.  As I wasn't a fan of those early GoF "Let's explain the 
breadth of the wizarding world" chapters, this would be good news, 
perhaps.  There is a LOT we don't know about the Voldermort I era, 
and I am just dying to find out about that.

Luke wrote:

However, if this assumption is correct than I cannot for 
> the life of me fathom why every question asked of JKR in interviews 
> indicates that [insert any mystery here] will be answered in Five 
or 
> Seven.  Never Six.  Maybe Six is the well-kept secret we are 
> overlooking.

Nice observation, Luke.  I'd like to hear from people who were 
listies who had read 1-3 and were waiting for GoF.  Did JKR give 
reall clues to to what she planned to do with GoF back then, or was 
it mostly misdirection?  These days, I don't put too much stock in 
what JKR says about what is coming in future books, because I think 
she is deliberately cagey and never tells us anything really 
important.  Was she similarly cagey in her statements about GoF 
before it was released, or did she really give us clues back then 
about what was coming?

Cindy (who will never get any work done if Luke keeps posting such 
interesting theories)