OoP - It's all about the twists

[Susan Atherton]

No: HPFGUIDX 70683

Darrin wrote:
<<snips>>
The first time I read PS, not fully realizing that I was reading an adult book kids 
liked, rather than the reverse, I thought Snape was the bad guy. 

Me: 
Oh, ditto! I was totally taken in. I'd finished PoA before I realised that each one is a mystery as much as anything else.

Darrin again:
The first time I read PoA, I'd nailed that Lupin was a werewolf, had an inkling 
there might be more to Sirius, but literally dropped my book in surprise when 
Scabbers was revealed.

Me:
I got Wolf!Lupin because of his name, but didn't pick up on the Boggart!Moon. Ditto VERY shocked when Scabbers was revealed.

Darrin continued:
The first time I read GoF, I got nothing. Moody as Crouch? Totally blindsided. 
Snape as a reformed DE? Yeah, I probably should have gotten in, but nope. 
Cedric dying? Not a clue.

Me: 
No, I missed all those too.


And now to what I actually want to discuss.

Darrin:
The first time I read OoP, I spotted the foreshadowing of Sirius' death and 
realized that Sirius being tortured was fake. I'd already had an inkling that 
Neville would be important, so, while the revelation about the prophecy was a 
bit surprising, it wasn't shocking. Ditto for Abused!Snape, which only surprised 
me in James and Sirius' complete domination of him.

Simply put, from a simple guy who still reads these things for recreation above 
all, it didn't twist enough.

Me:
I couldn't agree more.

The thing about OoP that made it particularly odd for me to read was that canon/not canon feeling I'm sure most people got for the first five or six chapters. I was reading happily enough, enjoying it greatly, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that this was fanfic, simply because we're all so used to the series ending at Goblet - which, in essence, it did temporarily, as at the end of Goblet all the loose ends have been tied up, so to speak. Voldemort has returned. The Ministry will fall. Snape is good. Harry failed. All of these things are events - OoP, on the other hand, is about reactions.

Now this doesn't make it a bad book. But it does make it very different from the ones that came before, and not just in tone or audience. It's different in anticipation - for a start, the fact that there was a death leaked out BIG TIME - I didn't get into Potter until after GoF had come out and all the fuss had died down after the PS DVD release and before the CoS cinema release. Therefore, I had no idea that anyone died - I just knew the books were about a kid called Harry Potter who was a wizard or something. 

Everyone went pretty Pottermad around July 2000. But NOTHING compared to what happened on June 20th as we approached 23:59. This, to me, made the buildup a bit too much - it's been hyped up and hyped up and it was given a lot to live up to. I'm not saying it didn't live up to that - I'm just thinking it's harder to avoid expectations and adopt a simpler approach.

Anyway, getting back to my original point: the twists. The other difference in OoP is the fact that there is no clear mystery, no clear bad guy to identify and stop. Kreacher was obviously a bad egg, especially when he went missing. Everyone's known since Goblet that Voldy is back. The prophecy could've been a surprise to the non-Potterite, I suppose, but to me, it was more or less fanon (ie. fan canon) that Trelawney's first prediction involved the downfall of Voldy due to Harry Potter. Now, this wasn't exactly what the prophecy said, but it was the general gist, so that wasn't surprising either.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book immensely, and after the lack of Quidditch in GoF, the Quidditch and the DA scenes were brilliant to read. But as Darrin said himself: nothing can beat that "oh my GOOOOODDD!!" of Scabbers-is-Pettigrew.

Darrin:
But for that first time? Nope, can't compare to the other four.

Me:
Damn straight.

Susan
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