Wasn't Anyone Else Disappointed?

[Richard Jones]

No: HPFGUIDX 133053

Maybe it's just postpartum depression after all the wait, but I 
thought HBP was disappointing.  It lacked the imagination of the 
earlier books.  For example, the first half could have had much more 
humor — at one point when Ron was and took it out on a first year, I 
expected a set up for a nice zinger and all we got was lame 
comment "It's not polite to point!"  Or part of the fun is that the 
witches and wizards have funny names, but in this book we more often 
just got "Bob" and "Jimmy" than any interesting names.

Part of my disappointment concerned Hermione.  She had been my 
favorite character in the first five books.  In the previous books, I 
was always glad when Hermione spoke, but in HBP by page 200 I just 
wanted her to leave — she was always either boring or shrill.  And 
she showed a nasty streak I never would have expected (turning those 
birds on Ron, going out with Cormac just to annoy Ron) — I guess hell 
hath no fury like a teenage witch in love.

My least favorite topic — shipping — showed the problem.  I expected 
some fun twists in this area, but all we got was the obvious — H/G 
and Hr/R.  It wasn't a perfectly straight line, but still there were 
no surprises, only the boringly obvious (obvious at least to the 
superficial reading of the issue that someone who, like me, isn't a 
shipper gave the issue in the first five books).  Maybe she was just 
clearly the decks for something interesting in Book7.

The middle of the book was well, dull compared to the other books.  
Of course, things picked up at the end, but all I can say is that a 
thought forced itself into my mind while reading the middle of HBP 
that never ever occurred to me while reading any of the other five 
books — "when will this be over?" 

All this does not bode well for what we can expect in Book 7.  I, of 
course, still look forward to Book 7, but not with the excitement I 
had anticipated before reading HBP.  I'll reread it next month and 
maybe my opinion will change.

Richard Jones