Half blood prince disappointing

[Harry Flashman]

No: HPFGUIDX 146278

What a disappointing book! I think JKR spent to many pages on unneeded
details. I mean did we need page after page watching how harry
convinced Slughorn to come back to Hogwarts? Could not dumbledore
simply have introduced Slughorn and then later told harry that the
reason he (DD) suspects that slughorn took the job was so that he
could add harry to his club?

Often I got the impression that JKR was simply trying to fill pages.
So much more plot could have been developed and loose ends started to
be tied. I can't see how the final book in the series can be any less
than a 1000 pages with all the loose ends that need to be tied in
order to properly close the plots and bring the series to a
satisfactory end.

Harry's training with DD could have been more than just learning about
Voldemorts horcruxes. In the cave DD tells harry that magic always
leaves traces yet does not tell harry how to spot such traces, even
though it is expected that harry will go in search of other horcruxes.
DD does not impart any special wisdom/knowledge that Harry will need
to overcome the immensely powerful defenses that Voldemort has put
around his horcruxes, or help harry form relationships with other
intelligent magical creatures who clearly respect DD and whose help
Harry might need. Almost as if DD simply left harry to fend for
himself, and unless DD is not really dead and will return in the next
book to lead harry to the remaining horcruxes and train him to
successfully fight (and kill) Voldemort, Harry will have a learn a lot
himself and awfully fast.

One other thing that occurred to me is that while Harry has survived
Voldemort on several occasions, surviving and killing are 2 very
different things. Harry needs to kill Voldemort but clearly does not
have the skill (at least at the end of HBP) to do so. 

Here is a way in which Harry might kill Voldemort: The 2 meet face to
face and after a brief duel, Voldemort disarms Harry and tries to take
over his mind, but because Harry's mind is so full of love despite the
loss of so many people he loves (and who loved him) Voldemort cannot
take the experience and is expelled from harry's mind in a greatly
weakened form, and Harry is able to either kill, or disable Voldemort
before he recovers his strength. Of course all this will happen after
all the Horcruxes have been tracked down and destroyed. 

Anyway the next book will have to have a lot more action, and plot
development than HBP had. 


Harry