SPOILERS: First Read Rant

[carolynwhite2]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "nkafkafi" <nkafkafi at y...> 
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> 

> 
> No, the reason I'm disappointed with HBP is simply because most of 
> it, IMHO, is sub-par. It's poorly written, relative to JKR's 
> standards. Am I the only one who feels that way? I frequently had 
the 
> feeling like I was reading FF and not the real thing. To say that 
> this book was under-edited would be a big compliment. I think the 
> editors should have told JKR to take her time, do an extensive 
> rewrite and get back to them in another 6 months, or maybe a year. 
> Well, I guess publicity finally went to JKR's head, or the editors 
> didn't dare criticize her, or they were under pressure to finish 
> quickly.

Carolyn:
According to the Time interview, JKR really took a lot of care over 
this one:

'...she still constantly questions her writing, reviewing it like a 
boxer watching tapes of his fights. "I think Phoenix could have been 
shorter. I knew that, and I ran out of time and energy toward the 
end," she says. She is worried that Goblet was overpraised. "In every 
single book, there's stuff I would go back and rewrite," she 
says. "But I think I really planned the hell out of this one. I took 
three months and just sat there and went over and over and over the 
plan, really fine-tuned it, looked at it from every angle. I had 
learnt, maybe, from past mistakes."'


> 
> The plot was simply all over the place. No proper buildup of 
> suspence, no dramatic flow and rhythm, plot devices felt 
artificial. Many important things were spelled out instead of implied 
by dialogue and description. Most of the book was emotionally flat. 

<snip>
 For example, why didn't Harry suspect even once during the 
> whole year that the Half-Blood Prince is Snape? I mean, who do we 
> know that is good at Potions and has a small cramped handwriting? 
> Cm'on! I suspected Snape from the first second and hoped for a long 
> time that in the end it would turn out to be someone unexpected. No 
> such luck. 

Carolyn:
I think the pace was fast and furious, certainly no bad thing after 
OOP, which drags horribly in the first half. I enjoyed the book far 
more than I thought I was going to as a result.

But I have to agree that the Potions textbook creaked very badly as a 
plot device - as I've ranted elsewhere already, like Snape would have 
left his precious old textbook at the bottom of a cupboard in a 
classroom he'd been teaching in for nearly how long? 
Thirteen/fourteen years? And it just happens to get given to Harry? 
Yeah.

Only spin I can put on the whole thing is that Sluggy knew perfectly 
well whose textbook it was, and made sure Harry got it..


> 
> Shipping: Like I wrote above, I'm not averted to shipping, and I've 
> predicted all three ships in HBP a long time ago, so I should be 
> content, right? Wrong. It is possible to write good shipping and 
bad shipping, and most of the HBP shipping was very poor. 

::closes eyes and shudders::
Please, please don't talk about the shipping. It was too ghastly...

The only possible amusement that can be derived from it is the rows 
that will now break out as to the moral turpitude of a school that 
allows 6th years to slobber all over each other in front of 
impressionable younger kids. Do we assume that HRH et al have been 
witnessing such scenes in the Gryffindor common room since they 
joined....just what kind of school is DD running, discuss etc etc.


> 
> The horcuxes: it's a nice plot device, similar to several ideas 
that came up here. The problem is: 95% of it is based on completely 
new information. It couldn't have been deduced in any way from what 
we knew before. So what's the point in having any theories at all? 
And the secrets of the remaining horcruxes' identities and places? 
Can it be deuced from what we know now? I wouldn't bet money on it. 

<snip>
> Characters: JKR invents a whole horde of new characters, which 
> necessarily come on the expense of continuing the development of 
old ones. Why was there any need to replace Fudge with Scrimgeur just 
to fill approximately the same function? 


Poor Neri. And it's going to get worse. I just saw this on Leaky:

'JK Rowling: I keep killing all my favourite members of the Order of 
the Phoenix, but there is one member of the Order of the Phoenix that 
you have not yet met properly and you will­, well, you know that they 
are a member, but you haven't really met them properly yet and you 
will meet them in seven, so I am looking forward to that.'

What are theorists to do, but stamp their feet and rage? The good 
news is that we have all shown ourselves capable of not only joining 
up the dots for her, but actually inventing better plots, IMO.

Maybe it's better in the long run that we don't get all the ends tied 
up, so we can continue to believe in our own version of events? 


>But if JKR thinks it's enough to invent a few cool names and anybody 
would worship her again, well she's wrong about me, at least. She 
forgot the hard work  part.  
> 
> Well, I hope this impression will improve in a second read. It did 
> with OotP.
> 
> Neri

I got the impression from the weekend interviews that she's very keen 
to get the whole thing over with, and really anxious to get away from 
the genre into adult fiction. 

Carolyn