Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a really good book. As with all of the books in this series, there are a couple of rough spots, but still: it's a really good book, full of imagination and magic. In lieu of a coherent essay, here are some bullet points on the good stuff (and the tiny amount of less-good stuff) in the book. I do give some mild spoilers, but I don't totally divulge all of the plot points. Except for the fact that Voldemort is revealed to be Harry's uncle. (No, not really.)

:: I don't like the title, really. It's too long and unwieldy, and it doesn't scan well. The former titles in the series roll off the tongue, but here we have "the" occurring twice, which trips up the nice rhythm the earlier titles had. It reminds me of Paramount Pictures' goofy decision to rename Raiders of the Lost Ark as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Of course, at this point, JK Rowling could name the book Harry Potter Slaps the Queen of England With a Tuna and it wouldn't much matter.

:: What I love most about this book is the way it does two things: it seems to set up the conflagrations and confrontations of the last two books (assuming the seven-book plan still holds), and explains or casts new light on things that have gone before. I liked finding out just why on Earth Harry keeps getting sent back to Privet Drive every summer, and that there is more to those awful relatives than meets the eye. It was also terribly appropriate that Harry started to see some of the warts in the people around him, the people he has loved and idolized but whose flaws he is beginning to notice.

Most of all, I liked how Rowling addressed something that's been cited as a weak point in the previous books: the fact that Harry is, at times, a passive hero, coming through adventures unscathed (or less scathed than he should be) without, well, doing much of anything. Rowling doesn't just show us that she is aware of this; she shows us that Harry himself is aware of this. It all plays into his growing sense of frustration and futility, which is fueled by his hormones, which are beginning to rage.

:: As for Harry's teenage problems, Rowling handles these well, although I'm not sure I believe that Cho Chang would be attracted to the guy who brought back the dead body of the last guy she was attracted to. I had a slight problem with that whole storyline.

:: As usual, you have to pay attention in the first half of the book, because a lot of the stuff established there will later come into play in the last act of the book. Rowling doesn't waste anything, and I'm hard-pressed to find anything in the book that isn't there for some kind of reason. And that applies to bit-players and supporting characters from earlier books who suddenly become a lot more important this time out, which was a nice thing to see. Especially in the case of poor Neville Longbottom.

:: JK Rowling clearly subscribes to the theory of writing that says, "Step One: Create nice, likable characters. Step Two: Put them through hell." She dumps so much crud on poor Harry that even when he gets to Hogwarts, things don't brighten much, if at all, before getting immensely worse.

:: Is it just me, or was anyone else strongly reminded of Merry and Pippin in the Lord of the Rings movies whenever Fred and George Weasley showed up? (As opposed to the LOTR books. In the movies, Merry and Pippin are a lot more of a "dynamic duo".) Their last moment in Order of the Phoenix is one of the best moments Rowling has yet written. I loved it, and she delivered it at just the right time in the book. I won't say more than that.

:: I have a little trouble discussing the book's big moment, the Death, without spoiling it. I'll just say that it felt…perfunctory to me. The death didn't seem to grow out of the story, so much as be required by it, as if Rowling said, "I have to kill off someone, so, I guess we'll do away with Madame Pomfrey." (No, it's not Madame Pomfrey.) It just felt, I don't know, arbitrary. I was expecting the book's death to feel, in emotional storytelling terms, like Mr. Spock's in The Wrath of Khan. But it didn't, really.

:: Dolores Umbridge reminds me of the Director of Training at my last job: the cutesy, pleasant woman who's really a cold-hearted meanie underneath. (Just to illustrate: in the last two years, my former company has advertised in the local paper for a new assistant for the Director of Training five times. That's how quickly she chews people up and spits them out.)

:: I'm ready for Harry Potter and the Balance of the Force (working title). Bring it on, JK Rowling!