Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

JK Rowling

“‘Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go.'”

When the Knight Bus crashes through the darkness and screeches to a halt in front of him, it’s the start of another far from ordinary year at Hogwarts for Harry Potter. Sirius Black, escaped mass-murderer and follower of Lord Voldemort, is on the run – and they say he is coming after Harry. In his first ever Divination class, Professor Trelawney sees an omen of death in Harry’s tea leaves … But perhaps most terrifying of all are the Dementors patrolling the school grounds, with their soul-sucking kiss …

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JK Rowling continues with her fabulous series and doesn’t let anything slip. There are so any good characters in this series, and a couple of new ones get introduced in this book, both good, though I prefer Lupin to Sirius. It’s not just the characters that make this book and the series great, it’s the plot, with Harry’s life becoming both better and worse as he learns more about his parents and how they died, and the writing; there is a good level of descriptiveness to every aspect of this book, but nothing that overwhelms the story, allowing you to access what’s going on without anything getting in the way.

The best thing about this book, compared to the first two, is that the plot doesn’t revolve around Voldemort, there is a different focus, and I believe that keeps the series from becoming boring. If I have one real complaint about any part of this book, it’s that there seems to be a contradiction between one part of this book and something that was mentioned in The Chamber of Secrets: in this book a character says there’s no cure for being a werewolf, but in COS Professor Lockhart mentions performing a spell that gets rid of a werewolf curse.

I’m not sure if Rowling forgot what she had written in the previous book, or if she needed to change that in order to use a plot thread she had come up with.

Regardless of that one niggle, this is a very good book in a very good series.

A review of Harry Potter 2

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

JK Rowling

“‘There is a plot, Harry Potter. A plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year.'”

Harry Potter’s summer has included the worst birthday ever, doomy warnings from a house-elf called Dobby, and rescue from the Dursleys by his friend Ron Weasley in a magical flying car! Back at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his second year, Harry hears strange whispers echo through empty corridors – and then the attacks start. Students are found as though turned to stone … Dobby’s sinister predictions seem to be coming true.

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The Chamber of Secrets continues from the events in The Philosopher’s Stone and delves deeper into the magical world of Hogwarts. We get to know more about Harry and his friends, and meet some new characters, some friendly and others not, all interesting.

Once again J K Rowling has brought to life a magical world I would love to be a part of. The characters feel and act like real people, with hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, friends and rivals. There is danger for Harry and his friends, and danger leads to injuries, but that’s to the good because it would have made it hard to accept what happens if nobody got hurt.

The writing remains as good as in the first book, and though I know, intellectually, magic doesn’t exist, I really wish it did and that I could do my time at school over again so I could attend Hogwarts.