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Longer and darker - but more riveting REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' (MSNBC) The latest Harry Potter, 734 pages in all, is about 250 pages shorter than "War and Peace" and about 250 pages longer than "Great Expectations." This is staggeringly long for a children's book. Once you've had its heft in hand, it's hard to picture little kids lugging it around. But of course you know they will. And once you start reading it, you'll find it so well constructed, so artfully paced, and so packed with surprises, both delightful and dreadful, that you will wish it were much longer. ...This is a quest story, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or the Arthurian legends. As with all quest stories, what the hero conquers isn't the headless knight or the fire-breathing dragon, but his own fear. What the hero finds isn't the Grail, but himself. That's one of the beauties of the Potter books, especially this one. Young readers can relate to a story crowded with classes and team sports and friends and enemies. It's like their own world, just made large with magic. And they can thrill to the real excitements of the books: finding your way, finding courage, keeping hope. As Dumbledore, the benevolent headmaster of Hogwarts, says near the end of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire": "It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be." more... The plot deepens REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' (Salon.com) Some parents may be upset by the darker aspects of "Goblet of Fire" which, as in the previous book, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," burst forth with sometimes shocking power in the book's final 100 pages. But Rowling understands that refusing to spare the emotions of the reader is not the same thing as exploiting those emotions. Our experience of pain and loss sharpens and deepens as we get older (almost in proportion to our ability to bear more), and so does the pain and loss that Harry feels. And the same is no doubt true of many of Rowling's readers who are growing up with her hero. I don't think it's too much to say that J.K. Rowling is providing her readers with the gamut of what reading can be -- the narrative fascination that gets us reading and the emotional resonance that keeps us reading. The longest of the books, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" is also the most relaxed and, ultimately, the most intense in the series so far. Like the previous three books, it follows the course of a school year at Hogwarts, a school for young wizards, with studies taking a back seat to the adventures of Harry and his best friends Ron and Hermione. We've had time to get used to the routine, and (up until the last 150 pages) the book proceeds with a warm and pleasant familiarity, along with a heightening sense of what Rowling is waiting to unleash. more... Extra! Extra! Page One of the New 'Harry Potter' REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' (Time Magazine) I haven't been this excited since...well, ever. For the past half an hour I have been reading a review copy of the Holy Grail of books: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". I can't believe I've gotten my hands on this thing. The book actually belongs to TIME magazine's Paul Gray, who has the enviable job of reviewing it for the upcoming issue, and until he abruptly yanked it from my trembling fingers, it was my moment in the sun. Then it was gone, and now I'm faced with the thought of joining the throngs of people who are probably lining up to buy a copy while I type this. Where's the justice in this world? Until then, bear with me as I explain my — and many other adults' — obsession with the world of Harry Potter. Sales at my local newsstand must be plummeting. Instead of newspapers, many of the fellow passengers on my daily subway commute are reading books. And not just any book. Yes, my subway car has turned into the Harry Potter express. Those riders are not children heading off to school. Nor am I. I am not a child between the ages of 8-12, nor am I the parent of such a child. I'm a woman in her late twenties. My growing fascination leads me to turn down party invitations, avoid the phone and stay up way beyond any reasonable hour. I am a woman obsessed. And I have finally transcended my adult embarrassment enough to take my book into the outside world. more... 'Goblet of Fire' burns out REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' (USA Today) Unfortunately, much of the fourth book's plot focuses on what happened 13 years ago when Lord Voldemort held sway over his followers, known as the Death Eaters. (Not a phrase you want your 5-year-old bringing to kindergarten, eh?) Frankly, one becomes confused and tired of who willingly joined Voldemort and who had a curse put on them. Trials were held, names named, family betrayed, lives ruined. It resembles a hocus-pocus variation on the 1950s McCarthy witch hunts. Plus, Rowling is clearly in a spot. The plot lines are wearing thin after four outings. We all know those Malfoys are bad to the bone. Hagrid's new animal obsessions, "blast-ended skrewts," lack Norbert the dragon's fiery charm or Buckbeak the hippogriff's dignity. Professor Severus Snape has become downright predictable in his nastiness. Even the series' moral center, the great wizard Albus Dumbledore, with his twinkly-eyed goodness, has gotten a bit long in the tooth. more... It's funny, it's sad, it's exciting, it's heroic REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' (Seattle Times) The long wait was well worth it - the media hype and hoopla are well deserved. J.K. Rowling delivers the goods in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (Scholastic, $25.95), the fourth installment in her series of seven planned novels about the world's most beloved wizard. This book (all 734 pages of it) is a rich, rewarding novel - funny and sad, exciting and heroic. Read the first chapter, "The Riddle House," slowly and carefully, for it contains just about every clue you need to appreciate the epic that follows. Rowling avoids the heavy-handed exposition of Books 2 and 3, "The Chamber of Secrets" and "The Prisoner of Azkaban," which went over the highlights of their predecessors. (However, newcomers will get the gist of Harry's background - the murder of his wizard parents by evil forces, his unhappy home life with his horrible aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, and his escape to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.) more... Richly plotted fourth book more than lives up to all the hoopla REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' (Detroit Free Press) And you may really want to read the fourth book in the insanely popular series, even if you've been immune to Harry Potter-mania. "Goblet" is great. It's the most deftly written and richly plotted of the mysteries about the English orphan who discovers that he's a wizard -- and that he's fated to battle the evil Lord Voldemort. "Goblet" is also the most thought-provoking, raising moral issues such as the universality of prejudice and the warping effects of power. The book doesn't need all that to hook readers -- the first chapters demonstrate again that J.K. Rowling's strongest card is her mastery of suspense -- but it's a mark of her increasing depth that she can turn to some sticky questions without derailing the plot. But parents, "Goblet" is also by far the scariest of the books, sufficiently disturbing that you will want to take care in how your children read it. A terrible death happens on page 638, in Chapter 32, and the 30 pages that follow depict some astonishing cruelty. They made me squirm. Some of the world is set right by the end, but not right enough to erase all of the shock. So be prepared to talk with your kids when they reach that stretch. We'll provide some discussion questions. more... Four's a Charm: The Steady Spell Of Harry Potter REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' (Washington Post) Good vs. evil is not the only colossal clash that Rowling addresses: There's also the spirited conflict over the pronunciation of Hermione's name. The author provides the answer on Page 419 (her-MY-oh-nee), forever silencing the "hermy-own" forces. And she has a word for those observers who, citing the absence of contemporary gadgets in previous books, have speculated that Potter's adventures take place in the 1960s or 1970s: PlayStation. Dudley Dursley's wrecked video game lays waste to that theory. Hermione neatly explains the general lack of such modern-day gizmos: "All those substitutes for magic Muggles use--electricity, computers, and radar, and all those things--they all go haywire around Hogwarts, there's too much magic in the air." more... Lord of the Golden Snitch REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' (New York Times) But Harry is destined for greatness, as we know from the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, and one day he mysteriously receives a notice in the mail announcing that he has been chosen to attend Hogwarts, the nation's elite school for training wizards and witches, the Harvard of sorcery. Before he is done, Harry Potter will meet a dragon, make friends with a melancholy centaur and do battle with a three-headed dog; he will learn how to fly a broom and how to use a cloak that makes him invisible. Though all this hocus-pocus is delightful, the magic in the book is not the real magic of the book. Much like Roald Dahl, J. K. Rowling has a gift for keeping the emotions, fears and triumphs of her characters on a human scale, even while the supernatural is popping out all over. more... The guilty pleasure of Harry Potter REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' (Salon.com) I can sum up the keenness of this book's emotions by quoting the passage that describes the author's most remarkable and moving invention. Prowling around the school one night after lights out, Harry stumbles upon a room that contains a mirror. Looking in it, he's startled to see himself surrounded by a crowd of people with eyes and hair just like him. Harry doesn't know that the mirror shows whoever looks into it their heart's fondest desire, but the realization dawns on him that he is "looking at his family, for the first time in his life." Rowling continues: The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness. How long he stood there, he didn't know. The reflections did not fade and he looked and looked until a distant noise brought him back to his senses. He couldn't stay here, he had to find a way back to bed. He tore his eyes away from his mother's face, whispered, "I'll come back," and hurried from the room. The beauty of that passage, in both conception and execution (Rowling is an astonishingly visual writer), needs no explication. But perhaps you have to have made your way through too many exquisitely crafted novels that didn't make you feel anything beyond a vague admiration for their craft to understand why reading a passage like that can seem as necessary as coming upon a drink of cool water when you're parched. So I don't want to condescend to J.K. Rowling by saying she's written a wonderful children's novel. She's written a wonderful novel, period. And to those who insist that novels should impart lessons, let the lesson of "Harry Potter" be the only distinction worth making in literature: separating the Muggles from the wizards. more... Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone REVIEW: 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' (New York Times) The book is full of wonderful, sly humor. Exam period at Hogwarts means not just essay tests, but practical exams too. ''Professor Flitwick called them one by one into his class to see if they could make a pineapple tap-dance across a desk. Professor McGonagall watched them turn a mouse into a snuffbox -- points were given for how pretty the snuffbox was, but taken away if it had whiskers.'' Throughout most of the book, the characters are impressively three-dimensional (occasionally four-dimensional!) and move along seamlessly through the narrative. However, a few times in the last four chapters, the storytelling begins to sputter, and there are twists I found irritating and contrived. To serve the plot, characters begin behaving out of character. Most noticeably, Hagrid, the gentle giant of a groundskeeper who has selflessly protected Harry over and over, suddenly turns so selfish he is willing to let Harry be punished for something that is Hagrid's fault. That's not the Hagrid I'd come to know. more...

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