Rating: 2/5
Harry Potter has started his fifth year at Hogwarts. After becoming increasingly impatient with his friends, Ron and Hermione, he becomes very angry when he meets them and finds it hard to feel contrition for shouting at them. Harry has turned from an interesting, funny, slightly quirky little boy into a sarcastic, boring, moody, sulking teenager and I don’t know why Rowling would think the books would be better with that kind of Harry in them.
As the story goes on in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, disappointment replaces anger as he is informed of his new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, horrible old hag Dolores Jane Umbridge.
Things get worse for the trio when Hagrid returns from a secret mission covered in congealed blood, explaining in a very long and convoluted way what happened to the point that what could have been an exciting story became almost as tedious as Cho Chang’s love-hate relationship with Harry.
I never finished this book. I only got about half-way through before giving up on it (that’s still 400 pages, though!). Rowling’s first book was amazing, but as she got more and more popular throughout her series, and as Harry, Ron and Hermione got older, she began to introduce boyfriends and girlfriends and kissing and tedious paragraphs that only mushy-brained teenagers would be interested in. I have been saving the films for when I have finished the books (I found the films much better than the novels) but now that I am neither going to finish this book nor read any of the rest of the series, I will be watching them all as soon as I can.