Title: Moonlight

Network: CBS

I am trying really hard to like this. I have watched the first 4 episodes with gut-busting hope. The potential for a modern day vampire story is tremendous. Unfortunately, the studio conveyor-belt system is just screwing it all up. It’s like they forgot how to work with anything that actually involves a script.

“I have to lay low, stay out of sight, people are hunting me down because I am a vampire… I know, I’ll get involved with a web reporter, help the cops solve crimes, and hire myself out as a Private Eye. There’s nothing more unobtrusive than video cameras, the internet, a nosey DA, and inviting people I have never met into my lair, erm… home, I mean home.”

The whole Private Eye thing has become such a cliche. Would have been cooler if they kept it the setting in the 40’s and turned the whole thing more noir. At least then it would be justified. As it is, it’s just another excuse for weaksauce episodic tv with horrid writing. Then again, the whole noir-esque thing didn’t save Dresden Files, so what the heck do I know.

I’ll probably give it one more episode before I start making more room in the DVR HD. Who knows, maybe it’s just taking a while to get to the good stuff.

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Title: Blaze
Author: Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King)
Publisher: Scribner
Year Published: 2007

The first five words of the book’s foreword sum it up best: “This is a trunk novel, ok?”

I am a huge fan of Stephen King and, by extension, Richard Bachman. I have close to everything he has published, with I think the only exception being Roadwork (and no, I don’t have a particular reason, I just never got around to getting it). Some of his work ranks up among my favorites of all time (The Stand, The Dark Tower series, The Shining, On Writing, too many of his short stories to list). Mostly, though, they fall into the kind of book I love to spend a long rainy weekend with and then forget about. Novels like The Regulators and Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis that I thoroughly enjoy and then set aside without much of a second thought.

Occasionally, however, something reaches my self that, had I any less dedication to Mr. King, would never have garnered my attention. Blaze is just such a novel.

As most any writer can tell you, a trunk novel is a story which was written and then, for whatever reason, tossed into a trunk. Maybe it made the rounds among agents and/or editors and gathered nothing but rejection slips along the way. Or maybe the author just knew it wasn’t up to snuff and threw it in the trunk when he or she got tired of trying to get it up to snuff. Whatever the case, it was labeled as unworthy of publication by someone and then placed into a trunk for storage… most often, for permanent storage.

For reasons he explains in the foreword, King dusted off Blaze, gave it a few touch-ups here and there, and set it adrift in the seas of big-market merchandising. Personally, I think he should have left it in the trunk. I also think, had this been written by anyone other than a top-tier author with a built-in audience with zombie-like devotion (like yours truly) this novel would never have been accepted for publication.

That said, I will admit that I found the character of Blaze oddly compelling. I didn’t like the story itself, nor how it was told, but I was really interested in the character Bachman created. I thought that he deserved more written about him, as his downfall was never really justified by the flashback-type setups Bachman employed.

I am still glad I bought the book, though, if only for two reasons. First, the five page Foreword (titled “Full Disclosure”) is great. It doesn’t justify the reasons for the publication of Blaze, but it does give some insight behind the decision, and it’s just so refreshingly honest. Second, the book closes with the short story “Memory,” originally published in Tin House in 2006. This short is simply wonderful, and worth the price of the novel alone. It is, according to a footnote on the title page, the seed that Duma Key grew from (coming in 2008), for which I am now very excited.

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Title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Author: JK Rowling
Publisher: Scholastic
Year Published: 2007
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Bildungsroman

And at last I finish the final book. Somehow I managed to avoid every review, every spoiler, every conversation that was taking place about Hogwarts, Year 7. I have read a few reviews since (as I have noted along the way) but my overall impression remains the same as it was when I closed the book…

Meh.

Actually… if I had a 3.75 graphic I’d use that, because I don’t think Deathly Hallows is as strong as Goblet of Fire.

Now, before you start sending me hateful emails, allow me to explain.

First of all, Rowling once again begins the book with chapters not containing Harry, as she did in Half-Blood Prince. Although I was uncertain then, I have decided that for me, especially with this book, it just doesn’t work. At all. I see the author’s hand as she constructs suspense and mystery, falsely leading the reader in a direction away from the truth. And truth is something we have come to expect from our narrator. The trusting relationship Rowling so carefully crafted is suddenly rendered unreliable, and a shadow of doubt is cast not only on the Harry-less scenes, but on every scene since we first met a lonely little boy under the stairs on Privet drive.

Secondly, the final two chapters are two of the worst chapters in the seven book series. The Epilogue in particular is thoroughly pointless, and mires the end of the book in an emotionally contrived “see how happy we are now, everything is back to normal” ending. Rather than leaving me wanting more, Rowling left me wanting to close the book and move on to… well… anything, really. I understand her desire to please her fans, but the compromises she made with the inclusion of these scenes brings the overall “reading experience” crashing to its knees.

Why a 4 out of 5 rating then? Simple. Where the first two chapters are superfluous, and the final two are the equivalent of a narrative train-wreck, everything in between is, without a doubt, the best stuff Rowling has written in the series. The frenetic pacing of both her action scenes and her information scenes compliment each other wonderfully. Indeed, it is easily the best plotting she has done, including Half-Blood Prince, which I still think is a strongest book in the series.

Perhaps the single element that made me smile most often was how, finally, Rowling allowed Harry to grow up. Over the course of the series, we have watched Ron, Hermione, and Ginny all grow up and mature. Harry, on the other hand, continually regressed between books. I mentioned the pattern in the write-up for Order of the Phoenix, and it was so refreshing to see that pattern finally broken.

The only other thing I would have enjoyed seeing was a greater emotional struggle for Harry where Ginny was concerned. Without giving anything away, his attachment to her seemed too easy for him to turn his back on. I wanted to see a greater struggle, and, conversely, a greater reward for that struggle at the book’s close. It is well done as it is, but for two young adults so emotionally attached to each other, I think it falls short of what it should have been.

(below added 11/15/07)

And so the Harry Potter experience comes to a close. Many series I read time and time again, of which Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire are just two examples (with another reading of Song as soon as a release date for the final book is announced). Will I read Harry Potter again? Nahh. Maybe to my niece or nephew in a few years, but certainly not for me. It’s a good series, and should find itself on many Recommended Reading lists for years to come, but it certainly isn’t ground breaking. Ground breaking would be the Le Guin’s Earthsea series (to which Rowling should really give some acknowledgment - but I digress). I enjoyed the time I spent with Harry, Hermione, and Ron, but, like J.K., it’s time to move on. What’s done is done. Still though… it was a helluva fun ride while it lasted! Thanks for the good reads, Ms. Rowling.

oh yes, one more thing… As I formatted this final review, which I wrote over a month ago, I came to realize something that kind of shocked me… Mrs. Weasely is my new favorite character. And that’s all I have to say about that.

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Title: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Author: JK Rowling
Publisher: Scholastic
Year Published: 2003
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Bildungsroman

I never noticed it back when I read the series the first time, but reading them all back to back to back like this I have come to recognize a pattern. Harry starts out as an annoying, selfish, whining little git (to steal one of Ron’s words), realizes the error of his ways yet remains steadfast and bullheaded anyway, then saves the day causing everyone around him to feel that they were the problem to begin with. The first half of this book, all 415 pages of it (yes, it is once again a massive tome weighing in at 830 pages), I wanted nothing more than for Ron or Hermione to haul off and smack the scar right off Harry’s forehead. He quickly became my least favorite character in the book, as he is the only character who hasn’t really seemed to mature at all throughout the series to this point.

I think I understand the reasoning behind it, though. There needed to be a rather substantial character journey for Harry to complete over the course of 800 pages, and the only way to really do this was to make sure he regressed a bit from where we left him after Goblet of Fire. The contrast between the sustained development of Ron, Hermione, and especially Ginny, however, is absolutely wonderful. The secondary and tertiary characters are what kept me interested in Order of the Phoenix long after I began despising Harry.

Even though the final 100 pages or so are some of the most intense that Rowling has written in the series, the preceding 700 seemed to fall a bit flat for me. In many ways Order of the Phoenix comes across as an introduction of what’s to come. There is absolutely a strong and important story going on, but it seemed to play second fiddle to the potential it speaks of for the remaining two books. That is one reason, I think, why the book needed to be so much longer than it’s predecessors. Not only was Rowling telling the story of this book, she was also laying the groundwork for the final two books of the series. Perhaps a necessary evil, but it caused large chunks of text to drag rather painfully.

It is important to note that the maturation of the series begun with Goblet of Fire continues with Order of the Phoenix. Although not nearly as “edgy” socially as Goblet of Fire, there are more instances of cursing by children and adults alike. It is handled very well, however, and is in all cases a very revealing aspect of character development. Never does it come across as arbitrary or gratuitous. It is an important realization by Rowling that without the social and cultural influences her readers face every day, her relationships and characterizations will be dangerously close to stereotypical caricatures. Kudos to Rowling for recognizing this and implementing these influences so carefully.

Title: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Author: JK Rowling
Publisher: Scholastic
Year Published: 2005
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Bildungsroman

The very first thing I noticed about Half-Blood Prince was the departure of the familiar format of the previous 5 books. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but never in the series has an entire chapter been written from the perspective of any character other than Harry. Here, not one, but two chapters, indeed the first two chapters, don’t even have our hero in them. Instead, Rowling takes a cue from Robert Jordan and begins her story by giving us a glimpse of what the bad guys are doing.

Looking back on the whole story now, I am torn as to whether or not I agree with the departure from the established format. I didn’t like having information that Harry didn’t have access to. Rowling took a long time to establish a very specific relationship between Harry and the reader, and even though I began to cringe whenever he opened his spoiled, whiny little mouth in Order of the Phoenix, I still felt somehow linked to him. By giving me more information than Harry has, the nature of our relationship changed. I became more of a voyeur than a participant in Harry’s adventures.

On the other hand, the additional information created wonderful moments of suspense, disbelief, and utter shock throughout the book. It was handled remarkably well, and for the first time in the series I am convinced that JK Rowling has matured as writer as much, if not more so, than her legion of fans have matured as young adults. Half-Blood Prince is easily the strongest book in the series thus far. The mysteries involved in this go-round are centered more on character and emotional development than they are physical danger (although there’s plenty of that, to be sure) and it lends a more mature, almost introspective nature to the majority of the book.

One important thing to realize however, is that this is the first book that can be said to truly belong in a “series.” Order of the Phoenix could be argued to have started it, but it is very much a complete book in and of itself, as are all of the previous books. Each of them can, really, be picked up in any order and read on their own. The amount of essential carryover is negligible. They would prove to be better reads when done so in order, but reading out of sequence wouldn’t be a complete loss as it would be for, say, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series or George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. Half-Blood Prince, however, is a different beast. Unlike the previous books, there is no final scene that ties up all the loose ends. There is no speech by Harry, or scene in which the bad guy reveals that he would have succeeded “if it weren’t for those meddling kids” (thanks, Scoob, have a snack). Instead, there is a glance to the final book of the series as each of the primary storylines is left on shaky ground, engulfed with uncertainties and incredulity. And Rowling pulls it off wonderfully. The book is finished, but the story isn’t. The book ends, yet the bigger story… the bigger picture… it’s only just beginning to come into focus. And oh, what a picture it is shaping up to be

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