This is far from my favorite book in the series, and even may have contributed to the angst of the past several weeks. I don't like Harry in this book, and I don't like the life-lessons in this book, and it's depressing and......well, I did finish it. I still hate Umbrage with a hatred so deep that it doesn't really register on the Dislike-o-Meter. I find Snape profoundly annoying, and I don't even like Dumbledore! What, pray tell, is redeeming about this book?
It gets you from book 4 to book 6. It shows Harry to be acting both his age and his trauma. And...that's all. It's a depressing book about depressing subjects, probably one of the most complex "children's books" I've ever come across.
For example, Rowling shows that people can be bad, horrible, nasty...and still you have to feel some pity for them. Umbrage is a terrible teacher and and awful person, but she's not part of the Evil that will soon be taking of the wizarding world. She is one of those about whom Albert Einstein might have been speaking when he said: "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." Or perhaps it was Edmund Burke writing: "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." Except Umbrage, and the Ministry of Magic aren't in any way "good men." They are toadies, and blind ones to boot.
Anyway. Sirius is dead, Harry is fated to kill or be killed, and everything seems to be out in the open now at last. Onward in the series I go.
Jim Dale's voice continues to inspire.
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