It so happens that some Potter maniac has written a 659 pages long tome starting where book 6 ended. My friend and co-pottermaniac since school days Manolin got hold of this copy.
Even though I appreciate this guy (or girl) for all the effort he/she has put in, anyone who reads a mere fifty pages easily makes out it isn't JK Rowling matter. One major blunder that this writer has made is that he has shown too much of romance between Harry and Ginny. In fact, she has been given too much of presence in the story. Perhaps the writer lost focus of the fact that the story always revolves around Harry, Hermione and Ron. All others are secondary to the story. Ginny amazingly takes up much more space than Hermione. Also, Harry's love -rather infatuation -is a subsidiary element that had to be show in book 6 since he is a teenager now. He is in the middle of a war now and I am sure won't fool around with a girl.
Lets make one thing clear here. Hermione is the heroine of Harry Potter Series. Little of her witty deductions and investigations was portrayed in this book. So also the humorous tussle between her and Ron. She is the smartest of the trio. Harry is not the hero; he may be the protagonist but he isn't just the hero. This story lifts him to the level of hero figure, that which JKR will never do.
There is a huge deficiency in this spoof from the point of creativity. When Harry starts searching for the remaining horcruxes, he doesn't face with much challenge. To get his hands at the cup horcrux, he has to face a huge dragon. Such a situation has already been seen in Book 5. The way Harry tackles the dragon -by jumping over the firebolt -is also ditto same as the previous one. When Harry hunts out the locket horcrux, same inferno stuff that he and Dumbledore had faced in Book 6 is repeated. There hasn't been anything new in the wizarding world as such. The writer just tries to built on the events.
Most of the characters aren't strongly built and the story has been narrated just plainly. Besides, I have always seen Harry and Co. as innocent kids. They getting fussy about Ginny's push-up bra doesn't go down well with me.
Salient points of the duplicate version of book7:
- Harry Potter is the seventh Horcrux
- The minister of magic dies. Umbridge becomes the interim minister and makes matter worse by trying to broker a deal with the dark lord
- Voldemort double crosses Umbridge and takes over the ministry
- Draco Malfoy is being pursued by death eaters because of some lame reason and he has taken sanctuary with the Order (that is very improbable given the fact that the Malfoys were involved in Black's and Dumbledore's murder)
- Lupin dies trying to save Harry
- Percy Weasley, the kid in ministry dies while being tortured by Snape to disclose Order's whereabouts
- Harry has premonitions about where to look for the horcruxes; in the sense he kind of felt where to get the horcruxes. Come on! This is the world of wizards, it doesn't mean you make anything happen.
- Dudley, it seems, is a wizard. His wizarding tendencies had been suppressed by Dumbledore. Aunt Petunia and Dudley's role in the story have been subject to much speculations since long. This book doesn't come out convincingly on the issue.
- This time around, Pansy Parkinson deceives Potter (I don't think this will happen in the original as Potter shouldn't trust anyone, let alone slytherins with death eater background after all that has happened -unless of course if he isn't ready to learn from mistakes of previous six years)
- Malfoy fights on Harry's side towards the end, even though he has his own reasons
- R.A.B at the end of Book 6 hasn't been satisfactorily exploited
Enough of this book. If you haven't had your hands on this book, I recommend don't read this at all. Wait for a couple of months till the original comes up. Enjoy it. Everyone is making guesses at what's going to happen in book 7. I shall present my take in my next blog entry.
2 comments:
i also have a familiar feeling after reading the novel. J K Rowling speciality in narration is that she never gives importance to a single character(like potter) but each character has an important role in the story.
This novel has not considered the following:
1. Hermione Granger is always the one who finds the way to solve a problem...here she is neglected.
2. There was no involvement of harry friends like longbottom etc.
3. Story completely revolved around harry and weaslies but actually in all the books there is quite a things happening btw different groups.
4. Snape has a very large role to play, not satisfactorily explained.
5. Dark Lord was so easily bullied, not acceptable to his powers in prev books.
6. Hagrid's creatures, involvement of any previous profs of hogwarts (Mcgonagal etc) was not there.
7. The finding and destroying of Horcruxes was done with out much ecitement and effort.
8. History of the dark lord was of no major use to potter to fight against him.
9. Malfroy role was debatable over here.
Thanks for writing this.
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