Now it’s time to write about a series that has become one of my favorites: Harry Potter.
I won’t even bother posting links to it, the story is famous enough so I’ll get right to it. If you’re only interested in a 20 second commentary on it, here’s mine: the story is great, and if you’ve only seen the movies, you’re missing on a lot of the good stuff.
For those not familiar with the series, it’s made up of seven books, and they follow an 11-year-old Harry Potter from his first year at Hogwarts Magical School all the way to the seventh grade, each book focusing on one year of his education. What makes this a great series are the characters: tortured hero Harry whose parents got killed by the greates Dark Wizard of all time, his best friend Ron, the brainy Hermione, lovable grandfatherly figure Professor Dumbledore, dreadful Severus Snape, and of course, the bad guy, Lord Voldemort.
I know it’s starting to sound like a bunch of cliché characters put together, but this is a true coming of age tale where not only we see the protagonist grow, but also those around him, even the grown-ups. You can see the kids grow into adults, they change the way they look, how they talk, their experiences make them stronger or more frail in different aspects of their life, sometimes they learn from their mistakes, sometimes they just make them over and over again. It creates a very real connection between character and reader, and there are enough characters in the story to suit all types of personalities.
Now I won’t say it is all perfect. The first two books are very short, clearly written for kids around 12, the storytelling is shallow and I found myself complaining a couple times about how much I would like to see some character get more “screen time”, but that stopped from the third book on. The first book tops at about 180 pages, while the fourth gets to almost 900, so there’s a lot of side-story development; which I much appreciated.
I won’t get into the details of the story because I don’t want to spoil anything for those who will see the movies in the upcoming years, though I have no idea how they plan to fit everything that happens in the seventh book, even though they’re making two movies out of it.
I can’t name a book in the series as my favorite, because they all felt like one huge book put together, especially because I read books 4 through 7 in less than two months (and losing many hours of sleep because I just couldn’t put the book down). I however will mention that the first two volumes didn’t impress me much, and only read the third because my favorite character from the movies, Sirius Black, would be introduced in it. However, I would have been very wrong to stop reading, for I would have lost the opportunity to read one of the stories I’ve enjoyed most.
I could write all night about Harry Potter, but I doubt many will have made it this far, so I’ll give those few a break. To finish it off, one of the reasons I decide to read the books was that my favorite author, Stephen King, wrote a review saying that Harry will probably earn a spot next to Tom, Frodo, Huck, Alice and many others; and after reading the series I can completely agree that they will be part of the library I’ll make sure my kids read some day
Edit: I added Frodo to the list of memorable characters, my good friend Gabo pointed out the omission
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