Off with ye if you don’t want to know what happens!

• Basically I liked it, but it was not my favorite. The exposition/fleshing out of Tom Riddle was interesting, but I didn’t realize until things picked up at the end just how little was happening plot-wise. And the identity of the Half-Blood Prince was so random and uninteresting.

• I actually enjoyed the teen romance bits. I guess having worked with youth, that whole aspect of adolescence felt very familiar. I think she handled the snogging well—kept things on the vague side (I kept thinking of second and third-graders reading the book). I liked the other romances as well.

• This is an Empire Strikes Back type book. Its main job is to set up the final showdown and the ending needs to be tense and indeterminate. So one way to create a little light and hope while preserving the overarching tension of the impending battle is to have people find comfort in one another in the midst of the tough circumstances. So Tonks/Lupin and Fleur/Bill worked fine for me.

• I like Ginny and Harry together, but thought the “I can’t be with you, it’s too dangerous” bit during the funeral of the beloved uncle figure was clichéd and unnecessarily angsty. I expected to see Harry don a spidey suit afterward.

• There was no whiz-bang magic in this one. Learning how to fight the dementors, the crazy rooms in the Ministry of Magic, the O.W.L.s—there just wasn’t anything like that here, no new wizarding technology introduced (except apparating, which was mind-over-matter mumbo-jumbo crossed with L'Engle's tesseract), and I missed that dimension.

• Perhaps it is my undying faith in Dumbeldore’s judgment that Snape is trustworthy, but in chapter two I wondered whether Snape would be the character that died as some tragic consequence of his vow to protect/help Malfoy. I think (hope?) there is more to be uncovered here. Snape was one of the most intriguing (albeit rather loathesome) characters in the series. It’s possible, for example, that Snape had to kill Dumbeldore for the benefit of the larger plot, details to be revealed in book seven. (Sort of a sacrificial thing, or maybe an Obi-Wan “If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”) That makes Snape a more truly tragic character—he had to kill the one man who trusted in him. Otherwise, I suppose, Dumbeldore is the tragic character—putting his trust in the wrong man.

• The Inferi thing was introduced but not a whole terrible lot was done with it. I assume this spell will figure prominently in book 7, but I wonder further whether it will come up specifically in relation to Sirius Black. I’m sorry, but I’ve read his “death” scene in book 5 a few times, and I think it is quite ambiguous as to whether he’s really dead-dead, or in some otherworldly state. Could be wishful thinking on my part, but I just get a sense he’s not totally gone.

That’s enough for now. Part of me wanted to savor the reading of the book, but I’m eager to talk about it and I just don’t have the kind of week that will be conducive to having a 650-page book hanging over me. I am glad to have the monkey off my back.