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J. K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | Review

Title: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Author: J. K. Rowling

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 770

Rating: 10/10

J. K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Order of the Phoenix is the fifth Harry Potter novel, and it marks something of a turning point in the series – up until this point, the threat from He Who Must Not Be Named is almost indirect, like a memory or a hangover which just won’t go away. But here, the big man is back in the flesh and blood, with a crack squad of his loyal Death Eaters at his service – the threat from him is real, and he’s no longer just worried about taking down Harry Potter. Now, he’s getting ready to take over the world.

The Order of the Phoenix, which the book takes its title from, is a secret society of ‘good guys‘, from Dumbledore to Sirius Black and the school-age Harry, Ron and Hermione. They’re a pretty bad-ass organisation, but they are also up against the Dark Lord and all of his Death Eaters. Wait, isn’t it only Death Eaters and former Death Eaters that call him the Dark Lord? Uh oh, I’ve been rumbled.

This is also the first book in the series to feature the death of a prominent character – not necessarily a protagonist, but one who’s played a key role in multiple books. I’ll say no more on the matter – you either know who I’m talking about or you don’t!

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter

In this book, our heroes are struggling to cope with their entrance into early adulthood whilst simultaneously fighting off the hordes of darkness. And not all of them are overt – he has to deal with Dolores Umbridge, for example, who Stephen King once described as “the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter.” Umbridge is a frightening figure, someone who’s truly evil and yet who’s managed to project a facade of innocence.

Whilst writing this review, I also learned that Order of the Phoenix is the longest of all of the Harry Potter novels, which also means that it has to be my longest Harry Potter review by word count. At 770 pages, it’s true that there’s plenty of the book to get through, but it never feels like a chore and you’ll be glad you stuck with it. For me, the story line was so gripping that I read it in a couple of days, and when the final book (Deathly Hallows) came out, I read it in a day. It also got delivered a day before shops were selling it, so I was very slightly ahead of the curve!

For me, most of the earlier books (and the first two in particular) had a focus on the minutiae of life at a school for aspiring wizards. Here, we get to see the wider world really opening up for the first time, and it’s fascinating to see how detailed Rowling’s imagination is. She’s easily one of the best living world-builders who’s still active today, and it’s a pleasure to read any of her work. But Order of the Phoenix will always be one of my favourites – it’s not just because of the vast amount of book that’s available to you, although that does help. For me, it also came about at just the right time – when it was released in 2003, I’d just turned fourteen, so it was perfect timing. In fact, this is the first of the Harry Potter books that I remember actually having to wait for.

J. K. Rowling

I’m almost 600 words in and still have another 200 to go, so I guess I’ll talk about the audio books. I’ve listened to multiple different versions of them, and I was a big fan of both the Stephen Fry one and the Jim Dale one, although I’d probably go for Fry if I was going to listen to them again. With a book as long as this, sometimes an audio book can help – on the other hand, sometimes the audio books end up being twenty hours long, in which case you’ll probably find it faster to read the book.

But you should read the book, because it’s awesome, and one of the highlights of the series in my opinion. Of course, I also think that you should read the entire series in order, but that’s up to you – the good thing about the Harry Potter novels is that they’re such a part of mainstream culture now that you can almost dip in and out of them. After all, everybody already knows the basic story line that loops through the seven books.

J. K. Rowling Quote On Robert Galbraith

Click here to buy Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Thomas Harris – Red Dragon | Review

Title: Red Dragon

Author: Thomas Harris

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 421

Rating: 7/10

Thomas Harris – Red Dragon

Red Dragon is a competent enough novel, but that about sums it up – Thomas Harris was a fine writer back in 1981, but he wasn’t as fine as he is today, and it shows. That said, the novel shows a lot of promise and it’s a decent enough read, professional at any rate – there’s just something about it that failed to excite me, a kind of realisation that the characters are difficult to relate to and the unsuspension of my disbelief.

However, it comes from an interesting background, and you could never accuse Harris of failing to do his research – ahead of writing the book, he learned about serial killers and the role of the F.B.I. from the organisation’s own Behavioral Science Unit. In fact, I’ve said in other reviews that Harris is the only author who’s ever scared me – he knows so much about the way that psychopaths work, that it’s hard to comprehend. Sometimes you start to wonder whether it takes a psychopath to know one.

Let’s face it, there’s got to be something that Harris doesn’t want us to know – after all, he hasn’t given anybody an interview for nearly forty years, and that seems unlikely to change now. And that leaves me feeling like there’s just something about him that compels me to read his work, and I think the feeling is shared by many others.

Thomas Harris

As usual, I don’t want to go too deeply in to the story-line, because I don’t want to spoil it if you go on to read it yourself – I will say, though, that I think this is the weakest of Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels and that if you’re anything like me, you’ll only get round to reading this because you’ve read all of the other novels and you feel like you ought to see where it all started, although if you really want to see that then you should check out Hannibal Rising.

In fact, Lecter isn’t really the primary antagonist here – that honour falls to a disturbed serial killer called “The Tooth Fairy”, and while he is a sinister force throughout the novel, he just doesn’t spread the fear through your veins in the same way that Lecter does, and while he is a well-educated villain, I doubt he could outsmart Lecter. The F.B.I. actually seeks the cannibal’s help to track him down, leading to a battle of wits between the baddies.