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osprey_archerAt last I have read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child! Which my feelings about are… rather lukewarm? I’m still working out my feelings about it. But I’ll put this
It’s in script format, which I knew before I started reading the book, and which I think somewhat undermines the book: one of the things I have always loved about Harry Potter is the descriptions of strange and fantastic settings and objects, and the fact that this is a stageplay means that there’s not much opportunity for that.
And, because it’s a stage play, we don’t get the opportunity to see the characters’ thoughts, which I think undermines some of the emotional arcs. In particular, I would have loved to see Albus’s thought process when he’s being Sorted: how does he go from horrified at the prospect of being in Slytherin on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters to letting the Hat Sort him there a few hours later? Is it just Scorpius? I like Scorpius a lot (he’s probably my favorite of the new characters in this story, in fact), but even he doesn’t seem like a compelling reason to go to Slytherin.
Also, I just don’t buy Cedric Diggory becoming a Death Eater. No matter how horribly he was humiliated in the Triwizard Tournament, he’s not going to join Voldemort. I feel surprisingly strongly about this for someone who never thought much about Cedric Diggory either way before.
I did like the scene where Harry confronts portrait!Dumbledore about leaving him with the Dursleys all those years, and actually I can totally buy Harry being pretty bad at the whole father thing: the Dursleys are his main role models for how parenting works, and while I’m sure he realizes they are bad role models, “be as unlike the Dursleys as possible” still has its limitations as a parenting philosophy. There are lots of ways to be unlike the Dursleys! They’re not all good ways!
...I also liked Hermione Granger, Wild-Eyed Rebel Leader. Of course I am glad that’s not the future that came to pass, but at the same time, I sort of think Hermione missed her calling when she became Minister for Magic. Clearly she was meant to be a rabble rouser.
I think ultimately I enjoyed it - it had a lot of parts that I liked - but I didn’t find it very memorable. It feels less richly textured than the other books, probably because it’s a play so it’s basically all dialogue, and so it feels like optional canon to me.
It’s in script format, which I knew before I started reading the book, and which I think somewhat undermines the book: one of the things I have always loved about Harry Potter is the descriptions of strange and fantastic settings and objects, and the fact that this is a stageplay means that there’s not much opportunity for that.
And, because it’s a stage play, we don’t get the opportunity to see the characters’ thoughts, which I think undermines some of the emotional arcs. In particular, I would have loved to see Albus’s thought process when he’s being Sorted: how does he go from horrified at the prospect of being in Slytherin on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters to letting the Hat Sort him there a few hours later? Is it just Scorpius? I like Scorpius a lot (he’s probably my favorite of the new characters in this story, in fact), but even he doesn’t seem like a compelling reason to go to Slytherin.
Also, I just don’t buy Cedric Diggory becoming a Death Eater. No matter how horribly he was humiliated in the Triwizard Tournament, he’s not going to join Voldemort. I feel surprisingly strongly about this for someone who never thought much about Cedric Diggory either way before.
I did like the scene where Harry confronts portrait!Dumbledore about leaving him with the Dursleys all those years, and actually I can totally buy Harry being pretty bad at the whole father thing: the Dursleys are his main role models for how parenting works, and while I’m sure he realizes they are bad role models, “be as unlike the Dursleys as possible” still has its limitations as a parenting philosophy. There are lots of ways to be unlike the Dursleys! They’re not all good ways!
...I also liked Hermione Granger, Wild-Eyed Rebel Leader. Of course I am glad that’s not the future that came to pass, but at the same time, I sort of think Hermione missed her calling when she became Minister for Magic. Clearly she was meant to be a rabble rouser.
I think ultimately I enjoyed it - it had a lot of parts that I liked - but I didn’t find it very memorable. It feels less richly textured than the other books, probably because it’s a play so it’s basically all dialogue, and so it feels like optional canon to me.
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Date: 2016-09-06 04:45 pm (UTC)Do I infer correctly from your sentences about Hermione that there are alternate futures given?
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Date: 2016-09-06 05:06 pm (UTC)And yes, there are alternate futures given. There's a bunch of business with a Time Turner that ends up creating different timelines.
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Date: 2016-09-11 01:36 pm (UTC)I'm definitely leaning towards treating this as optional canon though. And I felt it was unnecessarily cruel to make Harry relive his parents' deaths, bah, that was mean.
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Date: 2016-09-11 01:39 pm (UTC)Really I thought it was enough to give him a difficult relationship with his son. Isn't that angst enough after Harry's own childhood?