Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Reread Review (Mario)

The scope of the Harry Potter series explodes with the fourth novel. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is physically a big book. It doesn’t rival the individual novel sizes of large epic fantasy series by the likes of Robert Jordan or Terry Brooks, but it’s still a very big book, especially considering that Harry Potter is often categorized as young adult fiction. I’m hesitant to enforce a strong comparison between Rowling and someone like Jordan because, unlike Jordan, the size of Rowling’s books actually matters. The Goblet of Fire isn’t a bloated version of The Chamber of Secrets. The world hidden away inside its pages is representative of the overall size of the physical book. In short, more pages translate to more Harry and more wizarding world. That’s a great thing for me as a reader, but it’s a difficult thing for me as someone who is writing an appreciation of the novel. There is a lot going on and the best way for me to deal with it is to break it down by categories, while trying to tie them all together into some sort of cohesive whole. Sure, that sounds like an obvious thing to do while writing a review, and it is, but I’ve always found it difficult to organize my thoughts when I’m blown away by a great book and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, despite its problems, is a great book.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Reread Review (Myriam)

So, I’m finally sitting down to write my blog for the fourth book. I finished reading it a few weeks ago and have been holding back from starting the next book. I’ve not been motivated much to read the fourth book, nor to write my post for it. I think it’s because it is my least favourite book of the series. Even before the series was complete, I didn’t like book 4. It might be the “middle-child-syndrome” or in this case the “middle-book-syndrome”. There are many elements in this book that I simply don’t care for much. Let’s explore!

First off, Rowling deviates from her usual introduction. This time we start with Voldy right off the bat. Here we learn of Voldemort’s first killings, probably his parents, which ripped his soul a couple time and allowed him to create two horcruxes. We also learn that Voldemort was surviving off milk from Nagini, a rather odd fact that is also ironic seeing as he is actually feeding off of one of his horcruxes. I guess we can say he put in place some sort of insurance policy by using Nagini as a horcruxe. Again, this is probably nothing important, but I simply read into it way too much. But you never know!