Book Review: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'

You might be asking why I'm reviewing the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, years behind its publication date and mere days away from the release of the sixth movie. It has directly to do with my pursuit of blowing through the first six books in preparation for the release of 'Half-Blood Prince' and indirectly to do with my growing admiration for the series. I wasn't very impressed with the first two books, I have to be honest. They were fairly good, though in and of themselves, I didn't think they necessitated five more books, of increasing length no less. But my opinion changed with the third - and subsequently the fourth - book.

I have to give it to J.K. Rowling: she managed to fool me again. Shame on me. I just put 'Goblet of Fire' down, and I have to say that I was very nearly disappointed until the last fifty pages or so (I won't give anything away, or at least I'll try). Needless to say, at its length, it has quite the labyrinthine plot, and in parts it became tedious to get through the characters' Bond-Villain-Like proclamations of guilt and motivation, but in the end I enjoyed it. There is one part (which I won't mention) where I thought the book - and perhaps the series - had jumped the shark, so I teetered over into territory where I thought I might actually come away actively disliking the book. I continued to read, skeptical of the outcome, but Rowling actually pulled it all together fairly well, aside from the problem I mentioned above.

'Goblet of Fire' is stronger than the third book, 'Prisoner of Azkaban', but only slightly. Though the plot threads do get tied up in the end, it seemed to have taken quite the effort to get them in position for the denouement, considering how much dialogue it took for everything to make sense. I am amazed at how many details become cogs in a fairly complicated plot machine. One thing I admire about the series is that it really does pay off for the reader to pay attention to even the minutest details, because they may get pulled into the story's climax. That, I believe, is a testament to J.K. Rowling's process of revision, which seems to be astoundingly in-depth. I'm looking forward to finishing books five and six within the next week.

'Generation Dead' - Daniel Waters

Normally I don't comment on books until I'm done with them, but I'm bored and don't feel like writing 'fiction', so here goes. Furthermore, I'm only a measly seventy pages from finishing the book, so I feel justified in talking about [some of] it.

Generation Dead has a charming readability to it that I'll credit to Daniel Waters's prose style, which is fluid and somewhat witty, and it does tackle its main theme - social acceptance - quite deftly, so for that it gets a round of applause from me.

I cannot fault the preachiness it exudes, either, because it is YA fiction, and the entire medium has had a history of making everything so bloody melodramatic. I feel British today. The entire novel revolves around how silly people can be in not accepting others as 'human', even if those people are dead and not necessarily 'human'. Okay, let me clarify that thought. The entire conceit of the book seems, to me, to be that, if it seems sort of silly to discredit the undead solely based on whether they breathe or not, then isn't it silly to discredit others for other lifestyles? I can already hear how it would be taught in eighth grade classrooms everywhere.

If you took the words for undead - zombie, differently biotic, etc. - and changed the people from zombies to, let's say, gays, blacks, or middle easterners, then the message remains the same. Which, I guess, doesn't speak well of how the book is constructed. I can say, however, that there are some good zombie-ish moments in there, even if the book isn't drenched in gore and Romero mythology. Overall, it does present some very good points about humanity as a whole and what things actually divide us into our little cabals.

The problem is that it gets too muddled in what I'll call its 'Twilightishness'. SPOILER ALERT: [One of] The main characters falls halfway in love with a zombie, but their love/like situation isn't as transformational or transcendent as it is in Stephanie Meyer's books. It is marred by a type of discouraging real-ness not often found in these kinds of novels, and the main character, Phoebe, rides the fence through the latter third of the book, at a point when she should have either been totally in love or her passive prejudice should have shone through a little more clearly. Instead, we get a half-and-half working of Phoebe and Tommy Williams' relationship...and that's about as far as I've gotten.

Now, Generation Dead is more brain than brawn/lust, so approach with caution. There are a few "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" moments in there, so be prepared to see the soapbox come out and be prominent onstage. Other than that, it's a fairly quick, engaging read. And it has zomb, er, differently biotic people.