…
Title: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Author: J. K. Rowling
ISBN: 1-55192-756-x
Format: Hardcover 607 Pages
Overall Concept 7
Execution 8

This is the sixth, and penultimate, book in the Harry Potter series and continues the tale of the orphan boy trying to get through his private school education while dealing with the larger issue of a homicidal megalomaniac, who he is magically tied to, trying to take over the world.

In this book Harry is no longer the petulant punk that he was in book five, but he is becoming the responsible man, capable of accepting his fate, that he will need to be to finally confront his nemesis Voldemort.

This book is more about Voldemort and who he was, is and can be, how Harry comes to learn these details and what he’ll begin to do once he understands them.

Really this book is an excellent lead up to the next, which will be the last in the series and the one where Voldemort and Harry come to their final encounter.

My only concern with this novel it that it appears that Ms. Rowling might fall into the trap of having Snape actually be a major villain of the series, and should she do this I will be most disappointed. Personally, I think she will be better off if she uses Snape as an example of the moral that life if full of very hard choices, sometimes seemingly beyond one’s control.

I enjoyed this book more than I enjoyed the last and because of such I am most certainly looking forward to seeing how Ms. Rowling ends the series, not to mention just how large of a book it will take her to wrap it all up.

I most certainly would recommend this book to anyone who has read the others in the series, and I would recommend that anyone who likes a good tale of fantasy pick up the entire series.