Book 5 to set up 6 & 7?

[Violet]

Maybe it was just me, but i think that book 5 in many ways was sorta the transition between the younger harry (the less serious side of things) and then the older more mature harry.
We've found out a lot more history about things, RE: the order and the bond between harry and lord v.
i felt that i was expecting a lot more to be happening because of the way that book 4 was finished.
now i've finished it i think that it was great, but whilst i was reading it i found myself kinda waiting for sumat to happen.

[Lunatech]

violet i agree with you completely on this. I mean you gotta understand harry is 15 now. that's a huge transitional period for any adolecent. also the fact that now all of his close relative are dead and harry has to face the reality of having to face voldemorte.

the book is just that, a huge transition from the chipper harry potter to that of the more bleak and grim one where people will die because voldemorte is just that badass. this is probably a bigger transitional change than that of book 4. in book 4 harry still seemed a bit naive.

i suspect the last two harry books to be quite dark. voldemorte will probably go on killing spree.

[Nothlit]

JKR commented on this during her webcast today, and it really does make a lot of sense. The first two books were so innocent. Harry discovers he's a wizard, and goes off to Hogwarts, where everything is so magical and whimsical and completely different from everything he has ever known. The only "bad guys" were really more like strange monsters than people (Voldemort sticking out of Quirrell's head, for goodness sake! ). Then, in PoA things start to get a little more complicated. We realize that the Muggle and wizarding worlds are intertwined with the fact that the Muggle news media is alerted to Sirius Black's escape from Azkaban. Things also get darker, with the introduction of Lupin, the werewolf, and the discovery that Scabbers is really a mass murderer. GoF continues this trend of darker, more complex ideas, and the end of that book is so crazy I had to read it a couple of times before I fully understood everything.

Now, OotP opens as Harry has experienced the first death of this new war. He's mad because he feels left out of his own life, like people are making all the decisions that affect him without actually consulting him. (If you have never felt this way before in your life, then you must have never been a teenager!) It's so accurate that it's almost scary! So yeah, this book has to take us through Harry's brooding and anger. This book coupled with PoA and GoF is really the big transition from the fantastical world of magic into the real and dangerous world of magic.

[June]

I don't know... I can understand Harry's change into the angry teenager in the 5th book, but perhaps what I'm more disturbed by is the abruptness of it. The end of the 4th book did not seem to signify any transition in harry. It was a rite of passage and he experienced a lot, but by the end of the book, he was shocked and sad and mybe a bit bitter, but all in all, just seemed the same person he had been. The starting of the 5th book however, introduced us suddenly to the Angry Harry... and to me, it was pretty abrupt. I know that a month has passed since then... and perhaps the problem is that we don't see that month, where he might have made his slow transition... we're just hot smack with the result... and for that, I'm just not very accepting of it, I guess...

[June]

hot smack = hit smack... -.-;;

Another typo...

[June]

Sorry for the triple post... but just read the thread again, and I think I posted in the wrong thread... and so my post is diverted from the main point of the thread.. Sorry about that.

Darn it... I just hate the fact that I can't edit my own post in here... -.-;;

In any case, in regards to the topic, I agree with Violet. Plenty of things happened in Book 5, but not the big war I was expecting. It was more of stealth, distrust, intriuges which, as Book 4 was a transition from the innocent world of magic to something more sinister, Book 5 was too a transition from tension and denials to an all-out war. A prelude to war, I would say.

BTW, does anyone else find that the 2nd war against Voldemort alludes a lot to WWII in the muggle world? The delusions that Hitler was not going to war, the denials, the pacifications, the fear of 2nd world war... someone in the background against such delusions (Churchill vs Dumbledore) etc. All these seems to corresponds to OotP...

[Violet]

i hadn't actually thought about it like that, but i think that u are right. any writer would be influenced by their surroundings and previous history etc, so i think that JK probably did have some thoughts of WWI and WWII in her mind.
i mean when u think about it voldermort is much like hitler. i mean hitler hated the jews, much like voldermort hates anyone who isn't a pure blood! which is fairly ironic seeing as he isn't one himself. much like hitler himself never upheld the typical aryan image of the german people, and he was austrian anyway!!!
but back on topic, i certainly think that books 6 and 7 will be MUCH darker and have a LOT more happening. we now have the situation fully set up, and well it's now inevitable for either harry or voldermort to die at the end of book 7, so there HAS to be a lot happening.
but i do wonder who else is going to die in the next book!

[Violet]

sorry to double post, but i just heard this on JK's interview thingy

I had to put in some things because of what's coming in 6&7~JK rowling

so yeah i think that pretty much backs up what i was saying earlier!

[Charis]

The last chapter is called "the second war begins." likely, the first war was the one fought 15 yrs ago before Harry was born and "killed" (for lack of better words) Voldemort. but, when i first read that chapter title, i took it to mean the real war begins. i was thinking that the first war was the war against the ministry, trying to get them to accept the truth. the most likely as the first war is the one i mentioned first, but if you see it as the war against the ministtry as I did at first, then you see even more how its a transtional book. not just for Harry, but for the overall plot of the whole series. the end of book four leads us to believe that Voldie will start killing and acting right away, but in book 5 we see that thats not the case. most of book 5 is just foreshadowing the "real" war, i think.[/i]

[werebane]

The second war is going to be big. it's litterally probally going to be the voldemort side against the anti vodemord side in several big skirmishes.

[Cho Chang]

The second war is going to be big.

well i agree with you. 'cuz JKR is going to make sure the war goes on for the book 5 and 6.

[Charis]

yeah..and i'm assuming book 7 as well.

[Hermione Weasley]

yeah i defintly think this is a big transitional book i was getting bored when i was reading it though and after i finished my head was hurting from all the info.

[Voldemort]

I thought it was good, but very transitional

[Lizzy Bennet]

Maybe it was just me, but i think that book 5 in many ways was sorta the transition between the younger harry (the less serious side of things) and then the older more mature harry.
We've found out a lot more history about things, RE: the order and the bond between harry and lord v.
i felt that i was expecting a lot more to be happening because of the way that book 4 was finished.
now i've finished it i think that it was great, but whilst i was reading it i found myself kinda waiting for sumat to happen.

I would have to agree, violet. Book 5 gave a great amount of detail, background, and set the stage for many things yet to come in the last two books. Like you, violet, I kept waiting for something to happen--it made for tense reading. I felt the end of the book got a bit muddled, somewhat like the end of book 4 got a bit muddled as well. Overall, it was a good book because you, as the reader, learned so much more about Harry's world and got the grander scope of things on the whole, which should set up the readers quite well for the following two books.

Again, to agree with you, violet, I think I went into book 5 expecting more action considering how book 4 ended...in a way, we, the readers, were like Harry...suspicious, anxious, disbelieving that Voldemort hadn't simply struck out immediately as we may have expected. Although Voldemort and his legions weren't 'active', for the most part, in this book, Voldemort's penchant for spreading dischord certainly was...Voldemort's very resurgence was enough to cause a war between the Order/Hogwarts and the Ministry...it caused the Weasleys to have one of their own turn on them, it caused Harry to be an outcast, it caused all sorts of chaos at Hogwarts, etc. Book 5 not only set the stage for Voldemort's full-blown return, but also set the stage for the next two books, and got us ready for what will happen.

And while I was frustrated, at times, with the lack of action, and then too much going on at the end of book 5, I will say that Voldemort simply coming back, full-force, after book 4, would have been a bit too simple...what would there have been left to do in the last two books? If anything, the way book 5 was written, it isn't just Harry anticipating Voldemort's reign of terror...everyone is! Book 5 was definitely transitional and needed to be so, and sadly, I think Harry did have to lose someone really close to him to examine what death means in a much more personal sense. I'm excited to see what happens in books 6 and 7!


~ Lizzy