Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything.  Yep, I finished it fast, and then immediately started reading the series over again. 

Another step towards a darker storyline with more mature themes.  I thought the parallels to the "war on terror" were well placed.  I wish I was surprised by the big surprise at the end, but I wasn’t.  I knew it was coming a couple of books ago, and I’m actually surprised it took this long.  It has more parallels to the Lord of the Rings and some standard fantasy tropes, but many young readers will find such ideas new, so that’s all good. 

I love that Dumbledore loves to read muggle knitting magazines, and that we have Mrs. Weasley busy at her knitting.  I am glad that questions of romance are bubbling up, and hope we see some of the main characters continue to move towards real adult paths, full of promise for love, success, and happiness.  I guess I won’t say any more about it though.

Like I said, I took the opportunity to reread the rest of the series, and I’m glad I did.  A couple of weeks of power-reading got me through all six and cleared up some foggy bits in the story-line for me.  And it was fun.  Yay that.

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