deathtocapslock | GOF Chapter 8: The Quidditch World Cup

If Arthur's numbers are correct then the QWC stadium is of the order of Wembley stadium (though not as big as the original Wembley). Since Harry's experience of sporting events so far came from TV and Hogwarts I can see why he is awestruck with the size of he place, though I doubt anything else about it was particularly amazing.

Am I to believe Wizarding Britain can afford to have 500 members of its workforce engaged in preparing the stadium for an entire year? Does this work with a population of 3000? Or even 10,000? Is that why there wasn't enough manpower available to catch Sirius Black? Or perhaps many of these were retirees looking for extra income?

Oh how fun it is to mess with the minds of Muggles (people like, say, Hermione's parents) to keep this event secret. Bless them, indeed. Meanwhile Hermione is taking notes on what magic is acceptable to use on Muggles.

Now that we see the size of the top box we realize that Arthur's party takes up about half of it. No little favor Ludo did him.

Wizarding commercial advertisements are just as lame as Muggle ones.

Is that Dobby? No? Shucks. But it's a house-elf at any rate, so Harry was only half-wrong. Doesn't it sound like Winky knew Dobby from before he was freed and started seeking a paying job? What would that mean? Were the Malfoys frequent dinner guests at the Crouch household way back before Mrs Crouch's death? Did Dobby and Winky grow up together? Did Dobby sneak away from Malfoy Manor to the Crouch residence to complain about his evil masters? Do house-elves have some kind of social gatherings? We'll never know now. Hmm, but if Winky knows of Dobby's search for a paying job and had the chance to hear Dobby speak of Harry 'all the time', doesn't this mean he came to the Crouch home (more than once) after being freed? And never noticed the invisible Barty Jr (in contrast with Bertha Jorkins)? Or perhaps he too was zapped with some memory charm (or several)? Might explain some things.

So ill-behaved elves and goblins are to face the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Is this the same department that dealt with Buckbeak? I doubt it is the same department that deals with ill-behaved wizards. I think the latter are dealt with by the Department for Magical Law Enforcement. I can see elves getting a different treatment - once one realizes they are a slave-class (though Winky expects the same to apply to a free elf), but goblins are free members of magical society, or so I thought. In any case, elves and goblins are classified as beings which is a category that includes those creatures that have the capacity to understand the laws and take part in forming them. Of course, this does not mean they are actually treated equally by those laws, nor does it mean they actually get to participate in law-making.

Winky is sitting in one of the seats and ostensibly reserving the seat next to hers for Barty Crouch, when in fact the other Barty Crouch is sitting in it, invisible. Which means Crouch Sr got a Top Box seat for his house-elf. I'm wondering how that came across to mainstream wizards. Oh, this is Harry's first meeting with the coming year's DADA teacher (though he doesn't even know anyone is there). And Barty's 1st opportunity to see Harry up close (and steal his wand). Now I'm wondering if Bagman was working for Tom after all.

Harry is indignant on Winky's behalf for her having to reserve her master's seat when she doesn't like heights. 2+ years from now Harry will force his own house-elf to go on spying missions for him against said house-elf's preference. IOIAGDI?

Percy can repair his shattered glasses. Meanwhile Muggles invented plastic lenses that are shatter-proof.

We see Fudge, and the Bulgarian Minister. But no Irish Minister in sight. Has the Wizarding World not caught up with the 1920s? Fudge is alone, BTW. In chapter 28 at some point Crouch will ramble about taking his wife and son to a concert with Mr and Mrs Fudge. I wonder what became of her.

The Malfoys make their entrance. All three of them this time around. There have been many men by the name of Lucius in history and in literature, as the wikipedia disambiguation page shows (at the bottom there are links to additional lists of Luciuses), but I tend to think Lucius Malfoy was named after Lucius Tiberius from Arthurian legend, because it seems one of the main reasons for Lucius' existence in HP canon is to serve as Arthur's antagonist, to be compared to Arthur and be found wanting. (This looks even more true in light of

aasaylva 's 'Arthur cuckolded Lucius' theory.) In PS neither man is present, but we hear their opinions of each other quoted by their respective sons. In COS we get to meet each of them individually - Arthur being excited that the twins took the car without permission, Lucius expressing disappointment with Draco's grades - and then they meet and clash at the book store. In this book they are both in the Top Box and in OOTP they are both waiting outside the courtroom for the outcome of Harry's hearing (no, Lucius' ties did not go far enough to grant him entry to the Wizengamot). Their trajectories cross at the end of OOTP - Lucius goes to Azkaban, Arthur gets promoted - and leads searches of Lucius' home. DH shows one thing they have in common - love for their respective families.

(Heh -Arthur and Lucius are like Albus and Gellert, though probably without the love affair - red-haired 'good' guy and a slightly younger blond 'bad' guy.)

Back to chapter 8:

Lucius donated to St Mungo's. He is so evil for (possibly) receiving 3 tickets as a perk in return! He should have done something more wholesome, like, say, help Fudge cover up illegal and harmful acts. Since I am in the biotech field I like to imagine that Lucius founded The Abraxas Malfoy Memorial Fund for Dragon Pox Research, though of course it could have been just a general donation to the hospital.

No Harry, the Malfoys don't consider anyone from Muggle descent second class (Bellatrix does, but she is still away in Azkaban). Narcissa's visit to Severus' home in HBP seems not to have been the first one. But they do consider Muggle-borns like Hermione to be second class. The way the Weasleys consider Muggles, such as Hermione's parents.

Arthur feels the need to polish his glasses upon spotting the Veela. To see them better? Or to avoid looking at them? This used to be evidence in support for Imperiurized!Arthur theories - or alternately theories about Weasleys being more susceptible than average to mind-control.

Harry notices the Veela - and his mind goes blank. Blanker than usual, that is. This is his first direct experience with mind-control, which will be very important in this book. (And to a lesser extent in later ones.) Meanwhile Ginny thinks, 'when I grow up, I want to be a Veela too!'

Leprechauns give the crowd a golden shower :^ I notice that many among the crowd were rummaging for gold - were they as ignorant as Ron, or were they hoping to find others just as ignorant? (BTW leprechaun gold is explained in Fantastic Beasts, a book Harry and his friends had to buy for 1st year. I wonder if the boys ever read it?)

Veela can be part of human society, can interbreed with humans and are considered 'beings' (don't appear in 'Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them'). Leprechauns are capable of speech in human language but are classified as beasts and have never requested reclassification as beings (I suppose because they don't want to be bound by human laws? Not that being a beast helped Buckbeak in any way). Anyone find their use as mascots just a bit icky?

Are all Veela female? Are all leprechauns male? Are they like Pratchett's dwarfs - the sexes are indistinguishable to humans? How do human heterosexual females respond to male Veela? Was Lockhart a male Veela?

Krum is thin, dark, sallow-skinned, crooked-nosed and is likened to a bird of prey. He looks like teen-Snape! And Hermione ends up liking him! Surely she'd find Severus attractive too, once she is a bit older? Alternately - remember those theories about Viktor and Severus being related? Perhaps they are - it doesn't really matter who Viktor is related to. How does a professional player of an outdoors sport get to be sallow-skinned at the end of summer, anyway?

The Irish team rides Firebolts, which automatically makes them worthy of victory. You can skip to the end of the game, we know who has the better brooms.

As an example of the lengths us fans went in attempt to decipher Rowling's supposed 'master plan' I offer you Quidditch World Cup, Shadows of the Future - An essay by a fan who disliked the Quidditch in the series so much he thought there had to be some meaning to them for Rowling to go into such detail about the games. It's still fun to do these things in retrospect: Is Harry's watching the game in slow-motion until he misses events symbolic of how he has no idea what is happening in the war because he is hiding in the tent reading about Dumbles' youth? Is Viktor's skill at flying a foreshadowing of Superman!Voldie? Is Harry watching Lynch's fall in slow motion a foreshadowing of him seeing the extremely long fall of Albus' body from the tower? Is Viktor's broken nose a foreshadowing of noseless!Voldie? And obviously, catching the Snitch while losing the game is what Voldie did with the Elder Wand. But also what Rowling did with Harry's story - she managed to get him to outlive Voldemort while completely denying him convincing growth. (This was not intended to mock SCollins. Most of us were doing this sort of stuff for a long while.)

Ginny hears Arthur telling Harry not to go for looks alone and promptly decides to adopt Veela personality once she can manage it. (BTW, this is the girl who has been flying secretly since she was 6. Notice we hear nothing about her reaction to the game. What does Ginny know about Quidditch?) Of course in Rowling's world all adult women are Veela. The pretty ones do it naturally, the less pretty ones can be Veela by choice, with the aid of a Love Potion.

Viktor throws the game for personal glory. Yet his team doesn't seem to mind - he is still an active player 3 years later. Hermione thinks he was brave. Since Durmstrang becomes a stand-in for Slytherin in this book we can speculate that he too was 'Sorted too soon', just like the grown wizard he resembles.

Fudge receives the Cup on behalf of Ireland. Looks like wizards have their own borders.

Bagman finds himself in debt to the twins, goblins and others. His manner of paying them marks the beginning of his real troubles. How did he hope to get away with it? Maybe he didn't read Fantastic Beasts in his student days either.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com

The thing is; Rowling is so totally ignorant of how fantasy actually *works* (clue: stuffing the background with elements directly imported from folklore isn't going to make it a plausible fantasy), that I'd almost like to see something written straight by her, just to have a comparison. And I'm not sure that she isn't up to anything "real". It was the more fantastical elements that she kept lobbing at us that fell flattest.

Because there is no question that she can tell a story. There were all kinds of *absolutely convincing* bits of 'impressionism' in the first three novels, light touches of characterizations that were *worlds* more effective than the melodramatic drivel she repeatedly rubbed our noses in, starting with about book 4. It's almost like at some point she gave up letting the reader draw their own conclusions -- or *wanting* the reader to draw their own conclusions -- and felt she had to dictate what they were supposed to think.

Which to me says that she didn't really know why anything actually *happened* from that point on, only that it *had* to happen that way in order to push the story arc to the next checkpoint so she could give it another boost to roll it on to the one after. She didn't *want* the reader to ask questions, or consider alternatives, or look to either side from the path she had drafted out. It was only going to work if they thought exactly what she *intended* them to think, and otherwise all her revelations were going to be ruined.

And all this was further undermined by the fact that as she had less and less to work with, she kept padding the naratitive with fluff and other non-essentials that contributed *nothing* to the final resolution, only extended the progressively more threadbare plotline to fit the acvademic year.

I'm not altogether sure I'd actually settle down to *read* a Rowling mainstream novel -- chiefly because I couldn't care less about mainstream novels. But I wouldn't mind seeing a novela or short story that wasn't some piece of fluff just dashed off for charity.

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

It was the more fantastical elements that she kept lobbing at us that fell flattest.

In terms of being 'unsupported' by the world in which she placed them, maybe; is that what you mean?

Myself, I think her biggest failing is in simply devising a clever storyline, a plot that has the necessary complexity to enthral her readers. Consider the end of the HP series; she had absolutely no idea how to draw it all to a close. Instead she just threw in some more deux ex machina devices into the mix and scripted a painfully simplistic trail of Harry proceeding from one 'checkpoint' to the next with no thought given to alternatives at all (as you say).

Where you say that she can 'tell a story' ... I'm interpreting that as "implement/write the plot that someone else has devised"? If someone walked up to Rowling and said "hey, Jo, I've worked out the plot, see how it all fits together and makes sense? How the end game uses all the previous plot elements, how they're all drawn together? How everything is consistent? Okay, now please go and write this story" ... okay, maybe then we'd have a Rowling series that measured up.

So yeah -

It's almost like at some point she gave up letting the reader draw their own conclusions -- or *wanting* the reader to draw their own conclusions -- and felt she had to dictate what they were supposed to think.

No, I think the storyline, at that point, got too complex for poor Rowling. Her 'oh, maths!' mentality couldn't handle the 'logic' and discipline required to map everything out properly. Either that or she just can't grasp the necessity for such detail; maybe both.

Anyway, she continued to wave her hands and just write what she wanted, but the shortfall between her tunnel vision (deliberate or naive) and what was required for a 'real' story just became more and more apparent. One facet of this being as how it demanded, more and more, that the reader surrender his will and turn a blind eye to all of those paths that the HP characters just didn't see springing up from every 'checkpoint'.

In other words, I'm in general agreement with you about Rowling and the broad brush strokes of her failings. But I don't think it was a case of her 'giving up on letting the reader draw his own conclusions' or 'feeling she had to dictate what they were supposed to think'. No, the root problem was Rowling's ineptitude in devising a properly 'realistic' or clever plot; instead she wrote a simplistic trail which simply required any reader to voluntarily cease thinking about the series and go only where his Jo led him. She didn't deliberately set out to dictate terms; that was just one of the results of her plot failure.

From:

jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com

>No, I think the storyline, at that point, got too complex for poor Rowling. Her 'oh, maths!' mentality couldn't handle the 'logic' and discipline required to map everything out properly. Either that or she just can't grasp the necessity for such detail; maybe both.<

No, it didn't get too complex. It *stopped* being complex. Because she had run out of legitimate story, and yet she still had to get the plot about six stations further down the line to be able to tie it off. But she hadn't ever bothered to build that part of the track. I think she simply assumed that when she got to it, it would come. And it didn't.

And rather than it *being* complex, she kept trying to *make* it complex-- by throwing all kinds of extra stuff that had *nothing* to do with the central issue, and contributed nothing but filler.

By the end of Gof the remainder of the central plotline could be summed up as; "Harry needs to learn that he and Tom are mentally connected, and that's bad and dangerous. Sirius needs to die so Harry can't depend on him, and Harry needs to learn about the Prophecy. Harry needs to learn about the Horcruxes, and Albus needs to die so Harry cant count on him to save him either. Harry needs to hunt the Horcruxes, and learn that *he* needs to die. The Horcruxes need to go away, Harry needs to volunteer to die, and then come back and trick Tom into killing himself.

Everything else is filler, and that just isn't enough to string three *long* volumes of the series together with.

Also, looking at it from that persective it's obvious why Rowling was so annoyed by all the interest in Snape. From that perspective, Snape is just a messenger, and his death *serves no purpose*. She didn't need to kill him at all.

By "tell a story" I mean that she can do exactly that. Spin an entertaining yarn that will keep the reader interested. It won't be great literature, but it will be entertaining. Unless she suddenly decides that it needs to become "serious"--because she just plain can't *do* serious. She can do creepy, for a short sequence. But pretty much the minute it stops being fun it starts coming apart at the seams. I don't get the feeling that she was having any fun at all by some point in OotP. And it never really became fun again. The "happy ending" sure wasn't any kind of fun.

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

No, it didn't get too complex. It *stopped* being complex. Because she had run out of legitimate story, and yet she still had to get the plot about six stations further down the line to be able to tie it off. But she hadn't ever bothered to build that part of the track.

That's what I meant; I wasn't precise enough in my statement.

A proper resolution - particularly one that tied up or used all of the previous material, or one that fulfilled her promises to fans, or one that was emotionally satisfying, or one that could carry the weight expected of it - was beyond her, too difficult for her. It *should* have been complex; but it *stopped* being complex. Writing a complex ending was too complex for her.

(I was going to put a smiley there but I'm serious.)

Anyway, I think we're in complete agreement.

And rather than it *being* complex, she kept trying to *make* it complex-- by throwing all kinds of extra stuff that had *nothing* to do with the central issue, and contributed nothing but filler.

Well said, total agreement. That sort of approach had served her well before; she just didn't understand how the end game of a series is of a different nature to what comes before. The same old procedure of throwing in new gizmos to save the day just doesn't work. Or putting in superfluous filler because the size of the books is being scrutinised and compared with their predecessors.

Rowling treated the last couple of books just like the first five; episodic, single-book adventures and puzzles and deus ex machina devices introduced at the novel's start and activated at the end. With only a tenuous and superficial connection to the actual backbone of the series itself or each other.

By the end of Gof the remainder of the central plotline could be summed up as; "Harry needs to learn that he and Tom are mentally connected, and that's bad and dangerous. Sirius needs to die so Harry can't depend on him, and Harry needs to learn about the Prophecy. Harry needs to learn about the Horcruxes, and Albus needs to die so Harry cant count on him to save him either. Harry needs to hunt the Horcruxes, and learn that *he* needs to die. The Horcruxes need to go away, Harry needs to volunteer to die, and then come back and trick Tom into killing himself.

Well, the prophecy was pure filler too; it was employed as a one-book wonder propping up the whole story of book 5, but it was cancelled by Dumbledore in book 6 and makes only a token appearance in the last two books, with Rowling hoping that her readers would believe it was important when it was mentioned in passing. No, the prophecy was just a one-book deux ex machina, or McGuffin, whatever it's called. Your central plotline is even more reduced!

By "tell a story" I mean that she can do exactly that. Spin an entertaining yarn that will keep the reader interested.

If the story is either (a) a lightweight (or 'childrens') piece, okay. Otherwise she needs the story to be outlined for her first.

From:

jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com

No argument there.

She *did* manage to string together a very decent, reasonably well-integrated series for about 3 and a half books. So she *is* capable of it. There was a bit of the one-book-wonder element in play, which is a bit tiresome in retrospect. But the first three books certainly worked.

But she skittered off once she sold the series as a series. I think she'd spent much of that five years that she claims she worked on the story before she sold the first book reworking and refining the first half, and never really got around to dealing with what she was really going to do to get from point D to point L.

She really idoes come across as the kind of person who just plain doesn't have a track record of actually finishing projects, for all she says she's been writing stories since she was six. She certainly doesn't seem to have ever tried to sell any of them. Did she even finish them?

During the years that she's been in the limelight she's often been asked whether she is working on something new. She's claimed from time to time to have been working on drafting out several *other* stories, that *weren't* about Harry Potter. Where are they? Did they ever turn into anything but a handful of notes, and maybe a couple of unrelated scenes that she wrote for fun? It's been three and a half years since she finished DHs. Has she written anything other than fluff for charity? IS she writing anything at all? Or is she going to claim to be writing the threatened "Encyclopedia" and, consequently have a built in excuse NOT to write anything ever again?

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

... and never really got around to dealing with what she was really going to do to get from point D to point L.

I don't think there can be any doubt about this whatsoever. Absolutely no mention of the Hallows, the Bard, etc, in the earlier six books. She had no idea how she was going to get Harry over the finish line until she sat down to start writing DH.

And HBP had just one bare fact/event in it - the death of Dumbledore. Everything else was (boring) filler (as you covered earlier).

Or is she going to claim to be writing the threatened "Encyclopedia" and, consequently have a built in excuse NOT to write anything ever again?

Well, sadly, the excuse works, plus she *doesn't* have to write anything ever again! Unless she wants to purchase Tasmania.

From:

karentheunicorn.livejournal.com

Well, sadly, the excuse works, plus she *doesn't* have to write anything ever again! Unless she wants to purchase Tasmania.

LOL! And then she can write about vampires!! =)

From:

seductivedark.livejournal.com

...she just didn't understand how the end game of a series is of a different nature to what comes before. The same old procedure of throwing in new gizmos to save the day just doesn't work.

From what I recall of writing class, the gizmos and macguffins should appear in the first third to half of the story. It's okay to wander off on this road or that road to explore a little, as long as the introductions are kept to a minimum and kept to people and things that will be important later on. It's like tying gossamer strings to little fairies and letting them flit away but, only to the end of the thread and pulling them back within the framework of the arc surrounding your body, that is, your text. After the halfway point, the fairies need to be reined increasingly inward, increasingly quickly, as the wanderings stop and everything faces in toward the central theme, which becomes a huge whirlpool drawing everything down to the end.

I started worrying when more and more stuff was introduced after GoF. Those fairies were not being reined in, they were off exploring the mulberry bush on extendable leashes and, like the kid in the Tale of the Five Brothers, they weren't coming back when they should have. There was no way she was going to be able to tie things up in three books, now two books, now one book, without causing a literary train wreck. All that stuff about the Deathly Hallows, Tom's past, Lily/Snape, H/G and R/Hr, horcruxes and the scar connection, should have been set up before the end of GoF, if even obliquely.

I tend to agree with some things I've read over at Red Hen (not sure which essays, sorry, JOdel!) that say Rowling panicked when people started guessing things such as, Snape is a Good Guy, did anybody love him, and tons of other things that fans explored through their fics and the questions they posed to Rowling. I think she deliberately wrote blinds into the story to put off theorists and guessers, to keep her secrets until the very end. All that unfairness of Dumbledore not telling Harry what he needed to know goes for the author and her readers as well. The secrecy ultimately took precedence over the plot.

IMO, of course.

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

I've never taken a writing class but I've read other series of fiction books which *have* done the right thing, spent the last part of the arc tying everything together, drawing matters to a close, the characters and their actions all coalescing into one big finish.

So when Rowling sat down and wrote the very last novel of the series just like the earlier six - here's Harry, he has a problem, here are some new gimmicks just for this book which he'll use to get over the humps - only far worse, far more clumsily than ever before - it really felt WRONG. Just amateurish writing, pulling new rabbits out of the hat at the eleventh hour.

I guess I also thought of the end game of a series as something like the third speaker of a debating team, he who is supposed to spend most or all of his time refuting the other side, rather than bringing in new material. That was the closest academic analogue I had in my experience.

All that unfairness of Dumbledore not telling Harry what he needed to know goes for the author and her readers as well.

OH MY GOODNESS YES!!

One of the things for which I most detest DH is Rowling's deliberate *cheats*, how she blatantly LIED to the readers just to keep her precious surprises. The Elder Wand enthusiastically showering sparks when Voldemort steals it from the tomb ... only we're told later on it's not working properly for him, no, not really. The magical rule of transitive wand mastery which doesn't exist, not even a HINT, until Harry broaches it two seconds before he uses it. The just-like-Lily's-sacrificial-protection-only-entirely-different gimmick which Harry says is in play ... even though he'd been shielding students from Voldemort's spells immediately before. Which allowed Riddle to immobilise Neville and throw McGonagall, Kingsley and a third combatant into the walls with deadly force. All of that, particularly the last, are examples of Rowling deliberately lying to her readers. Just so she could keep all the surprises until Harry's stale monologue.

PATHETIC, sad writing.

Those a specific examples, but yes, I agree, Rowling's deliberately writing Dumbledore as a crippled or farcical leader who wouldn't confide in ANYONE - just to preserve the secret of Snape, or the horcruxes - stretched beyond credibility part-way through book 6. The series disengaged for many readers for just that reason, I dare say.

From:

mary-j-59.livejournal.com

Great discussion, you two! I'd just like to add my two cents, if you don't mind.

1. I get irked, as an aspiring writer, longtime reader, and youth services librarian, when people claim Rowling just ended up writing a set of children's books. Because there are many children's books that tackle serious subjects in an honorable and serious way. To give two examples, Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea tales and Diane Duane's Young Wizards both, in their very different ways, tell about young wizards and their maturation. And both show a coherent magical system and young people actually facing and dealing with the consequences of their actions. Both are miles ahead of Rowling on many, many levels.

I was shocked when Rowling claimed that she was writing character-driven stories, because that was one thing she was definitely not doing. No, her books are entirely plot-driven. She has her characters act in zany and counterproductive ways to serve the needs of her plot. But also-

It seems to me that, to write a novel, you don't need massive complexity in plot. You need one main idea that is big enough to build your story on. For example, there's the question of whether power must necessarily corrupt. Or the question: what is the nature of evil, and how is it best fought? Can it be fought? Or- what if there really were a world of talking animals? How would that world relate to ours, and how would the redemption story play out in that world? Or - but you get the idea. Rowling may have had a big idea or two, but I don't think she ever settled on just what her story was about. Was it about the corrupting effects of magic on humans? I can certainly read it that way, but I get the strong impression that she didn't intend that reading. Was she really saying something about the power of loving sacrifice? It seemed so in the earlier books, but now I just don't know. Was she rewriting Wuthering Heights from Hareton's pov and setting the story in a magical world? Or was she saying something about depression? I simply have no idea, in the end, of what story Rowling thought she was telling. And - that's a problem. It's a bigger problem than all the innumeracy in the books.

My two cents!

From:

danajsparks.livejournal.com

LOL Yes! That really is the basic problem with her story. It lacks a theme! Which is, like, considered one of the most basic elements of any story.

I think the fact that she borrows from and alludes to so many elements of classical literature leads us to expect to find some overarching message, but her story, in many ways, is actually about the equivalent of a summer action movie.

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

Diane Duane's Young Wizards ...

I *love* the Young Wizards books! I've touted them many times as examples of 'childrens books' done right, way superior to Rowling's work. Mainly in reference to its 'magical mechanics'; as you say, Duane devised a 'coherent magical system' that works beautifully and adds a solid chunk of weight and realism to her whole series. Whereas Rowling's utterly trivial 'wave a stick and say a few latin words, and hey presto! No effort, no sense of magical 'power' or exertion, no skill, no expense, no matter the scope, it just happens' casts an aura of lightweight caricature over the Harry Potter universe right from the start.

Both are miles ahead of Rowling on many, many levels.

You are so right!

*makes a note to read this 'Earthsea' thing*

No, her books are entirely plot-driven. She has her characters act in zany and counterproductive ways to serve the needs of her plot.

Nowhere is this more apparent then in the last book, where Rowling had to write the end game for her characters and get Harry across the finish line. Deathly Hallows is nothing more than a simple pinball machine with Harry bouncing from one story 'checkpoint' (to use Jodel's word) to another, driven entirely by Rowling's need to get them there. Her characters never *think*, never explore options; they are dumbed-down automatons.

Rowling may have had a big idea or two, but I don't think she ever settled on just what her story was about.

Rowling didn't really have the depth of intelligence to devise or handle a single major theme. All along the way she just threw in gimmicks as they occurred to her. With no actual *support* for those gimmicks. We're no doubt supposed to marvel at Harry's provision of 'sacrificial protection' to the castle defenders; I've read the comments of fans who, to this day, bleat that the HP series was a triumph of 'love'. But these themes were so badly done it's beyond any sane person's credence. James's dying for his family meant nothing, but Lily's - wave your hands here - invoked 'old magic'. Just because. (Read Rowling's interview explanation of this for both amusement and disgust.) No other mother died for their children like Lily did for Harry. His dying-not-really-but-he-meant-to creates the same 'protection' for the castle defenders as Lily's, except it works completely differently.

That's just one example of a Rowling 'theme' which was thrown into the pot. She did that with a heap of common tropes, hoping one or more would stick. I come across fans who still insist that the series culminated with the fulfilment of the Prophecy, even though it was deconstructed by Dumbledore/Rowling right after OotP was done with its services.

And so on. Just like Rowling would chuck in magical creatures and names from popular myth to flesh out her fantasy world, so do did she toss in any number of ideas. But she treated none of them in any depth. She didn't provide hooks on which they could be properly supported. And so they largely failed.

It was funny - and disgusting - to read all of those interviews after the end of the series, the ones where Rowling was patting herself on the back and trying to retroactively assign non-existent depth to what she'd written. I'm sure in interviews she tried to attach several of those themes you mentioned - Harry's 'goodness', the 'power of love' and so forth. It was funny, sad and disgusting to watch, all at once.

It seems to me that, to write a novel, you don't need massive complexity in plot.

I appreciate and agree with what you've said, although the series I've been thinking of in comparison with HP have been ones which instead capitalised on setting up multiple plot threads and drawing them together. I guess the HP series was never set up according to that template; everything was Harry-centric, his was the only real story arc. But DH is still a miss in how it fails to draw everything swirling around Harry - horcruxes, Hallows, bad guys - into a tight and elegant finish. Instead it's a confused mess with any number of 'cheats' and holes held over for the final dramatic confrontation, where they are then dismissed so cavalierly the whole series fails.