Thursday, June 10, 2010

Summer at Hogwarts - Chamber of Secrets


Hello everyone! We're now 10 days into the term and that puts us at the end of another book - Chamber of Secrets.  Hopfully a few people have keept up with the reading and have now officaly opened the chamber, defeated the basilisk and are now starting your third year shadowing Mr. Potter at the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Sticking with my No Reviewing Books We've All Read and Enjoyed policy I'll now dive into things I noticed, liked and didn't like about Chamber of Secrets.

For starters I'll mention that this was my tied for my favorite book in the series for quiet some time and it still holds a special place in my heart, but on this read it did not live up to my memories. I think the biggest issue i noticed on this read was the pacing. I thought it was just a little off and sometimes had a hard time following how much time had passed. Not that this is really that important in the grand scheme of things, especially knowing the story so well but it still kind of irked me.  

What really struck me was how little I thought about this book, it was just a quick read but in the whole of the series it does little in moving the plot along, much like in Sorcerers Stone. There is obviously a lot of useful information here, even if it wasn't apparent the first few reads before HBP and DH came out. However this is the start of my love/hate relationship with House Elves, especially Dobby. He is so annoyingly hilarious and every time he appears on a page i both want to close the book and laugh. 

My favorite thing of Chamber of Secrets is the the overwhelming mystery that passes through it. What is the Chamber? Where is it? What's in it? Who's opening it? Why is Harry a Parseltongue? Of course all of these things are answered by the end of the book, but these questions are really the only intriguing part of the book for me and probably the only reason I finished it instead of skipping ahead.

What are your thoughts on Chamber of Secrets?

The Prisoner of Azkaban recap will be more in depth, and will have more compelling quiz entry's along the way. 





1 comment:

Unknown said...

Like you I enjoyed the mystery while reading the books. The first time I read it I had fun trying to guess the answers but fortunately I failed to solve it until all was revealed. :-)