I am a Harry Potter fan. There. I’ve said it. I pre-ordered the new book from Amazon and we went to see “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” this afternoon. While I enjoyed the continuation of the story of Harry this was my least favorite story and the movie was dark and depressing.

One of the things I like about Harry Potter is the sense of wonder and hope. Here is this kid who has had such a terrible time growing up and has somehow managed to not become bitter. He has a strong sense of right and wrong and knows how to be a friend even though he hasn’t had any experience with friendship. He is loyal, kind, admirable.
In this book and movie it seems like that sense of wonder is gone, the expectations are all bad, Harry spends much of his time pushing his friends away, and in general the quality of the story wasn’t up to the same standards as the others.

Every other Harry Potter book and movie left me wishing they had gone on longer. This was the first one that made me feel like it could have fit into half the time and it didn’t even seem as though the characters liked each other. The only time I saw any of the old Harry was when he was teaching the other students and the part of Ron was almost non-existent.

Sometimes there is enormous pressure on authors who write a very popular series of books to hurry up and crank out the next one. If that’s what happened here it makes me sad. I hope Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is better. If not it may be a good thing if it is the last of the series.