I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince less than 24 hours after starting it, as is the case with pretty much all of the series, and it was good enough. I guess there are some people disappointed in the storyline, which is understandable because some unpleasant and irreversible stuff happens, but that’s how these kinds of things are. Remember Return of the Jedi where it ended with Luke losing his hand and finding out Darth Vader is his dad? This is kind of the same thing – the ending of this book is inconclusive, but that’s to be expected when you’re talking about a series of at least seven books. And if this is truly the penultimate in the series, then it should be leading you up to something really big in the final book.

The other source of disappointment seemed to stem from the lack of action, and while it’s true that this book wasn’t as adventure-packed as the earlier ones, it feels right that less physical action is happening. It’s ridiculous to expect that they’ll go on exactly one huge groundbreaking journey every year, and this was much more about providing us with more insight and background on all of the characters than it was finalizing everything, which is fine. I enjoyed it, so there.