If you'd like to know what hapens in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows without having to read two hundred pages worth of camping-related program activities, there's a slightly snarky scene-by-scene summary at Gibberish in Neutral:
Yaxley: HAI I IZ DEATHEATER NOT APPEARING IN PREVIOUS BOOKS. YOU HAS NEWS?
Snape: Of course I have news. I'm an evil genius of unaccountable intelligence.
YAXLEY: THAT IZ GOOD. WE B FRENDS?
Snape: Come on, Lord Voldiething is waiting.
YAXLEY: LOOK MALFOY BE HAVING ALBINO PEACOCKS LOLOLOLOLZ!
Also, and here is a sentence I thought I'd never type, I basically agree with Megan McArdle (writing before the big release):
The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?
The answer, as with so much of JK Rowling's work, seems to be "she didn't think it through". The details are the great charm of Rowling's books, and the reason that I have pre-ordered my copy of the seventh novel: the owl grams, the talking portraits, the Weasley twins' magic tricks. But she seems to pay no attention at all to the big picture, so all the details clash madly with each other. It's the same reason she writes herself into plot holes that have to be resolved by making characters behave in inexplicable ways.
There's some element of the econ version of humorless dorkitude in this, and the same complaints can be applied to other, better works (Where do Sauron and Saruman get the food for their giant orc armies? For that matter, where does anybody in The Lord of the Rings get their food from?). But McArdle has put her finger on some of the things that I mean when I say that the Harry Potter books, for me, do not reward deep thought.
Comments
>the Harry Potter books, for me, do not reward deep thought
It amazes me that anyone thinks they should. They're kids books, after all. They're not supposed to be deep.
Posted by: writerdd | July 25, 2007 9:09 AM
Chad, there were huge farms in the southern part of Mordor. Those are mentioned, I believe, in the Return of the King while Frodo and Sam are marching in the slave column toward the Dark Tower.
I'm pretty sure that Saruman let his troops live off the land (therefore raising the ire of the ents in Fangorn.) If I was creating orcs, I'd make them able to eat about anything, to tell the truth.
writerdd, there are no shortage of deep children's books. Twain's and Heinlein's juveniles are worth a read, even for adults. LOTR and Narnia are fully functioning worlds with a depth and rules that are equal to our own.
The age of the audience is no excuse for shallowness. Good children's literature is good literature, period.
Tom
Posted by: Tcgtrf | July 25, 2007 10:09 AM
There's some element of the econ version of humorless dorkitude in this,
"Some element?" It's pure humorless econ dorkitude. Good grief, that's in the same vein as people who wonder how much the Death Star cost and what the chips mean in ST:TNG's poker games. Since, y'know, it's a moneyless society.
At some point, one needs to step back and take the book for what it is. And what it is is a detailed morality play for kids and young adults, not a detailed economics treatise.
Posted by: John Novak | July 25, 2007 2:22 PM
"Some element?" It's pure humorless econ dorkitude. Good grief, that's in the same vein as people who wonder how much the Death Star cost and what the chips mean in ST:TNG's poker games. Since, y'know, it's a moneyless society.
There's a lot of that, but I think she also identifies a couple of the elements that rub me the wrong way-- the fact that the difficulty of spells seems to depend entirely on the dramatic needs of the plot, the fact that there doesn't appear to be any real cost to doing magic, and so on are story-telling issues as well. They erode the suspension of disbelief in a way that's detrimental to the whole story, at least for me.
It's why I've never had the slightest interest in Harry Potter fanfic, in spite of Kate raving about several fanfic authors-- the world of the books just doesn't feel solid enough to me to be worth the bother.
Posted by: Chad Orzel | July 25, 2007 2:37 PM