Harry Potter and the Promise Kept
Just about six months ago Anita and I stopped at Third Place Books on our way home from something I now forget. I got myself a coffee and my grandson a hot chocolate while Anita went and found a book she had been lusting after: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final episode of J. K. Rowling's famous series.

I teased her about it a little, mostly because the book had been a media sensation and Anita wasn't much on media sensations. She thought I was yanking her chain because it was a kid's book and, much of the way home, proceeded to disabuse me of the notion. Being naturally contrary I took the opposite position for a while, but she did intrigue me a little with her description of how the books became steadily darker and more sinister and not so much children's fare as simply good Fantasy. She explained that they were far better than the (as I had to admit) otherwise quite good movies.

Only a couple of days later she finished reading it and, that night, she made me promise I would give the Harry Potter sequence a chance. I was more than willing to follow through right then, but the first few books in the series were ensconced somewhere in one of the book boxes filling an entire side of our storage unit; not exactly close to hand. Being me, not long after that I completely forgot about the whole thing. . .

. . . until during my recent move, so soon after Anita's death, I found myself packing up the last couple of Harry Potter books, along with one from the middle of the seven. I remembered my promise then, and it started itching at me. I looked up 'Harry Potter' on Wikipedia and was amazed to find a wealth of information about the books, all cross linked and full of spoilers. (Follow the link, you will be surprised at how complete and well-written the articles are.) Clearly the fan-base for Potter included many smart (and mature) people.

Those first few books still lost in the depths of my storage unit, I looked in the 'Young Adult' section the next time I was at a used book store and walked out six bucks poorer, with a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in my hand. This was about a month ago.

Tonight I closed the covers on the final book with a deep sense of satisfaction. Taken as a whole the books were not the best extended novel I have ever read. (If I re-read The Lord of the Rings again this summer it will be the seventeenth time. Yes, I have kept count. No, I can't imagine reading the Harry Potter books even a fraction as many times.) But I don't think I have read anything longer than a hundred thousand words in recent memory which I found quite so captivating.

Harboring my own ambitions of writerhood, I found myself analyzing as I read Rowling's work. Why was this holding my attention so well? What in it worked? And what didn't?

Quite honestly there is a lot there that doesn't work. The settings and props are too fantastical by half; sometimes enough to break suspension of disbelief and drop you sputtering right out of the story. The characters are often dumb as rocks. You want to shout at them. Make them step outside themselves and pay attention for just a moment.

And right there is one of the things Rowling gets right: You care about the characters. Most of them seem real, with flaws and strengths that bump them out into three dimensions. Clearly she cares about the characters as well, otherwise why spend so much time developing minor characters into believability? Unsurprisingly the only truly cardboard characters of the lot are the ones lost to evil. Apparently Rowling found them much less interesting.

And then there is the writing itself. We are not talking high literature here; rather a workaday prose whose greatest strength is its clarity. Most of the time the words simply do not get in the way of the story. Certainly there are times Rowling gets a bit too clever, as described above, but most of the time you are simply reading the story instead of chuckling over a ingenious usage here or unpacking a hidden meaning there.

Nearly all the story is told in the tightest of tight third person narrative, with Potter as the viewpoint character. The exceptions are info-dump devices intended to bring the reader up to date as the story gets trickier and events start moving with more speed. This also works well, you find out things as Harry Potter does and, even when the foreshadowing gets intense, chances are you are barely ahead of the young wizard in figuring things out.

Which brings us to plot. The first four books are simple 'coming of age' mystery adventures, each slightly more complex than the last. Then the mysteries become far more intricate and the books suddenly slide sideways into character-driven narrative before slewing back around to adventure towards the end. This is not the usual Hero's Journey stuff either; there may be one viewpoint character, but there are too many real heros here for your standard monomyth. Each overcoming their natural shortcomings. Each making a part of the myth their own.

All of this doesn't work one-hundred percent of the time, but it works enough to hold your attention and keep you turning the pages until, by the end, you find yourself awed by the depth of the world Rowling has created. No, this isn't Tolkien. Hell, it isn't even Pratchett. But it is more than good enough.

Good enough for me to think Rowling deserves the fame and money Potter has brought her (even if I think Tolkien deserved it more). And good enough for me to thank Anita for extracting that promise from me on a hot July night...