I've just finished reading Half-Blood Prince, and I'm pretty disappointed with it. I've somehow guessed who was going to die quarter-way through the book, but still it wasn't a very exciting read, compared to the previous books. It starts off with a bang but quickly slowed down to a crawl, and it crawled it did, through more than half of the book. If you want to read through it quickly, I suggest reading the first 5 and last 5 chapters.
I understand, however, that this book is somewhat like Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It is placed smack in the middle of an excellent start and excellent ending - it can't do much except to carry the story forward with no real resolution to it. And that's what happened with this book - a lot of things are explained and a lot of scenarios are set up for the final encounters in Book 7.
Some reviewers blasted the book on focusing too much on silly puppy love and Quidditch. However, I think that is an accurate representation of most 16 year-olds. J.K. Rowling has to please a whole range of fans, and I think she tried to balance it too much, ending up nowhere. Gee, I'm still shocked with the ending. Guess that proves how good she is at writing deaths and suspense, but not romance and story telling.
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