Bad Moon Rising: Regarding the Half-Blood Prince
By the end of The Order of the Phoenix, the battle lines between Voldemort and his Death Eaters against the rest of the wizarding world had been firmly set. His return now public and Harry beginning what would become his final year at Hogwarts, The Half-Blood Prince is a final bit of setup and a final bit of housecleaning before the grand finale. There are loose ends Rowling needed to tend to before the seventh and final novel in the series and this book suffers a bit because of it, laying the foundation for something bigger in sacrifice of its own self-contained story. But at least she turns most of her cards.
The sixth installment of the Harry Potter series was published that last magical summer in between high school and college for me, that kind of lazily surreal period where you've just completed that lengthy major stage of your teen years and make final preparations to go off on your own academic adventure hopefully somewhere new and with its own new cast of characters entering your life. That made it perhaps the perfect time for The Half-Blood Prince to be released but it, in the larger canon of the series, it is perhaps the strangest, saddest entry in the series and the darkest one at that time; it's the Majora's Mask entry in the series. That reference is for like three people. Including me.
This entry essentially introduces what will be the central narrative drive of its sequel with Harry learning that Voldemort has remained alive through his use of Horcruxes, splitting and storing his soul across different relics and artifacts. It's how he suffered his own killing curse being reflected at him and presumably explains his appearance as a no-nosed frog man. Along the way, Harry learns of the root of Snape's antagonism towards him and provides the Boy Who Lived one last bonding experience with Dumbledore before the elder wizard's death at the book's climax.
A lot of time is spent here delving into hidden histories and the origins of Voldemort with his sinister descent into darkness. It makes sense; all of the other pertinent history surrounding Harry and the inevitable conflict have really been tapped out at this point so all that's left is the Dark Lord and his background, the last major reveal from this deck of narrative cards. That, I'm sure, is fascinating for most but I never particularly need to know the origins of villains, the tortured backstories, all that. I was never all that interested in a entire prequel trilogy to explain the origins of Darth Vader, a Rob Zombie-helmed reboot to explain how Michael Myers became The Shape, or an upcoming Joaquin Phoenix Joker origin film. I don't need to understand evil to accept it as such; it's a force of nature, it just is. Just a matter of personal preference there.
I do like Harry learning his father James wasn't the saintly figure he had always built up his parents to be, at least as a schoolboy himself. It adds layers of nuance to the characters that hadn't really been seen before and certainly explains the years of antagonism Harry has endured at the hands of Snape. Though speaking of Snape, the titular mystery regarding the identity of the Half-Blood Prince is sort of a feint. The mystery doesn't really play to the central driving plot and the revelation that Snape himself is the self-proclaimed figure is almost presented as an afterthought after the story's major twist of Snape killing Dumbledore in its climax. I think that kind of is a good summation of the story as a whole.
The film adaptation doesn't fare much better; it's easily the weakest since the creative second wind the franchise received with The Prisoner of Azkaban. A lot of that comes with the feeling that a lot of those B-storylines receive far too much pacing. It's probably not director David Yates' fault; those problems are in the text too but he had done so well adapting The Order of the Phoenix that I had hoped he would similarly deliver here. But by the film and book's end, the pieces had finally been explained and set and the true game was about to begin.
The sixth installment of the Harry Potter series was published that last magical summer in between high school and college for me, that kind of lazily surreal period where you've just completed that lengthy major stage of your teen years and make final preparations to go off on your own academic adventure hopefully somewhere new and with its own new cast of characters entering your life. That made it perhaps the perfect time for The Half-Blood Prince to be released but it, in the larger canon of the series, it is perhaps the strangest, saddest entry in the series and the darkest one at that time; it's the Majora's Mask entry in the series. That reference is for like three people. Including me.
This entry essentially introduces what will be the central narrative drive of its sequel with Harry learning that Voldemort has remained alive through his use of Horcruxes, splitting and storing his soul across different relics and artifacts. It's how he suffered his own killing curse being reflected at him and presumably explains his appearance as a no-nosed frog man. Along the way, Harry learns of the root of Snape's antagonism towards him and provides the Boy Who Lived one last bonding experience with Dumbledore before the elder wizard's death at the book's climax.
A lot of time is spent here delving into hidden histories and the origins of Voldemort with his sinister descent into darkness. It makes sense; all of the other pertinent history surrounding Harry and the inevitable conflict have really been tapped out at this point so all that's left is the Dark Lord and his background, the last major reveal from this deck of narrative cards. That, I'm sure, is fascinating for most but I never particularly need to know the origins of villains, the tortured backstories, all that. I was never all that interested in a entire prequel trilogy to explain the origins of Darth Vader, a Rob Zombie-helmed reboot to explain how Michael Myers became The Shape, or an upcoming Joaquin Phoenix Joker origin film. I don't need to understand evil to accept it as such; it's a force of nature, it just is. Just a matter of personal preference there.
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| Not interested in young Dumbledore as Sam Loomis either. |
The film adaptation doesn't fare much better; it's easily the weakest since the creative second wind the franchise received with The Prisoner of Azkaban. A lot of that comes with the feeling that a lot of those B-storylines receive far too much pacing. It's probably not director David Yates' fault; those problems are in the text too but he had done so well adapting The Order of the Phoenix that I had hoped he would similarly deliver here. But by the film and book's end, the pieces had finally been explained and set and the true game was about to begin.
