I mention in one of my reposts (Adventures in Bad SciFi – Bloodsuckers) that I have had a love-hate relationship with the channel.  Both SF (hard science fiction) and sci-fi (space opera, Star Wars, and other “(insert genre)-in-space” fare) are two of my favorite genres of literature, movies, comics, and overall entertainment.  Add horror and fantasy into the mix, and you have the vast majority of my reading/watching material right there.

However, I have not really watched the SciFi Channel as much as I expected to.  That has been a result of a couple of things.  First, much of what’s on it is bad.  It’s just not quality; hence my soon-to-be-resumed series ‘Adventures in Bad SciFi,’ which was inspired by the weekly “SciFi Channel Original Movies” that play on most Saturdays.  It is true that there has always been bad, cheesy sci-fi; it’s almost a subgenre.  But unless a movie is bad enough to be entertaining, then it’s just boring.

Second, I have reached a place in my life TV-wise where I just don’t watch much serial television the way I used to.  I haven’t watched a regular series as it airs in years.  Instead, I tend to watch TV shows (such as Doctor Who) in large chunks of episodes, on DVD, DVR, or other means.  As a result, I have yet to watch much of Battlestar Galactica, which is really right up my alley, every Friday.  I’m probably going to get the DVDs and watch it that way.

Thus, my SciFi Channel viewing as been spotty.  I also forgot that the executives at the channel have added shows that are either non-sci-fi/fantasy related (ala ECW; why is wrestling on it at all?) or reality shows (Ghost Hunters got old after 10 mins of one episode; “Oh, no!  It’s dark and our cameras can’t capture crap, but we’re all freaking out anyways!!!”) and I just get tired of that crap.

So, with all that said, how do I feel about the name change?  First, it’s a stupid name.  When I looked at it, it immediately became “sifee” (short i, long e) in my head.  They claim the renaming allows them to trademark the name (which they can’t do to a genre like “sci-fi”), but the claim that the new name somehow makes the channel easier to identify is ridiculous.  However, given my general feelings about the network as it is, I’m not really surprised.  I’m not going to boycott the new SyFy or anything like that.  I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing: barely watching it at all, except maybe every Saturday evening for a really bad “original movie.”

August 5, 2007
Review – A Princess of Mars
Filed under: Literature, SciFi/Fantasy — duane @ 7:26 am

Edgar Rice Burroughs is better known outside of scifi and fantasy circles as the creator of Tarzan, but like many writers during the pulp era, he wrote in several different genres. In scifi, his principle contribution has been Barsoom novels, which contributed to a genre of pulp fiction known as “sword and planet” stories. While these type of stories are often called science fiction, they have more in common with fantasy; what little science they contain is very fuzzy and is basically magic in scientific trappings.

Science, however, is not the focus of Barsoom novels. They are pure adventure, set in a Mars that is as fantastical as Middle Earth. Just as Middle Earth is a fantasy version of ancient Europe, so Barsoom is a fantasy version of Mars. That’s not a problem, however, if you approach the novels appropriately. If you’re expecting Kim Stanley Robinson, you will be disappointed. But if you want to experience a fast moving adventure story, then The Martian Tales Trilogy will not disappoint.

This particular volume that I’m reviewing contains the first three of Burrough’s Barsoom novels: A Princess of Mars (serialized in 1912 and published as a novel in 1917), The Gods of Mars (1913/1918), and The Warlord of Mars (1913-14/1919). It was published by Barnes & Noble, and runs about $9.95. This is perfect, because given how fast these novels read, I could move on to the next right after.

All three novels focus on John Carter and are told from his perspective. Burrough’s sets the first two novels up with introductions, explaining how he obtained the manuscripts from his Uncle Jack, as John Carter is known by his earthly family, and then begin with the first-person narration of Carter.

Burrough’s Carter is basically a demi-god of sorts. He is ageless, always appearing about 30 years of age, and while he claims Virginia as his home (where he is claimed as family by the Carter family), he has no memory of his childhood. A Princess of Mars begins after the American Civil War. Carter and a friend have gone to Arizona to make their fortune in gold. Carter’s friend ends up killed by Apaches, and Carter himself barely escapes into a cave. While in the cave, Carter is struck by paralysis, while the pursuing Apaches are scared away by some unknown fear. Carter, struggling to move, ends up out of his body (which remains in the cave). He goes outside, and focusing on the planet Mars, finds himself transported almost instantly through space to arrive on the Mars.
Carter’s advent on Mars, as well as his (lack of) backstory, begin to set up the fantastical elements of the novel. No explanation is ever really attempted (the cave may have had some mystical element, but this is unclear), and it’s not really the point anyway; the point is to get Carter to Mars as easily as possible.

Once upon Mars, called Barsoom by the native peoples, Carter almost immediately encounters his first Martians, the green men, who are ten-feet tall with four arms and tusks. It is here that Carter discovers that because of the lesser gravity of Mars, he is able to perform superhuman leaps and has superhuman strength. These abilities work to his advantage with the green men, and he is able to win a certain position among them; although he is a prisoner, his actions against two of the greens elevates him to the position of chieftain among this green-man tribe, the Tharks.

Carter’s time with the green men results in the formation of several important relationships that influence the rest of the novels. First, his feats of strength gain him the respect of Tars Tarkus, a powerful chieftain of the Tharks. He also comes into contact with Dejah Thoris, the incomparably beautiful princess of Helium. The people of Helium are more like Carter, but their skin is a light copper, and Burroughs refers to them as the red men of Mars. Carter is pretty much smitten with Dejah from the first, and his relationship with her becomes his primary motivation through the rest of the novels. Another relationship that Carter establishes while with the Tharks is that with Woola. Woola is a calot, basically a ten-legged creature with a large, frog-like mouth that contains three rows of teeth; the calot takes the place of the dog on Barsoom.

During this part of the novel, several of Carter’s character traits are revealed. Burroughs manages to avoid making Carter a totally perfect (and therefore boring) character. Although Carter is noble, he has devoted so much of his time to the warrior profession that he lacks an understanding of women. This lack of understanding threatens his burgeoning relationship with Dejah a few times, and it is only through conversation with Sola, a green woman who was charged with Carter’s care. We also see Carter’s more caring side with animals, especially with Whoola, whom he wins the undying affection of through his kind treatment; Carter also manages to tame the wild thoats (like eight-legged, ferocious horses) through kindness. Prior to Carter’s arrival, the Tharks were accustomed to using violence to get the thoats obedience, but Carter demonstrates that through kindness, perfect obedience can be won.

Once the basic relationships are established, the story moves on. Carter must first free Dejah and Sola from the Tharks, whose jeddak (supreme ruler) is consider horrible even by green-men standards, and then from Zodanga, a country of red-men who are rivals to Helium. Zodanga, taking advantage of the Heliumatic Navy’s search for Dejah, attacked Helium and comes close to victory before Carter is able to turn the tide against them. Carter is (naturally) successful, and he and Dejah are married. Carter remains on Barsoom for ten years, and Dejah becomes “pregnant” with their child (the people of Barsoom actually hatch from eggs). All would be wonderful, except that the atmosphere factory that keeps Mars alive stops working. Carter is able to save the day (using knowledge he learned earlier in the novel), but ends up back on Earth after collapsing from lack of air. He then spends the next ten years on Earth before being able to return to Barsoom at the beginning of the next novel, The Gods of Mars.

Like many adventure novels, A Princess of Mars has certain morals or themes that are often touched upon. Carter is an outsider to Barsoomian culture, and as such he doesn’t take for granted their traditions and customs. While among the Tharks, Carter is able to teach them that the softer virtues of love and kindness are not signs of weakness. This is especially true in his training of the thoats, and in his discovery of the relationship between Sola and Tars Tarkas. His extension of friendship to Tars Tarkas also has a profound impact upon the Thark, who realizes that the red men of Helium do not have to be his enemies; this racial theme is continued in even more detail in the next two novels. Carter inspires Tars Tarkas to unite many hordes of the green men, used to fighting amongst themselves, to attack Zodanga and thus save Helium. While this enlightenment only permanently extends to the Tharks (the other green hordes being concerned only with plunder), it is a great achievement, and Tars Tarkas becomes a friend of the red men of Helium.

These virtues that Carter preaches are not just words, however. Carter is primarily a man of action, and thus his ideals of friendship, nobility, love, and kindness are given strength because of his actions. It is by what he does that people come to believe that he says. I think that may be one of the strongest themes of A Princess of Mars, as well as the other two books: show what you believe by what you do. The moralizing may be a bit heavy handed at times, but given the rollicking good adventure story, that can be forgiven.
All in all, A Princess of Mars may not hold up well today as science fiction, but it continues to be a good fantasy-adventure story, so long as you don’t take it, or yourself, too seriously.

I’ll continue this review of The Martian Trilogy with Part II: The Gods of Mars, and Part III: The Warlord of Mars.

GeekNights is one of my favorite podcasts, and they are huge Watchmen fans.  Scott, one of the two hosts, posted a short audio response to the change in the ending of Watchmen in the film version.  I have to admit that it had been so long since I read the original that I missed the ending change, but Scott’s argument is very well made, althought he admits that he hadn’t seen the movie yet (this was posted on March 5).  I’m going to be rereading it and posting my thoughts about it, so I’ll cover my thoughts about the ending when I get there.  If you’ve already watched the movie and read the graphic novel, then give this a listen.

By the way, the purpose of this article, as the title says, is just to get a few thoughts down, to sketch my initial impressions of the movie. It might be a while before I see it again (when the DVD is released, perhaps), so I want to jot down a few things before the memory fades.

I also want to follow up this article with a series of posts chronicling my rereading of the graphic novel. I got the idea from a series of blogs on tor.com, in which someone reread Lord of the Rings and chronicled their impressions of it. I think that might be an interesting idea to do for this and other works that I regard as classics, so look forward to that in the (hopefully) near future.

Now onto the sketch.

On this first viewing, I definitely liked the film. With my admittedly murky memory of the original, I thought this film stayed true to the comic’s theme and plot. It didn’t pull any punches in depicting the violence found in the comic; the film was very visceral, and especially gory in places. In fact, the only negatives that I can think of now were 1) the music choices in several places, particularly the sex scene between Dan and Lori in Archimedes, and 2) the length of the aforementioned sex scene. Beyond those two minor quibbles, I enjoyed the film.

Several scenes stand out in my mind. The opening sequence was, I thought, wonderfully done. It did a great job showing the audience the effect that costumed heroes had on the world, how they changed its history from ours. That’s something that I think is often missing from comics, specifically long-running series that have spanned decades. We know that costumed heroes would have affected history in many ways, but series like Spider-Man and X-Men can’t really drastically change history, which does create a distorted timeline (to say nothing of the actual ages of the characters; Peter Parker should be in his 60s). The film does an excellent job showing the changes the world and the characters have gone through.

One final thought. This film, like the graphic novel, is not easy to watch. Its messages about human nature are difficult, not to understand, but to accept. Human beings are shown more often at their worst; for a superhero story, heroes are lacking. That was something that was innovative about the original comic. Somewhat ironically, perhaps, this movie does the same for the superhero film genre that the original did for the superhero comic genre. Hopefully, for those viewers whose primary exposure to superheroes has been movies, this film will have the same effect.

Grouchy-old-geek addendum: the audience we saw the movie with, while on the whole okay, displayed moments of pure stupidity and ignorance. I could tell that this would not be a great audience when the majority of them laughed uproariously at some been-there-done-that comedy movie about stupid people doing stupid things. (I think the title was The Hangover.) Anyways, they sniggered like middle-schoolers during the sex scene, let out comedic interjections at the demise of one of Big Figure’s goons, and totally failed to get the meaning behind playing “99 Luftballoons.” Oh well. Stupid kids… get off my lawn!

I have always had a love/hate relationship with the SciFi Channel. For a sf/fantasy fan like myself, the concept is awesome. Unfortunately, throughout the years the execution has often left a lot to be desired. While one would think I would watch the channel a lot, the truth is I don’t. I haven’t cared for most of their original series, and even those with a premise I liked (such as Eureka) I just haven’t been that compelled to watch. And for every step they take forward, they always take at least one back. For example, it’s cool that they’re showing the new Doctor Who, but then they also show ECW wrestling, which has, as far as I can tell, no connection to scifi, fantasy, or horror.

With that said, one of the things I love about the SciFi Channel is one that I should probably hate: original SciFi Channel movies. These come in two types: mediocre movies that are neither good nor bad, and therefore are incredibly boring (such as Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula, which I was going to review after this one, but just wasn’t interesting enough), or they are so incredibly bad that, as the cliché goes, they circle back around to good again. Thus, every Saturday and Sunday (when I remember), I check out the program guide for potentially bad scifi, fantasy, or horror movies.

Bloodsuckers, also known as Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe, is one of these movies. It was written and directed by Matthew Hastings, who, it turns out, also wrote and directed another gem of the scifi trash heap, Decoys (about a sorority of aliens that kill the frat boys they mate with). This movie has all the familiar trappings of a made-for-SciFi-channel movie: relatively unknown cast, cliché-ridden dialogue and story, mostly crappy CGI effects, and TV-style cinematography (ie. lots of closeups, very few long establishing shots) shot onto video. Because these are intended as DVD releases, they are often shot in standard widescreen format (1.85:1), as opposed to TV (1.33:1); of course, this is mostly wasted because so many of the shots are close-ups or two/three shots.

The concept of the movie could have been pretty cool. I love vampires, and I love outer space; putting the two together could have been a chocolate-in-my-peanut-putter moment. Of course, this is a SciFi Channel original, so it isn’t. The basic premise of the film, established through a voice-over narration by main character Damian (not a vampire, btw, despite the name) is that as humans expanded out into space, they discovered that most intelligent life in the universe is vampiric in nature. Like a lot of modern vampire movies, they make a big deal of the fact that these aren’t supernatural vampires, and all the garlic/holy water stuff is useless. When humans came into contact with these vampires, the Vampire Wars began. For the most part, these wars are over, but the vampires are still a menace. This is where Damian and his fellow crew members come in: they are part of Vampire Sanitation, or VSan, paramilitary vampire hunters under the control of the Company, which contracts with the government to provide this service.
Damian is new to this VSan crew, and as can be expected, has many cliche-ridden moments with his commanding office, Captain Churchill, and the other members of the crew:
·    Rosa – stereotypical tough lesbian chick
·    Roman – stereotypical tough redneck dude, friends with Rosa
·    Quintana – stereotypical good vampire chick, loves goth/dominatrix wear, antagonistic relationship to Rosa and Roman
That’s it. Five people on a spaceship with no back up are supposed to clean out vampires from various planets. I know that the Vampire Wars (despite the DVD box title) are supposed to be over, but you’d think they might at least hire a few more people to round out the crew, but that would have required a bigger budget (both in the movie and in real life).
Damian’s first mission with the VSan crew provides even more exposition about the vampires. Apparently there are many different types of vampires. This an interesting, if not entirely original idea. Despite the fact that there are supposed to be all these different types, we only ever see three of them: the Vorhees, the Leatherfaces, and some worm-type vampire that infects a host. You may notice the names of those first two vampire types: they’re allusions to Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Other film allusions include a “final frontier” (Star Trek) reference in the opening narration, the Kenobi System (which contains a Tatooine-like planet), and a line from The Princess Bride.

The cliches continue throughout the first mission. As the crew search for the Vorhees, Churchill tells Damian never to hesitate when attacking vampires. In the ensuing battle, what does Damian do? He hesitates to stab a Vorhee through the heart and has to be saved by Churchill.

After the defeat of the Vorhees, the crew then gets a distress call from Fiona, a cute blonde trapped in a mining colony that has been attacked by another group of vampires. They easily rescue Fiona (wearing the Cardigan-of-the-Future!), but then encounter the Leatherfaces. Although dumber and more primitive than the Vorhees, they travel in very large packs. Churchill and Damian end up over their heads, and in one of the more confusingly inept and uninteresting scenes, Churchill ends up “killed” by the Leatherfaces. Predictably, Rosa and Roman blame Damian for Churchill’s loss, and give him a lot of attitude back on the ship, while Quintana sides with Damian. They escape from the planet with Fiona, and head off to another planet while they wait for orders.
This would be a good time to discuss one of the annoying little quirks of this film: the music. While I’m sure there must have been actual incidental music (although there may not have been; I can’t remember any), much of the music is generic radio stuff, bland pop and rock type stuff. The thing about it is that they all have lyrics to them. I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way, but I’m usually against music in movies having lyrics. On the one had, they tend to distract from the action going on, as I find myself trying to understand the lyrics. On the other hand, if they actually have anything to do with the film, they usually come off extremely cheesy or cliche. Two examples of this are, funnily enough, both by Queen: Flash Gordon and Highlander. Now, in Flash Gordon, Queen’s music is effective because it adds to the cheesiness of what is supposed to be an over-the-top cheese-fest. In Highlander, I find it less effective, although since it’s Queen, I tend to have a fondness for it; it works well for the opening, but I’m not as big a fan of it during the romantic scenes, when the music will swell toward a lyric.

In Bloodsuckers, however, the music seems to have been picked just for the general sound of it, not the lyrics; they’re usually not very understandable, and the music tends to just stop without warning, as if it wasn’t really written for this movie. Furthermore, it doesn’t ever add anything to the movie. Maybe if they had just gone for some pounding, instrumental rock for the action scenes, it would have been cool, although admittedly it wouldn’t have made the film any better overall.

Anyways, I bring the music up because while on the ship, Damian has what seems to have been intended to be a slightly romantic moment with Fiona while they’re on-route to the next planet. Sappy pop comes on as she climbs up a ladder, having shed her Cardigan-of-the-Future, revealing that she’s basically just a Space-College-Chick in a strappy midrift-bearing tank and very low-rise do-you-like-my-pelvis-bones cargo pants. This scene is very short, and despite the attempt of the music, fails to produce any romantic spark between the characters. She basically just thanks him for saving her, he asks her a few questions about the incident, in which you can tell he’s a little suspicious of our Space-College-Chick, but that’s it.

Once on the planet, they ditch Fiona, and Rosa and Roman attempt to enter a Company bar, only to find out that their ID cards don’t work. This part was a little confusing, because it appears that Damian essentially fired them to get them to continue to work for him. I didn’t really get this part. It’s slightly plausible; I guess the point is that without their Company standing, Rosa and Roman would have nowhere else to go, but I still think it’s a little convoluted. After convincing them to come back to work, the crew leave the planet, but almost immediately after another vampire attack forces them to return.
This attack introduces us to another species of vampire, and I’m guessing Hastings had seen or heard about Slither, because these vampires are not human-based, but worms that infect a host and spit venom. This reveals the worst CG in the film, as the worms are animated when they attack the crew. After most of the worms are destroyed, Quintana is able to get one to talk to her in what sounds like a mixture of French and Huttese (from Star Wars). This reveals part the big conspiracy of the film: there was a saboteur who lowered the planet’s defenses, in the same way that the defenses were lowered on the mining planet.

The saboteur should be obvious by now, if it wasn’t obvious before hand: it turns out that Cardigan-wearing Space-College-Girl is a terrorist. Just in case we missed the connection, the movie changes view-points for the first time, where it is reveals that Fiona is part of Cosmosis, a terrorist organization that believes that humans don’t have the right to drive the vampires from existence, that humans have exploited the planets they’ve colonized, and that we should try and work together with the vampires to learn more from one another; all your basic, generic liberal-environmentalist crap. In another “twist”, it turns out that Cosmosis is working with the Vorhees, led by (cue music): Michael Ironside – Vampire! Cosmosis has allied with them in order to show humans the error of their ways and blah-di-blah-di-blah.

The Vorhees plan is to lure Damian to a planet in the Kenobi System (the aforementioned Tatooine-like planet), to capture him, turn him into a vampire, and therefore learn human creativity and ingenuity, which is what defeated them in the Vampire Wars. Damian and crew totally fall for the bait, and on their way to the Kenobi System the crew has several bonding moments. Quintana takes it upon herself to get “Captain” Damian to “relax”; she enters his room all goth-dominatrix to the tune of more bad music. Now, when I saw this scene, I figured it could go two ways. Either Damian would suggest that she means sex, when she really doesn’t, or she really means sex; Hastings avoids the potentially comical-though-cliche misunderstanding, and just goes for the sex. After all, what is a direct-to-tv/DVD movie without a little sex? Actual sex between them is out of the question, however, because at climax Quintana would go into a bloodlust and kill Damian. Fortunately for Damian, Quintana is suggesting “tantric” (read “telepathic”) sex, and we’re “treated” to a pretty dumb scene in which Damian imagines himself having sex with his wife. This leads to a misunderstanding with Rosa, however, who hears this and thinks Quintana and Damian are getting it on; this is all patched up, however, once Damian explains.

Once at their destination, the Damian, Rosa, and Quintana head out, leaving Roman with the ship; as they leave, he quips, “Have fun storming the castle!” (ala The Princess Bride). Soon after, however, their ship is destroyed by a drone, and once again the music cues in. This time, the music is sad, and my wife Jen (who was only kinda paying attention) asked if someone died. When I said, “No,” she replied, “They should only play sad music if someone dies.”

Anyways, the whole crew ends up in the vampire lair, where they meet not only the vampires, but also the Cosmosis humans led by Fiona. The plan is revealed, Damian is separated from the group, and in one of the most anti-dramatic scenes, it is revealed that Churchill was not dead after all, but, “Dum dum dum!” – turned to a vampire, and the plan to lure Damian was all his idea. As the cliche’s continue, Damian and Churchill have to fight (but not before Fiona is killed by Michael Ironside – Vampire!), they fight, Fiona’s Cosmosis friends figure out that they really need to side with the good guys, and they lead the crew to rescue Damian. Of course the good guys when, but not before Michael Ironside – Vampire! is killed in another extremely anticlimatic moment. The crew, plus the only surviving member of Cosmosis, take one of the other ships, and we have the feel good speech by Damian that should end the movie.

However, the movie doesn’t quite end there. For some reason, Hastings thought, rather than end the movie here, we need to get Rosa into the whole “vampire telepathic sex” thing, and so we actually end the movie with the ship flying away, and Rosa going, “Oh, Quintana!” and role credits.

There were so many things wrong with Bloodsuckers, but as I mentioned before, this movie ended up being somewhat entertaining in how bad it was. It really could have been an okay movie. The basic idea of vampires-in-space was pretty cool, and although the CG effects on the worm vampires were pretty bad, the space ships looked alright (except for one brief scene). A movie like this has a couple of places it could go. It could have been a cool action flick, but there’s not that much fighting, and it’s all pretty bland. It could have been really campy and silly, but the actors are too wooden to pull that off. Even Michael Ironside – Vampire! couldn’t pull of the stilted dialogue. The movie just failed on so many levels.

I definitely can’t recommend ever putting more than $1 down on this movie. If you catch for free on SciFi and you’ve got the two hours to kill, then it’s okay. If it makes it to the dollar bin at Wal-Mart or a dollar store, then maybe go ahead. But definitely don’t rent it, and most definitely don’t buy it; I didn’t even waste harddrive space on it after I watched it.

I’ve talked about Harry Potter before, so it should be no secret that I’m a big fan. It’s also no secret that that last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was going to be a good book. We know by now that Rowling is a good writer, that she has created interesting characters, and that the story-line is compelling. And the majority of people already know if they’re interested in Harry Potter or not; while some people may have been waiting for the series to end before reading it, and others may pick it up later, a review of Deathly Hallows is not likely to inspire anyone to read it. I’m therefore just going to make a few comments about it, and save any potential spoilers for a larger article on the series as a whole.

First, Rowling continues to develop her characters throughout the book. One of the things that always impressed me about the books is that Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, is remarkable because he’s not perfect. A lot of Christians often objected to Harry Potter because they felt that Harry’s faults would end up encouraging kids to break the rules. I’ve always thought this is a short-sighted viewpoint. His rule-breaking does not come without consequences. Harry and his friends often make mistakes, some which come close to costing them their lives, and some which cost them the lives of friends. But that’s part of what makes him a more real character. The books wouldn’t be as strong as they are if Harry did not have his faults. The inspirational part is that Harry overcomes these to accomplish what he accomplishes.

Second, Rowling paces her book very realistically. Harry’s mission to find the Horcruxes goes anything but smoothly. Because Harry, Ron, and Hermione aren’t perfect, they struggle with indecision, fear, and frustration. They struggle, they argue, they get on each other’s nerves. They’re relationship with each other is realistic, because, as frustrating as it sometimes can be, they act like high-schoolers, rather than little adults.

And even the adults in the story also act realistically, with perhaps a little more wisdom, but still imperfectly. One of the greatest things about this book is what we learn about Dumbledore. Despite his death at the end of book 6, Dumbledore continues to be a major character, and much of the book revolves around his secrets. Harry, Ron, and Hermione continually struggle with the fact that Dumbledore, a keeper of secrets, hasn’t really told them anything. This brings us to one of the central themes of the book: doubt and faith. Harry struggles with as his image of Dumbledore changes. Ron and Hermione struggle as their faith in Harry wavers, and, as we’ve seen throughout the novels, Harry’s faith in himself to accomplish what he must.

Finally, the ending of the book was, for me, extremely satisfactory. While I knew that I would enjoy the book as a whole, the ending was something that I always worried about. After all this build up, would it work? I was very happy with it, and felt that it wrapped things up very well.

I’ll put some more thoughts into a larger article as a whole, when I’ll be free to discuss the details of the plot without worrying about giving things away. If you haven’t read Harry Potter yet, now would definitely be a good time. There’s even an audio version read by Stephen Fry for those of you who prefer audio books. I loved this book, and felt it was a fitting end to the series as a whole.

Feb 25, 2009 – Just as a quick comment on my own remarks as I read through them a year and a half later.  There are some out there who don’t see J.K. Rowling as a good writer (Rym on the Geek Nights podcast has stated so several times), so I wanted to clarify how I approach Rowling as a writer.  I haven’t done any indepth literary analysis of the Harry Potter books, and I won’t have time in the forseeable future.  When I say here that Rowling is a good writer, I’m not trying to place her in any sort of pantheon with Dickens, Hawthorne, Poe, Hemingway or any of the other great writers of English-language literature.  I put her in the category of those writers who are good, in the sense that they are competent and create compelling fiction.  For a lot of us writers, achieving that would be plenty.  If I were to sit down and attempt the literary analysis mentioned above, I’m sure I could tear her works apart.  But that’s hardly the point of them, and I feel that approaching them that way would be disigenuous.  – Duane