"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)


The first of the “door-stoppers,” The Goblet of Fire isn’t far off from doubling the length of its immediate predecessor.  For me, it’s the one out of the long books that I remember feeling mostly earns its length, and that largely holds up on reread.  It’s also quite the game changer – while the earlier books of course have lots of danger and scariness in them, this book gets incredibly dark in a pretty visceral way.

There is unrest in the wizarding world, with Voldemort’s old followers, the Death Eaters, starting to make noise again, and Harry keeps having dreams about the dark wizard restoring himself to his full power.  However, for much of Harry’s fourth year at Hogwarts, his attention is instead on the Triwizard Tournament, an international magic competition pitting Hogwarts against two other European schools of wizardry.  The foreign visitors turn Hogwarts upside down; everyone is invested in the tournament, interschool rivalry, and maybe a little canoodling.  Each school is supposed to have a single champion over 17 years old, but of course Harry gets in on the action – for reasons unknown, someone enters him into the competition, setting him up as an unprecedented fourth champion and putting him in serious jeopardy over the course of the dangerous tournament.

I really enjoy the expansion of the wizarding world that comes with the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament.  Of course, the forays into other wizard cultures bring some of J.K. Rowling’s blind spots to the forefront – the phonetic spelling on the foreign characters’ dialogue bugs me, and I never realized how incredibly stereotypical-British all the food at Hogwarts is until the kids are gaping at the French and Eastern-European-possibly-Bulgarian-but-we-don’t-really-know? food at the welcome feast for the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students.  But still, I like this angle and would’ve been interested to see even more on how wizards from other countries practice magic differently.

I also like the Triwizard Tournament itself.  Obviously, Harry being entered into the contest against his knowledge makes for a neat mystery, but the tasks are also exciting and interesting, I enjoy the angle of Rita Skeeter and her gossip-mongering in The Daily Prophet (even if she appears way too strongly out of nowhere,) and it’s cool to see how the goings-on at the tournament tie into the larger mystery at hand.  Oh, and the whole thing offers an entertaining outlet for the newly-emerging teen-romantic-drama side of the series via the Yule Ball – poor Ron and his dress robes!

It all ends in a very strong climax.  The “graveyard” scene includes a number of iconic moments, and it really kicks the series into high gear.  There’s the epic hero-and-villain stuff that’s all really well done here, but we also get the implications for the larger wizarding world and some good setup for things to come.

And finally, let’s touch on some new characters (other than Rita, who I’ve already mentioned.)  I like the addition of Viktor Krum, 18-year-old Quidditch phenom who’s a fawned-over world-famous athlete but who also comes off as reserved and sullen when he actually shows up at Hogwarts from Durmstrang.  I enjoy that people continually come to the wrong conclusions about him.  Fleur Delacour, I like less, because she’s depicted so flatly.  Also, with the whole part-Veela thing, I feel like an opportunity was missed to at least touch on how she feels about quasi-mesmerizing guys just by being near them.  And while Bill and Charlie Weasley are characters who’ve certainly been brought up before, this book is the first time Harry (and we) actually meet them.  I like them both, although I’m left wanting more Charlie and it makes me laugh a little that Harry’s description of Bill being cool is so basic (even though, again, I do like Bill.)  He has long hair!  And dragon-skin boots!  And an earring!  Oh, Harry.

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