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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