This Is It

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the last book in the Harry Potter series. And there’s absolutely no excuses for anyone to get upset if I don’t warn you about spoilers, seeing as how between the book and the two movies made of it; everyone should be aware of the plot by now.

Anyway, for most of the book; it seems like that Rowling has totally lost interest in writing the series. For the first 500 pages, it was like she was just ticking off all the plot points in a very “this happened and then this happened and then this happened…” sort of fashion.

I say the first 500 pages, because once Harry gets back to Hogwarts; it’s like her writing has suddenly become reignited. The Battle of Hogwarts looks like what Rowling had wanted to be writing for the last two books, and now she got the chance to do it.

Snape’s background was revealed in this book in a bit of detail. This has lead to him gaining a cult following in certain Potterhead circles, of course, with some of the more diehard fans claiming that dear old Severus Snape was more deserving of Lily than James was.

But think about it for a moment. Snape’s the kind of person who will befriend people who think torture is fun. He’ll knowingly turn damaging information about you to a man who’s going to kill you, your husband and your child if he can get away with it. After that, he’s going to turn to your most trusted ally for forgiveness.

He’s changed to an extent by the time Harry gets to school, of course. But he still treats Harry like shit because of what his father and his friends did to him while they were teenagers decades prior. If he were a real person; you would say without hesitation that Snape is a pathetic, bitter, petty man.

However, Snape isn’t the only character to gain a partial redemption in the book. Just prior to the Battle of the Seven Potters; Dudley says that he doesn’t think Harry is a waste of space—as pointed out by Harry, this is like him declaring his love for someone.

Even Draco got a partial redemption. It can be assumed by him begging a Death Eater that they were on the same side can be taken to mean that he had switched sides in the battle.

I have to wonder, though, why do all these characters need a certain amount of redemption? Draco I can partially understand because even though he was a bully, I don’t think he would have become a Death Eater if it wasn’t for the influence of his parents.

Even Snape I can understand to a degree, because there had to be some sort of explanation for why he had hated Harry beyond “your father was a prick to me”. Also, it was hinted at during The Order of the Phoenix that Snape had a liking for Lily.

However, I’m not entirely sure why they felt the need to redeem Dudley. Even though Harry had saved him from Dementors; there was no reason for Dudley to have believed that Harry had been telling the truth to Vernon and Petunia. Muggles can’t see Dementors, of course.

There is one other thing that bothered me: for the first half of the book; the story moved at almost a snail’s pace. Certainly, things happened, but quite often they felt like just moments of filler between the major plot points.

While The Deathly Hallows did tie up the loose ends and leave enough space for sequels; it wasn’t as well-written as it could have been. However, the last 100 pages were worth it, if you make it that far.

2.5/5

I’m sure that this review comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been following me for the last week or so. As I’m sure you knew already; Tre is Green Day’s third album in a number of months.

Tre has the strongest beginning of any of the three albums. It’s also the one that stands the best on its own two feet—you honestly don’t need to be drinking or listening to the other two albums beforehand to make this one good.

It also continues the trend with Green Day sounding more like they did in the 90s than what they did on 21st Century Breakdown or American Idiot. There are still traces of the sound of 21st Century Breakdown on this album, however: Brutal Love sounds like it could have been picked up off that album.

What’s more, this album is better in the middle and end than its two predecessors. This sounds like they could have just recorded it and released it, and it would have done brilliantly. However, as it stands; the album didn’t do quite as well as its two predecessors (according to Wikipedia, of course).

Of course, there’s no denying that the trilogy has done well. With over 500,000 copies sold between the three; the band will no doubt continue to be remembered for the next few years.

Tre mixes the sound that they’ve adopted in the last ten years and also what they sounded like in the 90s. It sounds a lot looser than a lot of the stuff Green Day has done in recent years, and I think that’s something that works in the band’s favour. Without the seriousness and disillusionment that the band had in 21st Century Breakdown and American Idiot; the album sounds a lot fresher than that which came before.

A lot of the songs on this album are much more memorable than those which were on Uno or Dos. This is particularly true of 99 Revolutions and The Forgotten, which are the last two songs on the album. Because of this, I think time’s going to be a lot kinder to this album than it will to its two predecessors.

Tre isn’t as given to filler songs as Uno or Dos, either. This is always a danger when you’ve produced thirty-something songs in a short period of time, and somehow Green Day have managed to avoid doing it on the third album.

Overall, Tre houses some of the best stuff the band has done in years. However, I suspect a lot of fans will have been scared off after having heard Uno and Dos.

3.5/5

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth Harry Potter book. This was where the series returned to what it had been before The Order of the Phoenix came out.

In every respect, this book is better than its immediate predecessor. It’s funnier, it’s more focused, and it’s final chapters have a greater emotional impact. However, by this stage, it’s beginning to look like JK Rowling was beginning to lose her interest in the series, because The Half-Blood Prince seemed to just be written in a “this happened then this happened then this happened” sort of manner. This is a problem which became worse with The Deathly Hallows, however.

The revelations regarding Voldemort’s past was the big interest with this book for me. For most of the series; you’re left to assume that he had lead a reasonably normal life up until he decided to take over Britain, although he had no doubt been much more talented magically speaking than those around him.

However, the fact that he now has a backstory makes the series as a whole work a lot better. Developing the villain is something that a lot of stories don’t really do a lot of, so JK Rowling has done something right here.

I think there could have been at least a couple more chapters where Voldemort’s life after school was looked into, however. Even though Dumbledore did say that the only person who would be able to provide a full account of what Voldemort had been up to in those years would be Voldemort himself; I would have thought that Dumbledore would have tried to keep a tab open on him.

The SPEW subplot was cut out of this book, and I think that’s a good thing. As I stated in my review of The Goblet of Fire; that subplot annoyed the hell out of me. It is unfortunate that the subplot wasn’t replaced with something that would make Hermione a more likeable character, however.

I am a little bit surprised that the death of Sirius Black didn’t have a bigger effect on Harry. I’m happy that it didn’t lead him into eternal wangst, but I thought it would at least be dealt with more fully than it was. Like, a piece of dialogue between Harry and Ron or Hermione (probably both) ending in Harry saying something to the effect of, “Voldemort killed my parents, and a Death Eater killed my godfather. I’m going to kill Voldemort even if I die doing it.”

Admittedly, this is something given in an exchange between Harry and Dumbledore, though not in those words. And I suspect Ron and Hermione know why Harry would want Voldemort dead even if there was no prophecy.

Harry wasn’t as wangsty over Ginny as he had been over Cho. While there was one moment of absolute wangst where he’s arguing with himself because of the fact Ginny’s his best friend’s sister; it was never really on the same kind of scale it was with Cho.

Overall, this was an improvement over The Order of the Phoenix. It’s nothing brilliant, and JK Rowling has once again proven that her writing skills did not match the good story she was writing.

3/5

Dos is the second of three albums released last year by Green Day.

This album has all the same faults as its predecessor Uno did: it only works well if you listen to it back-to-back with the other two albums; most of the best songs are at the start of the album and lyrically, there isn’t anything memorable to many of the songs.

However, at several points, Dos proves itself better than its predecessor. Firstly, the good songs do have a better spread over the album, and the final song on the album is actually pretty good. The beginning of Dos was stronger than the beginning of Uno, and overall the songwriting was better on this album.

Dos does sound a little more like 21st Century Breakdown than Uno did. This is a good thing, though: 21st Century Breakdown is the best album the band’s done in the last ten years.

To be honest, I think the band made a mistake by releasing three albums in such rapid procession and not make them a trilogy of interlocking rock operas. Had they done that; I think the general enjoyability of each of the three albums by themselves would have been greatly increased.

That path would have also come with another benefit: I doubt there are many bands who have pulled off the same task. Needless to say, this was unfortunately not the band chose to go down.

However, as it stands; Dos is one of those albums which sounds a lot better when you’re drunk. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it means you’re probably drinking with a couple of your friends when you’re listening to it.

There really isn’t a lot to be said about this album that I didn’t cover in my review of Uno. This does continue the trend of sounding a fair bit like the stuff Green Day was doing back in the 90s, but harder. I still doubt whether releasing three albums in a few months would be a good decision as far as fans who come to the band in ten years from now will be concerned, however.

2.5/5

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the longest of the seven Harry Potter books. This is both a gift and a curse because it develops a lot of the concepts that were introduced in earlier books in more detail, however some parts feel like they could have done with some better editing.

The Order of the Phoenix goes into a bit of detail about what happened with some of the older characters during the First Wizarding War. It also establishes a lot of the other concepts: firstly, what happens during a trial for using magic against muggles, the general set-up of St. Mungo’s hopsital and also it sheds some light on the inner working of the Ministry of Magic.

A lot of this book just feels like a repeat of the books that preceded it, however. Dumbledore is eventually forced to leave Hogwarts again, the student body doesn’t trust Harry, the Daily Prophet is producing lies once again, and Hermione is still going through her plight to free the house elves.

The final action sequence in the Department of Mysteries is unlike the final confrontations which proceeded it, however. While previously, a lot of the action was based upon the exposition between the characters; the battle in the Ministry is largely based upon the action itself, except for the initial conversation between Harry and Lucius Malfoy.

The bulk of the book is split three ways, however. There’s the question of why the Ministry has chosen to deny the return of Voldemort, which encapsulates Umbridge’s arrival at the school; then there’s the question of what Voldemort’s going to do next, and finally there’s the relationship between Harry and Cho Chang.

This lack of real focus makes the book difficult to get through at times, particularly considering that it’s a children’s book. Hell, the amount of times I’ve brought up this is a children’s book will probably ignite my Tumblr inbox like nothing else (NOTE: this was written a little over a month in advance. It’s deadset been in the queue for that long).

The real lack of editing, however, becomes obvious during the OWL exams. While most of this did not even need to be described, and there were many dramatic ways for Harry to see the vision of Voldemort torturing Sirius Black; these were still described in great detail for no real reason.

Sirius Black remained the best character in the book. It would have been good to have seen him used with a little more versatility; however the in-universe explanation of why he had to remain in his house was solid. His death, unfortunately, was not as emotionally powerful as it could have been (and this is one of the few things the movies were able to do better than the books).

This was the weakest of the series; however given that some of the events are important for later books, fans of the series will be forced through this one.

2.5/5

Green Day’s Uno is the first of three albums that the band released in a matter of months. Unlike the two albums which the band released prior to this, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown respectively, this album does sound a lot like the stuff they were doing in the 90s.

I am tempted to say the band is returning to its rebellious origins, however listening to Green Day has gotten to the point where it’s not even an act of rebellion anymore. Everyone listens to Green Day now; even my mother, who’s in her late forties, listens to it.

However, what I will say is that the album sounds harder than anything the band was doing in the 90s (you know, when listening to the band was one of those bands your parents didn’t listen to). This makes Uno worth listening to, even if it is just to hear something recent from Green Day which isn’t a rock opera.

I’m not entirely sure if I’d call this album a return to their punk roots, however. The band has been drifting away from punk rock for a long time now and I doubt that they’re going to return there for another few albums yet.

However, Uno wasn’t as moody as American Idiot or 21st Century Breakdown were. This kind of fun sound helped the album distinguish itself from what had come before it, and for fans who have come to the band in the last ten years, this is going to sound a lot different to what they’re used to hearing from the band.

Lyrically speaking, the album did come off as a bit strained sometimes, which is probably due to the fact that the band has had to produce three albums in the space of a few months. So a lot of the songs are difficult to differentiate, and a lot of the most memorable songs were in the first few tracks.

This also reveals that the band probably intended for this album to be listened to back-to-back with the other two albums. I think this is going to be lost on listeners who find this album in ten or fifteen years from now with no prior knowledge of the band. However I think this was a good decision, because the three albums do sound pretty good when heard like that.

However, because a lot of the songs on this album are indistinguishable from each other; it’s not really something that stand strong by its own right.

2.5/5

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire houses what is probably the most pivotal scene thus far in the entire series: the return of Voldemort, that wizard everyone’s supposed to be scared of. I probably should have warned you about spoilers, but if you’re worried about spoilers regarding a book that’s thirteen years old and has a movie adaptation that’s been around for eight years; I don’t know what you’re doing on the internet.

Anyway, the book revolves around Harry having been chosen for the Triwizard Championship, a competition he hadn’t signed up for. This competition wasn’t mentioned previously because, of course, not only is it only held once every five years; the competing schools didn’t want anything to do with it because of the high risk of death.

To be honest; I think the Triwizard Championship is a better concept than Quidditch, which was the competition which dominated the previous books.I think this for two reasons: firstly, the Triwizard Championship isn’t really presented as being a sport in the traditional sense, although it still has that sort of following. It’s presented more as a fight to the death kind of thing.

Secondly, it introduces an element of real danger to Harry. While in Quidditch; Harry was constantly falling of his broom or getting injured in some fashion or another; it’s stated from the outset that nobody’s ever actually died from a game of Quidditch at Hogwarts. In the Triwizard Championship; people die all the time and everyone accepts that.

This is the first book where Hermione’s concern for house-elves shows up. Well, she’s fourteen now and suddenly realised that she can form her own opinions, and her chosen cause happens to be the Society for the Protection of Elvish Welfare (called spew by Ron).

The Hermione subplot annoyed me a little bit because I always figured that if Hermione was going to have a cause, it’d probably be something like making muggle-borns and half-bloods equal to pure-bloods in the eyes of people like Malfoy. However, I have to admit that this was an entirely necessary subplot: Hermione doesn’t really get a lot of development in the series beyond “she’s the really smart one who gets Ron in the end”.

That’s actually a problem I have with the series as a whole. Hermione gets to do a lot of stuff, like bewitching coins for the DA in The Order of the Phoenix and producing Polyjuice Potions on a couple of occasions; but with the exception of SPEW, she doesn’t get the same kind of character development that Harry and Ron get. Like, Harry gets two major crushes before the final book, and Ron gets one as well, but Hermione’s brief fling with Viktor Krum isn’t really as built up as Harry’s relationship with Cho or Ginny, or even Ron’s breakup with Lavender.

Nor do we get to see her family relationships. Ron’s are definitely the best developed in this regard; however Harry’s relationship with his caretakers and with Sirius are better developed than what we know about Hermione’s relationship with hers. Like, it’s established that they’re at least on friendly terms because they take her on holidays to various places, but we never really know how her family operates on the same kind of level that we know about Harry’s or Ron’s.

Anyway; The Goblet of Fire isn’t really as emotionally powerful as The Prisoner of Azkaban until the very end. Granted, emotional power is something that’s lacking from the series as a whole for the most part because the characters aren’t really as well-written as they could be, but the last few chapters of this book are really something. Voldemort’s back and Cedric Diggory, who had been competing against Harry in the Triwizard Championship, was dead.

The confrontation between Harry and Voldemort in this book is much better than anything that had been shown previously. While in the previous books; Harry has demonstrably been in a corner for the confrontation, his life was never really in any serious danger except against the basilisk. This was the first time he’d shown up unprepared for a fight, and it costs him. Also, the speech Voldemort gives to his Death Eaters is worth reading, and it’s a shame they cut it to pieces in the movie.

Overall, this was a fairly solid book for a children’s book. I think it needed some tighter editing though, because at times it felt like it dragged on a bit too far.

3/5

Oh no! Not a parental advisory sticker! That must mean this album’s super dangerous!

In all seriousness; there’s nothing here that’s really going to scar you for life. Even the politically charged song that got people like me paying attention is about George W. Bush, so it is somewhat out of date. However, most of the album really isn’t this kind of political stuff; it tends towards the details of Allen’s personal life.

Essentially, Lily Allen’s It’s Not Me, It’s You is to pop what Four Non Blonde’s Bigger Better Faster More was to that kind of blues-y rock. However, there are a number of differences between the two albums beyond their respective genres.

Firstly, Lily Allen isn’t able to come off as tortured as Linda Perry was. This is probably more about the tone of Lily Allen’s album, however: if she sounded tortured in the songs on It’s Not Me, It’s You on the same kind of level that Linda Perry had on Bigger Better Faster More; no doubt her producers would have asked for a new album.

Secondly, in the more personal songs; Lily Allen doesn’t come off as feeling quite so disenfranchised. Actually, a lot of the more personal songs she’s done are more akin to the stuff Taylor Swift’s done than what Four Non Blondes was doing back in the early 90s.

And thirdly, Lily Allen’s album doesn’t really focus on the disenfranchisement to the same extent that Bigger Better Faster More did. While there certainly is that kind of undercurrent to It’s Not Me, It’s You; the songs dealing with that sort of stuff only makes up about a quarter of the album.

One would expect that Lily Allen’s work would be as lyrically barren as any other pop album out there. However, the songs are lyrically far above anything that Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift have managed to throw together as of yet. Indeed, I suspect that neither Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift would be able to come up with an album that was as good as this one.

Actually, one might even call the more political songs brave, even. There weren’t a lot of people out there who were willing to write a song telling Bush to go fuck himself (although I think Pink probably could have been talked into it, given that she did a song called Dear Mister President a couple of years before Lily Allen did Fuck You).

Also, a lot of the more personal songs aren’t just “oh, I love this boy so much; he means the world to me blah blah blah this could be a Taylor Swift song”. While there is no denying that some of them are in fact love songs (although one’s an apology to Allen’s sister), they track the course of a friendship turning into love or a deadbeat boyfriend turning out to be an okay guy.

This is the kind of thing that’s hinted at all the time by other people, but very few actually explicitly deal with it. You can’t sell albums by doing that kind of thing, I suppose.

Overall, this is a very solid album and I doubt that it’s going to be forgotten about quickly, despite the fact most people pay attention to things for maybe a few weeks.

4/5

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is, of course, the third Harry Potter book. For a long time I’ve held that this is one of the best books of the series, and that still held true when I re-read the book for what must be the fourth or fifth time now.

Like the two books prior to this; The Prisoner of Azkaban still has a fairly episodic feel to it. I mean, some of the lessons that happen are more or less forgotten about later on because of their lack of relevance to the overall plot.

It’s not so bad in this book, however, because most of the lessons do hold relevance to the plot. We don’t see Lupin introducing a dozen new creatures for no reason—although he probably did introduce a dozen new creatures to the kids off-page. Everything has a particular relevance to the overall plot (unlike the pixies incident in A Chamber of Secrets).

However, the Quidditch subplot that’s in this book, and existed in the previous two books, was beginning to get a bit old. While no doubt there was some relevance to the characters; action sequences for the sake of action sequences are, well, a waste of pages.

I think that can be largely forgiven though because the pivotal confrontation in the book is largely made up of exposition instead of actual action. If those Quidditch matches hadn’t been in there; the only real action in the book would have been Harry fighting the Dementors off at the very, very end, and somehow I doubt the younger readers would have been able to wait that long.

Sirius Black is one of the most interesting characters to have been introduced in the series. Most people on the internet note that he’s one of those characters you’re originally meant to hate, however he grows on you once you realise he’s innocent. I think it goes a little bit deeper than just that.

It’s not enough for Sirius Black to have just been wrongfully imprisoned for all those years. It’s not enough for him to be Harry’s godfather and still love him after all those years of being alone. This is a man who’s willing to go to great lengths to get what he wants in spite of the setbacks put in front of him, which makes him cut of the same cloth that makes a good main character.

None of the other characters, barring maybe Voldemort in The Half-Blood Prince, get the same amount of character development in one book. And, honestly, that’s probably a good thing because if nothing happened to the characters; they’d be boring to read about.

Overall, this is a solid book and one of the best in the series. While I think better books have been written; this is a pretty solid achievement for a kid’s book.

3.5/5

 Remember in 2009 how Green Day had their first album in six years? And remember how 21st Century Breakdown was insanely popular at the time? Yeah, this is the album I’m talking about.

Given that there’s eighteen songs on the album; it’s amazing that the only song I find difficult to listen to is Know Your Enemy. I suspect that’s a matter of the fact that the day the single was first released; I withstood the video being played on VH1 hourly all night. Why was I watching VH1? It’s because, unlike MTV; they actually play music videos.

Anyway, the cover for 21st Century Breakdown looks really, really good. I mean, have you seen it? Of course you’ve seen it; it’s at the top of the review. Despite the fact all the Green Day album covers released in the last ten years have ended up looking like that; the cover for this album looks really, really good.

21st Century Breakdown is a rock opera, which isn’t something I’ve seen a lot of. While it has been done—I mean, David Bowie and The Who have both taken a crack at it—I never really expected that it would work this well.

Like the rock operas that have come before it, this one has a loose story it’s trying to tell. Like, so loose most of it is left to the imagination: you’re meant to just work out what the plot points are for yourself based on what you’re hearing. You know, pretty much like every other rock opera ever done (although I would argue that 21st Century Breakdown is a lot subtler than most of them).

This leads to a lot of the songs actually working better when you’ve heard the song that comes immediately before it and immediately after it than they would individually. While some songs, like 21 Guns, work well either way; this is something that is true for most of the songs on the album.

That means that 21st Century Breakdown actually works better as an album than most others do. While you’ll be sitting down for a bit over an hour to hear it in full, which is a long time considering the run time of most albums is around the forty to forty-five minute mark, this one is well worth the effort because of that.

Overall, this is a very strong album and it was worth the six years of waiting. Six years!

4/5