‘Goblet’ Brimming With Potter Adventure
“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic, 734 pages, $25.95)
The three-word answer for Harry Potter fans everywhere:
Yes, it’s good.
How good? In the generally accepted Potterific Scale of 1 to 10 - in which Book 1 in the wildly popular series rates an 11, Book 2 slips to a 10, and Book 3 surges to a 12 - the madly anticipated fourth book settles in around an 11.
“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” released to the public at midnight Friday, is darker than the first three books detailing the young orphan’s magical adventures. For the first time, a Harry book ends on a somber note.
It doesn’t have the emotional resonance of the best parts of Book 3, focusing more on adventures than introspection. But it does provide a satisfying depth for several characters in author J.K. Rowling’s carefully imagined world.
And it keeps up the awesome inventiveness, deadpan humor and gripping pace of previous installments despite a 734-page count that gives “Goblet of Fire” the heft of a decent dictionary.
(Warning: Potter fans may want to stop reading here unless they want to know plot details that the book’s publisher has guarded as zealously as an Azbakan prisoner.)
Refreshingly, Rowling tinkers some with the series formula. She starts with a chapter featuring the evil Lord Voldemort rather than hero Harry and dominates Harry’s year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with a Triwizard Tournament of challenges rather than the magical game Quidditch.
Quidditch is still Harry’s favorite. The book’s first chunk is dedicated to the Quidditch World Cup (Ireland vs. Bulgaria), with a dark faction of fans rioting in a scary rally against Muggles (nonmagical people).
As usual, Rowling flawlessly knits her plotlines together, with seemingly casual early details taking on meaningful force by the end. (Ever wonder why Hogwarts student Neville Longbottom lives with his grandmother? It turns out to matter.) And as usual, Rowling slips in sly jokes that keep adults entertained, too. (“Moi?” says a hefty woman accused of giantess blood. “I ‘ave big bones!”)
The book focuses less on the funny-to-fascinating details of life at a magical boarding school and more on the coming showdown - it’s a seven-book series - between the good wizards on Harry’s side and the Death Eater followers of evil.
One of the most-hyped aspects of the book - that Harry and his friends would discover the opposite sex - is fun but not earthshaking. The romances are old-fashioned for the real 14-year-old set, with on-target agonies about whom to invite to the Yule Ball and a light-handed lecture against favoring beauty over brains.
The book’s scarier sections are certain to reignite a debate over whether younger children should read the book, technically aimed at ages 9 to 12.
A beloved character faces brief torture; another character (as Rowling forewarned) is killed; and there’s one scene with a chopped-off hand and another with magical curses that easily could raise the hackles of protective parents.
But adults often forget the horrors in older children’s classics that go over young readers’ heads. It seems a shame to deny the book’s intended audience the creative world of “Goblet of Fire” simply because of its honesty in including doses of both good and evil to illustrate the battle between the two.