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A review by kaivalyak
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne
I just..don't know how to rate this. To be fair, I didn't have a lot of expectations, mainly because this is the script of a play, and it's not even a quarter of how complex it could have been as an actual book. The premise and plot seem good enough: there were many unexpected events and it was wholly complicated as you would expect from a Harry Potter, but the whole thing just feels monumentally watered down.
This is not a good book: it would probably be better on stage(which is the point I guess). The characters, I feel, were not developed very well. A lot of things that they say feel wrong. I didn't feel like I was back in that magical place where I used to be reading the seven books.
There were also a lot of inconsistencies(like the flashback when Hagrid comes to take Harry form Godric's hollow, and Sirius doesn't appear). Plays can't afford to be as complex as books themselves, and this is blatant here. It just felt like we were being bombarded with shocking facts, with hardly any explanations.
The whole thing just felt like fan fiction, to be honest. I just cannot accept this as the future of these characters, and I don't believe I ever will.
List of complaints:
1) Most the beloved characters were at(many) times out of character. For example, Draco. The one nod is the only interaction we see between him and Harry in the 'Nineteen Years Later' chapter, and I was surprised to see how quickly he thawed throughout the book, to be readily included with Harry and the gang. He was having heart-to-hearts with them by the end. While this is actually great, it didn't feel believable. Also, Harry didn't feel like Harry at times, and don't even get me started on Snape. Or Hermione at places.
2)This book was all about Albus and Scorpius. Almost nothing of James or Lily, and the name Teddy Lupin does not appear even once.
3)Time-turner confusion. The third book and it's events with the time turner were complex enough, and in this book it's just chaos and fiasco(which is what the message is) but here it was the strange conundrum that it was too complicated and too simplistic at the same time.
5)Voldemort having a child. A daughter with Bellatrix Lestrange, which apparently happened before the Battle of Hogwarts. Putting it into perspective: while Voldemort had taken over the ministry, and was hunting down Harry who was systematically destroying parts of his soul, he decided to blow off steam by caving to Bellatrix's simpers and produced a child together.
The argument for most of these could be that it's just a play, and you can't make it detailed and descriptive. I get that, and that is so frustrating.
There were some redeemable parts though:
Scorpius was marvellous, and I liked him best, even more than Albus. Their friendship was something I enjoyed a lot: one of the good things in this book is the quirky dialogues between them. I also liked that Albus was, along with the prevalence of tension between him and Harry. This was something I could imagine, which made it more real than many other things.
I also quite liked Ginny, something that I didn't quite feel in the original books.
I expected some sort of a Ron/Hermione showdown because of the regret that Rowling showed in pairing them up, but I was glad to see that their endurance was a theme touched upon in the book.
Basically, I'm underwhelmed. It was great to get an insight into the future generations, but not satisfying enough when I felt like I was picking up merely scraps and pieces.
This is not a good book: it would probably be better on stage(which is the point I guess). The characters, I feel, were not developed very well. A lot of things that they say feel wrong. I didn't feel like I was back in that magical place where I used to be reading the seven books.
There were also a lot of inconsistencies(like the flashback when Hagrid comes to take Harry form Godric's hollow, and Sirius doesn't appear). Plays can't afford to be as complex as books themselves, and this is blatant here. It just felt like we were being bombarded with shocking facts, with hardly any explanations.
The whole thing just felt like fan fiction, to be honest. I just cannot accept this as the future of these characters, and I don't believe I ever will.
List of complaints:
1) Most the beloved characters were at(many) times out of character. For example, Draco. The one nod is the only interaction we see between him and Harry in the 'Nineteen Years Later' chapter, and I was surprised to see how quickly he thawed throughout the book, to be readily included with Harry and the gang. He was having heart-to-hearts with them by the end. While this is actually great, it didn't feel believable. Also, Harry didn't feel like Harry at times, and don't even get me started on Snape. Or Hermione at places.
2)This book was all about Albus and Scorpius. Almost nothing of James or Lily, and the name Teddy Lupin does not appear even once.
3)Time-turner confusion. The third book and it's events with the time turner were complex enough, and in this book it's just chaos and fiasco(which is what the message is) but here it was the strange conundrum that it was too complicated and too simplistic at the same time.
Spoiler
4)The possibility that humiliation can drive Cedric Diggory to become a death eater who then finally murders Neville at the Battle of Hogwarts. This makes no logical sense. At all.5)Voldemort having a child. A daughter with Bellatrix Lestrange, which apparently happened before the Battle of Hogwarts. Putting it into perspective: while Voldemort had taken over the ministry, and was hunting down Harry who was systematically destroying parts of his soul, he decided to blow off steam by caving to Bellatrix's simpers and produced a child together.
The argument for most of these could be that it's just a play, and you can't make it detailed and descriptive. I get that, and that is so frustrating.
There were some redeemable parts though:
Scorpius was marvellous, and I liked him best, even more than Albus. Their friendship was something I enjoyed a lot: one of the good things in this book is the quirky dialogues between them. I also liked that Albus was
Spoiler
sorted into SlytherinI also quite liked Ginny, something that I didn't quite feel in the original books.
I expected some sort of a Ron/Hermione showdown because of the regret that Rowling showed in pairing them up, but I was glad to see that their endurance was a theme touched upon in the book.
Basically, I'm underwhelmed. It was great to get an insight into the future generations, but not satisfying enough when I felt like I was picking up merely scraps and pieces.