Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

From TheAlmightyGuru
Revision as of 09:37, 9 September 2016 by TheAlmightyGuru (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third book written by JK Rowling in the Harry Potter series.

Reviews

Good

  • Professor Lupin is a fun caring teacher, and Sirius Black is a great villain.
  • Hogwarts is still very exciting and wonderful.

Bad

  • Snape and Malfoy have entered into the realm of cartoonish villains. While I understand that teachers are often unfair and kids may be cruel, Snape's favoritism to his own house and obvious hatred of all Gryffindors is never challenged by Dumbledore and Malfoy gets away with an awful lot of bigotry without punishment. While a child may hate them for this, it makes me feel that Hogwarts is poorly managed.
  • I can understand how bogarts can take the shape of dementors, but how do they gain their powers?
  • Fred and George say they've memorized the Marauder's Map, which is why they gift it to Harry, but, while they can memorize the layout of Hogwarts, the real-time updates of where everyone is located would still be a benefit too priceless to give up.
  • For as important as Quidditch is to the wizarding world, they don't play it very often. Each house only faces each other house once for the entire school year, resulting in a maximum of six games, or only three games each. Worse yet, two consecutive losses, automatically forfeits the third game.
  • Quidditch is even less realistic in this book. The Firebolt makes it even less about ability and more about who can afford the most expensive broom, and the blatant cheating done by Slytherin isn't properly punished. Grabbing the broom of a seeker results in a penalty shot for an attempt at ten points, but it prevents the team from getting 150 points, so it doesn't make sense not to do it! Same with the hitting chasers with bats.
  • While drawing out the final encounter with Sirius Black is made more dramatic by neither Black or Lupin being forthright, it doesn't make sense. They both risk the kids killing them by not explaining themselves sooner.

Ugly

  • The Marauder's Map pretty much ruins the entire Harry Potter world. A few students could create a powerful magical device that allows them to track the location of every single person in the school in real time? If this is the case, why doesn't the Ministry of Magic simply create a similar map to catch Black and every other criminal in existence? Why didn't the twins see Sirius Black on the map? Why didn't they see their sister in the Chamber of Secrets? Why didn't they see Ron with another man in his bed? Why didn't they see Voldemort on top of Professor Quirrel?
  • The Time Turner also pretty much ruins the entire world. The wizards have the ability to rewind time at will? Why didn't they rewind to before Black escaped? Or before Harry Potter's parents were killed? Or before Tom Riddle turned evil?
  • Keeping a charlatan like Sybill Trelawney on staff where she can lie to children unimpeded just because she makes an accurate prediction every few years is a horrible practice for Dumbledore.

Links