Interestingly enough, Arthur Weasly, who survives an attack in this novel, was originally slated to die, but Rowling could not bear to kill him off. And the death Rowling includes is just brutal, not really how she kills off the character but the fact she killed him off at all.
The climax of the book is great, with Dumbledore's Army truly coming into their own as they fight against the Death Eaters, who are trying to take the Prophecy from the Hall of Prophecy in the Ministry For Magic. The seeds were they but they cut it damn it.).
The series also has one of my favorite scenes in all of literature: when Dumbledore brings Firenze on during the rainstorm as the new divination teacher (a scene I was so disappointed they cut on the movie. And a personal favorite, Nymphadora Tonks. Grimmauld Place, along with Sirius, is also very entertaining.Īnd we get some great new characters. We get to go inside the Ministry For Magic, and a very impressive place it is. Mungo's (and have a rather morose encounter with Gilderoy Lockheart from Book 2). I also love how Rowling greatly expands her environment from the previous novels. It is here, with ORDER, in which Rowling shows us the evil of bureaucracy, of how Voldemort isn't the only person in which massive evil lurks. It is people like Umbridge that brought Hitler to power in the early 1930s, and who would enable him to commit the many atrocities that he did during WWII (and I thought that for a long time before HALLOWS came out, in which Umbridge has turned into a type of Nazi who fully subscribes to Voldemort's racial genocide). Umbridge is easily one of her best characters she ever wrote, and one of the most despicable characters in all of fiction. Reading ORDER, and especially about Umbridge, keeps reminding one of Orwell and his horrific visions in 1984 and ANIMAL FARM. ORDER, as far as I'm concerned, is where Rowling truly stopped writing children's fiction, but crafting a dark, bitter book about dark, bitter times in her character's lives. This is a dark, dark book, and while I still felt rather alienated and cut off from Rowling's magical world and the Ministry Interference, this time around I realised how masterfully crafted this novel truly is. When I reread it in 2007 in prepration for DEATHLY HALLOWS, my stocks in this book absolutely soared. Harry even had to take "Defense Against the Dark Arts" underground, as Umbridge refuses to even acknowledge Voldemort at all, as per Ministry order.
On the positive note he did get some romance,but ultimately even that frizzled out. Harry became angry and had severe mood swings, and was always snapping at the people around him. There was a lot going on in this novel, and it was all rather depressing. The Ministry is taken over, and it's run by a man who doesn't know what the hell is going on. Dumbledore is extremely distant (for reasons explained at the end of the novel). But when I read PHOENIX, though, I felt even more lost and rather alienated. I wasn't a big fan of GOBLET, and I couldn't way to spend more time in Harry's universe, being back at Hogwarts with characters I know and love. I remember when I read the book back in 2003 when it initially came out being rather disappointed. Much of the storyline revolves around Umbridge as she takes over Hogwarts, eventually ousting Dumbledore, who goes on the run. Still under staunch denial that Voldemort is back, Cornelius Fudge sends a new teacher, Dolores Umbridge, to bring Hogwarts under the Ministry's control. He ultimately must appear before the Ministry, and it is only by Dumbledore's appearance he is saved.īut the Ministry is not finished yet.
While at home with the Dursleys, he and Dudley are attacked by dementors, and so he stands trial before the Ministry for the inappropriate use of underage magic. So he must find out what to do about that. Potter has been having bad dreams about a locked door. This novel introduces the Order of the Phoenix, a whole litany of new characters and a more indepth look at the Ministry For Magic. The second most complex novel in the entire Potter sequence (the first being Book 7), this book is probably the second best one, though I still like Azkaban better. For all the talk about GOBLET being the one where Rowling really hikes up the intensity and the complexity in the series, it is here, in PHOENIX, she gives us Potter's darkest, and most complex, adventure of all. ORDER OF THE PHOENIX could well be my favorite book of them all, if Azkaban and Deathly Hallows weren't as good as they were.