Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
To understand Dumbledore's actions you have to understand that the boy who lived was, effectively, already dead. It was the potential religious interpretation for the sacrifice that I found most disturbing. But only later, and then I started to feel a bit like I'd just read a C.S. Lewis story. Saying more is probably not appropriate to this part of the forum.
I enjoyed the books regardless, and enjoy revisiting them from time to time.
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I enjoyed HP too, but I felt there was zero attention to World-building or INTERNAL magical logic. Like most of Enid Blyton (actually did), J. Rowling seems to make it up as she writes and invents magic on the fly to fill plot holes. Ironically Enid Blyton did plan and use notes for her two School Series (St Clare's and Malory Towers), but not for anything else. St. Clare's copies earlier school stories plots and structures. J. Rowling copies Worst Witch (Jill Murphy), Midnight Folk (John Masefield, the sequel Box of Delights is more famous), English School Stories (Sharp, Brazil, Brent-Dyer, Forrest, Blyton), The Secret of Platform 13 (Eva Ibbotson and most copied by Rowling) and others in HP.
I have and enjoyed all of those. The Chalet School series by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer (died 1969) was written 1923 to 1969 (last book published in 1970) and contemporaneously with almost real settings. Enid Blyton died 1968 and wrote her two school series in early 1940s and 1950s. Very many English school books start term with the school train.
People can be rubbish at dialog tags (J Rowling), poor at world-building, inconsistent, users of Deux et Machina, shallow characters etc and still manage to write entertaining books.