"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by J.K. Rowling

            Hey, gentle reader (a reference from my recent review of “Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon and Groot – Steal the Galaxy,” which you can feel free to peruse if you so desire if you like this review and want to see more of my work, for which there is PLENTY)! This is a review of the million-year-old novel “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” by J.K. Rowling. I stress NOVEL, and not FILM, and this is NOT a comparison review. Anyway, so millions of kids and adults have read this book from 1999 (million-year-old was a joke, by the way, not funny probably, just a little exaggeration for fun, I know, not funny), you might have even read it, too. I’ve read the book at least twenty times, I love it that much, but that’s jumping a little ahead from the standard composition of my reviews.

            Anyway, logically, to do a review, a synopsis would be a good thing to use, so we’ll start with that. Now, I’m going to do something a tad bit different than most reviews, and go chapter-by-chapter and just tell you the chapter title and what it means and try my best to keep a minimal or even no spoilers. There are eighteen chapters to this book, so expect to be reading this for a while, and if you want to, you can read this in a few doses if you want to take a break, but this will still be fun.

            Chapter One: The Worst Birthday. Harry Potter lives with his obnoxious Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and Cousin Dudley who treat him in ways that would be impolite in my G-Rated blog, but we’ll say rather badly. They always forget his birthday because they just don’t care, and instead of a birthday party, Uncle Vernon is throwing a dinner party to make a big selling deal for his company that sells drills so he can make a lot of money and buy a vacation house in Majorca. Harry is instructed to completely stay away so the potential buyers won’t mix it up with Uncle Vernon’s disturbed nephew. Harry notices an odd thing appear in the garden, but it is scared away.

            Chapter Two: Dobby’s Warning. Dobby the house elf shows up in Harry’s bedroom to tell him not to go back to the wizard school Hogwarts this year because something really bad is going to happen and Harry has to stay away from this to save his life. Dobby then gets Harry in trouble when Harry ignores this warning.

            Chapter Three: The Burrow. Harry, in trouble, is kept locked in his room. Harry’s best friend Ron Weasley and his troublemaking brothers Fred and George break Harry out and take him to their family home the Burrow for the rest of the summer.

            Chapter Four: At Flourish and Blotts. Harry and the Weasleys go to Diagon Alley to purchase their school supplies. At the book store Flourish and Blotts, Harry and the Weasleys run into Draco Malfoy and his father Lucius, as well as Gilderoy Lockhart, their new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts who narcissistically has written their new books about all the wonderful things he has done as a wizard.

            Chapter Five: The Whomping Willow. Harry and Ron are blocked from making the train to Hogwarts and instead steal Ron’s father’s flying car to get to Hogwarts. They crash into the Whomping Willow, a tree that fights back.

            Chapter Six: Gilderoy Lockhart. Harry, Ron, and their friend Hermione Granger sit in Lockhart’s first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson where the narcissist gives a test about everything in his books, then unleashes Cornish Pixies that terrorize the class, then cowardly runs off expecting Harry, Ron and Hermione to fix his mess-up.

            Chapter Seven: Mudbloods and Murmurs. Harry hears a dirty word for a witch or wizard who come from muggle (non-magical) families, then starts to hear a mysterious voice that no one else can hear.

            Chapter Eight: The Deathday Party. Harry, Ron, and Hermione attend a party celebrating the anniversary of Gryffindor House ghost Nearly Headless Nick’s day of death.

            Chapter Nine: The Writing on the Wall. A message about the Chamber of Secrets is painted on a wall near a defunct bathroom.

            Chapter Ten: The Rogue Bludger. Harry is attacked by a Bludger while playing the wizard sport Quidditch that is fixated on him and ends up in the school infirmary where he finds out about a petrified student.

            Chapter Eleven: The Dueling Club. Lockhart holds a Dueling Club to show the students how to fight wizard style, and proves to be completely inept at dueling.

            Chapter Twelve: The Polyjuice Potion. Harry and Ron take a potion that transforms them into Slytherins Crabbe and Goyle to see if Malfoy is the one who opens the Chamber of Secrets.

            Chapter Thirteen: The Very Secret Diary. Harry finds a magical diary that shows Harry that the gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid is the one who unleashed the Slytherin monster on Hogwarts fifty years prior.

            Chapter Fourteen: Cornelius Fudge. The Minister of Magic arrests Hagrid and takes him to Azkaban wizard prison, as well as firing Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

            Chapter Fifteen: Aragog. Harry and Ron find out that giant spider Aragog was not the Slytherin monster and Hagrid is not the Heir of Slytherin and are attacked by a horde of giant spiders.

            Chapter Sixteen: The Chamber of Secrets. Harry and Ron find the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets and enter.

            Chapter Seventeen: The Heir of Slytherin. Harry confronts the Heir of Slytherin and faces off with the Slytherin monster.

            Chapter Eighteen: Dobby’s Reward. The story wraps up and something good happens for Dobby the House Elf.

            Whew! Wow, thanks for getting this far! Anyway, now comes the important part: my score. Usually my reviews contain my thoughts on the book, the accessibility of the dedication needed to fully appreciate the book, and my numerical score of the book, and so you shall get all. First off, as I said before, I love this book and have read it at least twenty times. I found the book well written. The story kept me interested, I hardly wanted to put it down, but being a busy blogger I had to take breaks, plus I’m reading five things at once to review just for the sake of keeping the blog interesting, but I digress. The whole mystery of the Heir of Slytherin and the Slytherin monster was started relatively early in the book, ran through the course of the rest of the book, and had a satisfying culmination that completely paid off.

            As far as accessibility to reading this book, seriously, just read “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first book in the series, obviously, but if for some reason are reading a second book in a series without reading the first book, I don’t have anything positive to say to you about that, so let’s not go there. Or, if you just want to be lazy, watch the film of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” then this book will be accessible to you as well, but a film is NOT a novel, so there will be gaps and inconsistencies if you do this.

            Now, the moment you’ve been waiting for: my numeric score. I scale on one to ten, one being worst, ten being best. My regular readers will know I am VERY hard to please, I have given A LOT of bad ratings over the course of this blog for the past year. Now, this is VERY, VERY rare, but on my numeric scale, I rate this book at a ten. I’ve already established the reasoning for this score, so I think that nothing more needs to be said on this matter.

            Wow, this was long! Thanks for reaching this point in this review, you are THE BEST! So I’ll now free you from your bond and say, Tim Cubbin… out!