"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling

 

            The following is a review of the novel “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling and NOT the film adaptation.

            Hey, all, welcome to From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin! I’m your guy, Tim Cubbin!

            Okay, if you’ve been here before, y’all know how this works. If not, I’ll explain a little about how this review works. I review pretty much everything I read, and I’ve just reread the novel “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” for, in all seriousness, like the twentieth time. I love this book, I love all the “Harry Potter” books, and having started this blog over a year ago and having read the book within this parameter of running this blog, reviewing this book is a must. I have also, in fact, reviewed “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” so reviewing this book is basically a must. And yes, this book was written in 1999, over twenty years ago, but it still holds great entertainment value. And if you’ve read my other two “Harry Potter” reviews and are here now, you are quite a “Harry Potter” fan and just want to read an honest review by a true “Harry Potter” fan himself and someone who is not a professional critic (however I am an certified journalist, but that’s not the point) and will actually give a fair review.

If you’ve read one of my reviews before, you know I try to keep several consistencies in how I style my reviews, many of the same basic things. So, here’s how THIS particular post shall work. I know, you’re bored with me at this point and are saying “Tim Cubbin, get to the review already,” but stay with me for a few more sentences, but once we get past this, first off, I’ll tell you the synopsis of the book with as few spoilers as possible, then I’ll give you my own personal opinions on the book, then I’ll give the book my numeric score of the book (if you don’t know my scale score, we’ll get to that when… well, when we get to that), then I’ll say goodbye and then you are free to go about your merry way and break the chains of our bond to this post. Now, I’ll stop boring you and actually get to the reason I’m writing this review.

Okay, Harry Potter is a thirteen-year-old wizard and student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His best friends are Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and fellow students at Hogwarts. A wizard mass murderer, Sirius Black, has escaped from the “inescapable” wizard jail Azkaban. He betrayed Harry’s parents to the evil wizard Dark Lord Voldemort and is the reason they are dead, and he is now after Harry to finish Voldemort’s job and return Voldemort to full power. Harry lives with his despicable Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and cousin Dudley. After inflating his “Aunt” Marge, Harry flees the Dursleys and comes face-to-face with the Grim. Harry stays in the wizard shopping street Diagon Alley before starting his third year at Hogwarts. Hermione purchases a cat named Crookshanks who takes a mad-on against Ron’s pet rat Scabbers. On the Hogwarts Express train, Harry, Ron and Hermione meet their new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Lupin and learn that creatures called Dementors, the guards of Azkaban, are now stationed at Hogwarts. They feed on happiness and cause Harry to recall the deaths of his parents. Harry, Ron and Hermione attend their classes, such as the new class Divination, taught by a fraud psychic named Sybil Trelawney and Care of Magical Creatures taught by Rubeus Hagrid, groundskeeper and ally of Harry, Ron and Hermione, but Hermione has double-booked classes and seems to disappear and reappear at odd moments. In Hagrid’s first lesson of Care of Magical Creatures, he introduces his students to creatures called Hippogriffs, and Harry’s nemesis Draco Malfoy is attacked by the Hippogriff Buckbeak, who is then sentenced to execution. Professor Lupin begins to try to teach Harry to create a Patronus to defend himself against the Dementors. Oliver Wood, the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, is in his last year at Hogwarts and is determined to win the Quidditch Cup before he graduates. Fred and George Weasley, Ron’s twin older brothers and mischief-makers bequeath to Harry the Marauder’s Map to help Harry sneak into the wizard village, Hogsmeade, to which Harry does not have permission to travel to. These are all the basic plot points to the novel I can disclose without spoilers, but I will say that not all is as it seems.

Okay, my own personal thoughts. While it is not my favorite “Harry Potter” book, I still love it. Rowling truly knows how to build mysteries, excitement, humor, fun and action into her works, and I have never been disappointed by her works. I will say my favorite scene is where Professor Lupin has his third year students face off against a Boggart, a creature that can shapeshift into the nearest living thing’s worst fear and can only be defeated by laughter, and Neville Longbottom, a blundering Hogwarts student who is most afraid of Hogwarts’ Potions Master Professor Severus Snape, forces to Boggart Snape into Neville’s grandmother’s clothes. I also loved the plot twists, most of which I NEVER saw coming. As an aspiring novelist myself, I hope I can create such a sense of surprise in my readers that Rowling placed upon me as I ingested this book.

Alright, now to my numeric score. I score my subjects on a scale of one to ten. One means I barely managed to force myself into reading this book once, ten meaning I will totally read it again. You probably know where I’m leaning towards at this point, considering how many times I mentioned I have read this book. Some of my prior readers who have read reviews of mine on stories other than “Harry Potter” know I am very hard to please, and I don’t just give out great scores like candy on Halloween, so if I give a good score, then this book is probably pretty darn good. So, all said and done, I give this book a nine. This book was almost perfection for me, but I just can’t quite give it a ten. There were points that I lost interest in, and some of the major things Harry gets away with are just unrealistic considering the little things I got in trouble for when I was in school at the age of thirteen. But I thoroughly enjoy this book every time I read it, and I will totally read it again in a few years I just love the “Harry Potter” franchise that much. I will say that you ABSOLUTELY, SHOULD NOT read “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” if you have not read the books or seen the movies “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” or else you will totally not be able to follow everything, this is a SERIES and EVERY book or movie in the series MUST be read in order in this series, it’s VERY important!

Well, I think I’ve bored you long enough. This review has been longer than some of the articles I wrote in my journalism classes I had that much to say, and if you’ve read this WHOLE review, seriously, you are THE BEST! And, yes, I will review the other “Harry Potter” books in time, so keep a lookout for them soon. Feel free to look at more of the content on this blog, I am an aspiring writer and certified journalist, I write all kinds of things on this blog and I promise I will keep on churning out new material in time. I’ll say goodbye for now, but until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!