Bleary Potter

I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Saturday. It was a vast improvement over Order of the Phoenix, which I found long-winded and rather pointless, and it features a great deal of exposition that serves as ample payoff for reading this far into J.K. Rowling's epic. Without descending to spoilers, I found the climax to be rather unsurprising, and I was not as broken up about it as I might have been were I in the sixth grade, or if I wrote for the LA Times.

One thing that I found particularly fascinating about this installment was the fact that the main characters - some of whom are reaching the Wizarding world's age of maturity, 17 - are now drinking. In fact, one of the main plot points hinges on Harry's manipulating one of his teachers into getting blind on the sauce. As though the Christian Right didn't have enough to quarrel with in these books, Ms. Rowling is now showing America's youngsters that their counterparts across the pond (the descendents of the thoughtful, practical people who showed the Puritans the door) aren't subject to a nanny-state Prohibitionary culture when it comes to alcohol. Granted, the fact that the legal drinking age in America is 21 doesn't seem to stop many high schoolers, but imagine what's going to happen when all the six year olds who are reading this book are 16: "But mom, Harry Potter drinks!" "Harry Potter also flies around on a broom and slays dragons, hand over that six pack."