HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

Not your older brother's Harry Potter

By Chris Wyatt     June 23, 2003

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, like every Harry Potter before it, is the best one yet... because they keep getting better.

And they keep getting other things too. They keep getting darker. They keep getting more mature. They keep getting more complex and more imaginative. ORDER OF THE PHOENIX is to Harry Potter, what THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was to STAR WARS.
That's not to say that everyone's necessarily going to love the book. This isn't your father's Harry Potter... (Well, more like this isn't your slightly older brother's Harry Potter). Gone is the wide-eyed, joyful and eager Harry who's discovering the wizarding world. In this book Harry is feeling the effects of his physical torture at the hands of Voldemort (as recorded in the book four). And he's living with the trauma of having seen Cedric violently slaughtered in front of him. All that, plus the normal growing pains and jealousies that come with being fifteen.

PHOENIX opens with Harry trapped with his oppressive muggle relatives. He desperately follows the news, trying to detect the presence of Lord Voldemort's hand moving current events. But after a shocking, unmotivated attack by two dementors, Harry faces possible expulsion from Hogwart's for use of magic in the presence of muggles.
At school, normal academic problems, like studying for the O.W.L. exams, takes a backseat as the new defense against the dark arts teacher (a toad-like woman named Dolores Umbridge) raises Harry's suspicions. Meanwhile, rumors of the Death Eater army regrouping have inspired the restoration of an organization called "The Order of the Phoenix".

When did these stop being children's books? The first book, as good as it is, is just a well-written orphan's fairy tale. But the content of the novels is growing up the same way that the main character is. That's great for adult readers. And it's great for kids the same age as Harry, who are aging along with the character, but parents of younger children might be in for a jolt every once in a while.

Also, as might be expected, this is not the book for a new reader to pick up on. PHOENIX is quite clearly a continuation of the fourth book, and it doesn't exactly tie everything up nicely either. Though there is a climax to the book, elements will clearly be continued in the next book. But all that is to be expected, because we only have two more books to wrap the whole thing up.
The wait was long, Potter fans. But this was the book you were hoping for.

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