melandry:
Care to remind me just what that was? I read all the books, and I don’t recall anything about Thestrals in book 4.
That’s exactly what the contradiction is. They’ve been pulling the Hogwarts carriages for years, right? Why didn’t Harry see them at the end of book 4?
J.K. Rowling on the subject of Thestrals from her post-OotP Q&A session at the Royal Albert Hall:
This is not the best explanation in the world, but at least she has some kind of reasoning behind it. It would have been confusing to introduce the Thestrals with no explanation at the end of GoF, although I think if it had been me I would have tried to come up with some other way for Harry to get to the Hogwarts Express that time so as to avoid the issue entirely. But then again, how many novels, bestselling or otherwise, have I written?
Here’s another vote for the most to least favorite order being #5,4,3,2,1. Book five was a lot of fun, we got to see alot more of the wizardworld, Umbridge was a wicked villian, and the DA was cool, and I like the long books, but all the little mistakes do annoy me. The thestrals I didn’t mind, but Luna Lovegood appearing out of nowhere, Harry not responding to the mirror, Harry conveniently forgetting Snape was in the Order!
Also Ginny was just to much in this book, I could handle her suddenly talking, apparently being very popular, cool, whatever, but when we suddenly find out that she’s an excellent Quidditch player-come on! It’s like in Star Wars when we find out Darth Vader is Luke’s father-that’s cool, Leia suddenly being his sister too is pushing it.
I’m surprised that a lot of people didn’t like Harry’s character change. One of the things that most annoyed me from Books 1-4 was that Harry was (in the tradition of most noble heroes) really, really dull, a nice, polite, dull kid. Things just happened to him, he reacted, and through mostly luck and someone else’s help he survives. But in Book 5 Harry finally gets an attitude, he talks back, is sarcastic, and actually makes a huge mistake. So sure Book 5 had little inconsistencies, but I like the direction Book 5 took, and which hopefully Book 6 and 7 will follow.
The problem is, he didn’t actually see Cedric die (he admits as much to Cho), and yet he did see his parents die.
That kinda bugged me, too. I liked the character a lot, but the way she was introduced, I thought at first that she must be a transfer student. Oh yeah, she’s a Ravenclaw, and Ginny knows who she is, but how come we’ve never heard of her? Would it have hurt anything to have had Harry reflect that he’d seen her around a few times before? Sometimes I wonder if Rowling ever does a revision.
I will probably buy the sixth book within a week of it hitting the shelves. Wal-Mart usually has the slightly damaged copies (ink smudge on a couple page margins) in hardback for half-price or so. 
I have enjoyed all five so far, but the story is lagging. I’m in total agreement about the ‘1500p to tell a 300p’ story point. I also have to wonder…will it really end at seven books? Wheel of Time is an example of that phenomenon…inside the dust jacket of Lord of Chaos (book six, the last one anything really happened in), it says something about the ‘projected eight book series’… Hey, if I was making as much money on a series as Robert Jordan is, I would want to keep it going, too. Yet zillions of people rush out to buy the newest offerings, in hopes that at some point there will at least be a plot twist…
So, yes, I will buy the books. I also have a pet peeve about unfinished series on my shelves. I own all the Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth, four different David Eddings series (now he’s worth keeping up with!), Dune, Pern…you name it, I probably have it.
BTW, I liked all the Narnia books about equally (my favorite was Dawn Treader) and I once considered naming a kid Aravis…
Did he? I mean, he was present, but he was just a baby. Unless Rowling specifically wrote otherwise (I really can’t remember), I’d assume he was lying on his back like most babies and not actually looking at the action. Even if he had been, a baby couldn’t understand what was happening well enough to have it “sink in” the way that Rowling mentioned in her quote. Of course Harry knows that his parents are dead and has had to deal with that his entire life, but he hasn’t had to deal with the sight of it the way Luna did with her mother.
Not that this means the whole Thestral thing makes much more sense, but unclear rules of behavior are perhaps forgiveable when it comes to magical creatures. Although personally, the reason it doesn’t bother me is because I just don’t think it’s important that Harry didn’t see them at the end of GoF – what difference would it have made if he had? But I’ve been bothered by equally small plot holes and inconsistencies in other works, so I’m in no position to criticize anyone else for being annoyed by it.
I’m pretty sure that in Book 5 itself it says that Harry’s parents’ death didn’t allow him to see the Thestrals because he was too young for it to make an impression on his memory (or some such).
Going to preorder it, snatch it up, and cut myself off from the Internet until I’m finished with it, same as I did with Book Five, 'cos I really don’t want the risk of running into any spoilers. And I’d say that even if OotP weren’t well on its way to being my favorite of the series (six months ago I would have said it was PoA, but there’s so much good stuff in OotP that grows on you … Luna, a whole new gang of cool adult characters, getting to see Remus again, the new layer of social satire, the backstory on Sirius and Snape, Ginny and McGonagall (!) showing their rebellious sides … yum).
Of course, if she kills Remus in Book Six I am so boycotting Book Seven.
Wait…what’s so wrong about an empowered female character?
Fair enough. But there’s still a lot of ground between “dull” and “gigantic festering c—”.
I agree. I really liked Harry’s change to pissed off teenager in book 5.
I’m looking forward to book 6 a lot, myself. I’ll probably read my sister’s hardcover when it comes out and buy my own paperback when its released.
For the record, book 3 was my favorite. I hate book 2; if I hadn’t been told that 3 was so good I probably would have stopped with that one. Easily my least favorite.
OK, since no one has said it yet…
Didn’t you mean “eager” and not “anxious”? 
Well, normally I would say “eager”, but the way people got so worked up prior to the releases of 4 and 5, I upgraded to “anxious”. Remember the CS thread “Harry Potter 5: A Warning Shot Across the Bow”, started by a moderator, IIRC, prohibiting anyone from spoiling the Very Big Deal that we’d been told was going to happen? HP fans do not play.
Hey, I like empowered female characters, Hermione, and Tonks are 2 of my favorite characters. What I had a problem with was Ginny suddenly turning into this Supercool/powerful witch with almost no warning. Look at books 1-4, she barely has 4 lines total, then book 5 comes around and all her additional powers annoy me.
Alright, the fact that she’s started talking and going out more I can handle, JK gives a reason for that-she got over her crush with Harry. However the fact that she’s a great quidditch player, on top of all her other talents that have come to light in this novel irritated me, it just seemed over the top.
What “additional powers” are these? I didn’t notice that she was more proficient at magic than might be expected of a Hogwarts student of her age.
Considering that several of her older brothers were also good enough for the Griffindor Quidditch team, I don’t find this particularly far-fetched.
I didn’t have a problem with this at all. A lot of people take a while to blossom and then when they do, it seems as if it’s all at once when for all we know it’s been very gradual. Plus she had time to make friends with the people in her own class/grade (the same way Harry, Ron and Hermione have) which probably made her more confident. I was cool with it. Like her better this way.
Count me as another one who’s quite happy with the new Ginny (it’s not unusual for people to change radically between eleven and fourteen, and there were hints all along that her shyness around Harry was uncharacteristic; I think it’s in CoS that Ron says she never stops talking when she’s at home).
Love Luna, and Tonks, and Madame Bones, too. I’m really thrilled that the female characters in general seem to be coming into their own.
Yeah. And bear in mind that we see everything from Harry’s POV, so he wouldn’t have noticed any changes in Ginny until she got all up in his face. “I’m three years older than you were when you went after the Sorcerer’s Stone!” And as far as her being a good Quidditch player, and flyer in general, remember that she told Ron she’d been practicing on his and the other Weasley’s brooms for years, maybe even before she was a Hogwart’s student.
Huh? Additional powers? You mean learning more magic? 
Like someone said, we are seeing this from Harry’s POV. So while Harry ignored Ginny early on, this may be the first time he’s really noticed her. Before she was just the gal with the crush on Harry. Now, she gets into his face and shows that all that Quddich the Weasley boys played rubbed off on Ginny.
My hypothesis is that Harry ends up with Ginny in the end and marries into the Weasley family. Ginny had a crush on him and gets over it, and at that time Harry sees her for the first time (really). Of course, the trick is for Harry to get Ginny to like him as more than friend again. It seemed fairly obvious to me.