House of the rising Moonglum

The News agencies had sort of agreed to an embargo on revealing details about the Harry Potter books until after it went on sale. The NYT however picked up a copy early, and got slammed for their spoileriffic review which came out three days before the release. Rowling herself made some comments about “American Newspapers” ruining the fun. So I had to laugh when I found that the Trib sent their editor to London to pick up the book and read it on Saturday to finish in time for a Sunday review. And what a review it is. It is about as unspoilery as a review can be (though they do give a couple really great lines away). Probably my favorite part is where they make a veiled slam of the NYT:

Death is not the point

And that is why, frankly, all the fuss and blather and bother about early reviews of the book by some media outlets now look a little silly.

To be fair, the NYT review was pretty good too, just a bit spoilery. This quote in particular is funny, given Prince Corwin’s reviews of the first five books:

“This same magpie talent has enabled her to create a narrative that effortlessly mixes up allusions to Homer, Milton, Shakespeare and Kafka, with silly kid jokes about vomit-flavored candies, a narrative that fuses a plethora of genres (from the boarding-school novel to the detective story to the epic quest) into a story that could be Exhibit A in a Joseph Campbell survey of mythic archetypes.”

Also: I discovered my wife likes to read the last page first. This shocked me when I found out (though of course she did not spoil me). Fortunately, the Trib let me know that that is OK. There are two kinds of people, those who suck their way through a tootsie-pop, and those who bite. Apparently I am just a sucker.