Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The Book in 1 Sentence

A book that starts with the stupidity of a child and ends with the first bit of odder magic that leads to a final story.

Brief Review

The continuation of a solid story that shows the growth of J. K. Rowling. You will see the cementing of characters personalities. This cementing also is what allows this to continue. Knowing how it ends, you can see the groundwork of where the book story is going and just speaks volumes to the forethought of the author.

Why I Read this book

I was driving another 8 hours and needed a book to fill the time. This worked.

In-Depth Review (Favorite Quotes)

This is a slower book. I think because you understand the premise of the world, the amount of world building in this book takes the pace down. There feels like a lot of redundancy and while I know I haven't reviewed the movies yet, I think this movie is a bit better than the book as far as the main story.

You get more history about Voldemort, a.k.a. Tom Marvolo Riddle, which is the best part of this book. It leads to this internal monologue from Harry about how they are both similar in history and this leads to a concern that he will end up the same way. However, this also leads to one of the better lessons in the series about how our choices do more to make us who we are then our natural history.

The characters don't change much in this story from the last, but you are introduced to a couple of important characters in this book mainly Dobby. He is super frustrating as a character and even as a child when I first was introduced to these books, he annoyed me. He still does to this day in this book. There is also something else that I don't understand in this book about the Ministry of Magic and their detection of underage magic.

Harry is hit with a violation due to a levitation charm if I remember correctly, but not for the disapparation that Dobby does or any of the other magic going on around him that Dobby is doing. We also know in later books that each underage witch or wizard is tracked individually. However, I also know that House Elves use a different type of magic so was Dobby using "Wizard" magic to get him caught? I don't know.

Rating

This might be my least favorite book in the series as far as entertainment. It's slower, it spends a lot of time with plot lines that don't lead anywhere. It spends WAY to much time talking about Lockhart, especially since he is a throwaway character, and overall just feels dragged down by world building. That being said, it isn't a terrible book. This is a 7 which is where you kind of expect a series to go next since "They all can't be bangers."

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