Harry Potter: Why J.K. Rowling’s Seven Books Read Like a Mystery Full of Suspense
It is hard to write a book about witches and wizards without it sometimes becoming boring. J.K. Rowling does something remarkable in her Harry Potter series: she writes fantasy novels that read like gripping mysteries full of suspense.
Author: J.K. Rowling
Title: Harry Potter series, seven novels (1997–2007)
Format: English paperback box set (Bloomsbury Children’s Books), all seven books
Scope: Children’s and young-adult fantasy series set around Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1408856778 (ASIN 1408856778)
A World Worth Visiting
What sets Rowling’s work apart is the creation of an extremely interesting and imaginative fantasy world, based on witchcraft and magic, in which to place her characters. This world has a school where fascinating magical subjects are taught from textbooks such as A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
It has Quidditch, a sort of hybrid of basketball and football played on flying broomsticks; owls that carry the post; and a whole bureaucracy for magical people, which decides who may do magic and who may not, complete with a prison whose guards feed on human misery.
Place and Story
While we care about what happens to Harry, the place he lives in is just as exciting, if not more so. But a world like that on its own would not be enough to hold the reader’s attention. Rowling’s beautiful, imaginative descriptions of the events that happen in it are what carry the reader into the magical realm, and each book is built around a mystery that pays off at the end.
A Train, a Café and a Dozen Rejections
Rowling has said the idea of a boy who did not know he was a wizard came to her in 1990 on a delayed train from Manchester to London. She wrote much of the first book as a single mother in Edinburgh, and the manuscript was turned down by a dozen publishers before the small children’s list at Bloomsbury accepted it. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone appeared in 1997 with a modest first print run; ten years later Deathly Hallows was one of the most eagerly awaited books ever published.
The Seven Books
In order: Philosopher’s Stone (1997), Chamber of Secrets (1998), Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Goblet of Fire (2000), Order of the Phoenix (2003), Half-Blood Prince (2005) and Deathly Hallows (2007). Each covers one school year, and each is longer and darker than the one before. The first three are school adventures with a mystery at their core; from Goblet of Fire onwards, with Voldemort’s return, the series becomes a war story about loyalty, grief and sacrifice.
Why It Works
The original review put its finger on it: the books are fantasy built like detective stories. Rowling plants clues for years, sometimes across several books, and the pleasure of rereading lies in spotting them. Her characters also age honestly. Harry is often angry and unfair, Ron is jealous, Hermione is insufferable before she is admirable, and adults such as Snape and Dumbledore turn out to be far more complicated than they first appear.
Beyond the Books
The eight films (2001–2011) brought the story to an even larger audience, and the stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) continued it. Rowling also writes adult crime fiction under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. In Spain the novels are published in translation by Salamandra, but reading them in English is a classic way for students to improve: the vocabulary grows with the reader.
How to Read Them
The seven books grow up with their readers, from the light adventure of Philosopher’s Stone to the war of Deathly Hallows, so read them in order. The paperback box set linked here collects all seven; I have also written about several of the individual books on this blog.
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Part of the reading recommendations featured on books.sapiensverbum.com.
