I can’t believe I’m doing two posts in one day, but I couldn’t let this day pass by without comment! I’ve never been a huge Harry Potter fan, but as a lover of children’s literature and the reading community, I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to engage in lots of fun book excitement. My best friend (pictured below in the photo on the right) and I attended two Harry Potter events on Saturday night. He’s a proper Gryffindor. I don’t have any HP paraphernalia so I borrowed his Gryffindor scarf even though I’m pretty sure I’m Ravenclaw… The local independent bookstore had ambitious plans at a large park in the city. We checked it out for a couple hours, but with 12,000+ attendees we weren’t able to participate in any of the activities (I think had more fun catching Pokemon, haha). We certainly weren’t planning to wait in line to get the book at midnight so around 11:00PM we headed over to the bookstore where my sister works. She dressed as Luna for her store event. I read a few pages before going to bed, just to get an inkling of what the play was going to be about. I finished reading it in the morning.
There were many twists and turns where I gasped and cackled. I had absolutely no expectations for the story so nearly everything that happened was a surprise for me. My sister asked me if the story was any good and I said I wasn’t sure. It was certainly entertaining, but was it a quality continuation of Harry Potter’s story? I’ll come back to that question in a moment. Part way through I finally predicted that Delphi would be Voldemort’s daughter and that’s where things started to fall apart for me. Voldemort having a child doesn’t jive for me. The plot felt improbable and a bit melodramatic. I found some emotion in the story (largely in interactions between the adult characters we know and love), and I would still like to see the play performed, but story wise I don’t feel like this adds a lot to the canon. It’s great to have a bit about what the characters are up to as adults. But the dramatic plot feels forced and a touch fanservice-y to me (especially with the alternate timelines). Overall, I had fun reading this just to see what would happen. I don’t think it’s adding a whole lot to the Harry Potter Canon, though.
Did you participate in any release festivities? Have/will you read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child?
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