the prisoner of azkaban

Finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban this evening while half-heartedly paying attention to a snoozer of an All-Star Game - someone please remind me to post about what's wrong the MLB's All-Star Game and Home Run Derby and how to fix both in the near future. I really enjoyed how much the book added to the story I was already familiar with thanks to the movie. I also enjoyed the immense improvement in Rowling's writing from book two to book three - I'd start referring to the Prisoner of Azkaban as a novel if not for how horribly she butchers the book's ending.

Overall, the Prisoner of Azkaban follows the movie's plot pretty well, though there are noticeably more differences between the book and movie with this installment. For the most part they are minor and understandable to make the movie flow easier and faster, but some do stand out. One aspect of the book that stood out to me while reading was the growing tension placed upon the friendships between Harry, Ron and Hermione. I was aware of these tensions from watching the fourth film, but to discover their seeds in the third book was pretty cool. Also, there is a lot of quidditch in the third book. I kinda wish this element had made its way into the movie as quidditch is a lot more fun to watch than read, but oh well. The last observation I'll make is that Professor Snape is a much more prominent and detestable character in the books than the movies, especially in this book. I am surprised by this as I found Snape to be an intriguing character in the movies and actually one of my favorite characters - of course that could just be because I am a big fan of Alan Rickman.

Lastly, I do want to gripe about the book's ending. I like the conclusion to the story - Rowling's concept of the book's climactic moments is brilliant. However, it is so poorly written. It's like she didn't know how to bring everything together in the end and explain what she so eloquently foreshadows throughout the book succinctly, so she drones on for what seems like 6 chapters to conclude her story. Perhaps I would have read this more favorably had I not known how the story was going to end, but honestly it took way to long to reach its end. That is just a small complaint though from what was otherwise a very enjoyable read. Now on to number four, which I'm noticing is a little bit longer than the first three (combined?).