Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This is definitely my favorite Harry Potter book so far, although I really think I would like it best if the fun wizard-y things remained and all the dark, creepy wizard stuff was taken out. Basically, I would have enjoyed a book about wizard camping and the Triwizard Tournament tasks, without any of the return of the dark lord. The creativity and world-building continue to be incredible. And that includes all of the dark parts, which are so well-written and why I could definitely do without them. I will say that the reveal of who Voldemort's servant at Hogwarts was legitimately surprised me–I had spent a lot of the book sifting through the clues.

Unexpected scary bits!

It was a tiny bit scary and it had really good descriptions. It was kinda fun and creepy scary. It was about Harry Potter doing the Triwizard Tournament.

(I read this book aloud to my son - aged 7 - this year, so the review and rating is entirely his - personally I would have rated this as 3 star, it was super repetitive and I'm worried about the 5th book being even bigger and recovering all the stuff we already know about the characters and the world!)

I finished re-reading this with my daughter awhile ago and forgot to log it.

At this point, the series doesn't hold as much interest for my daughter at her age (5). There are fun concepts and exciting scenes for her, but it's overlong in parts and some of the side plots are just sort of dull. However, my daughter's review when I asked her for it was “Thanks, that was a very good book”, so maybe she enjoyed it more than I thought.

After we finished this, we started the Order of the Phoenix, which is a lot more plodding than this, and only made it a handful of chapters in before abandoning it for now. We'll try again in a year maybe to continue the series.

I still like this book, but have always preferred the simpler and shorter first three books.

I just finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It's never been one of my favorites of the Harry Potter series—in fact, it's typically been my least favorite, after Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. But I spent a long time reading this instead of racing through it, and I found a lot of interesting new things about the book and about Harry's experiences after the Third Task that I hadn't paid attention to before. I've changed my rating from 3 stars to 5. (04/16/10)

So far this is the longest of the Harry Potter books. Much of the last few chapters was spend with characters explaining details and wrapping up what had happened. I guess this is done for the younger audience this book was aimed for. It almost came across like Cliff's notes on plot details and their resolutions.

Terrific book. It's a long one - the second longest in the series - but it's paced nicely. This is the one that takes what has, up until this point, been a kid's story and brings it kicking and screaming into a somewhat darker and slightly more menacing place. At this stage, it's decidedly a young-adult novel, with themes that are not insignificantly stepped up. The book opens with an exciting Quidditch World Cup event, which sets the stage for the tri-wizard tournament - a competition that provides the framework of this novel, and ultimately provides the impetus for the big closing moments. New characters, new spells, blooming romances, and plenty of good vs evil. We're excited to get into The Order Of The Phoenix!

One of the absolute greats

This book isn't just the best in the series, it's one of the greatest books of all time. The amount of action, the amount of content that's in this book is simply incredible. Without giving away too many spoilers, this book takes the series into a much darker, more serious area whilst making you fall more in love with the characters and giving them even more personality than before. It's truly sensational and is most certainly up there as one of my favourite books of all time.

Reread 2020: I just love the entire story in this book. It got dark! I decided to listen to some ambient sounds, so I was reading this book while sitting in the Hufflepuff common room! ☺️ definitely made the experience even better. Damn, this book makes me so happy and yet so sad at the same time ❤️

My journey reading the harry potter books continues. As I've mentioned in my previous reviews, I never read harry potter as a kid, but now in my 20s I've decided to read them and see what all the hype is about and this one was the best by far.

This entry is the best one at the moment. With a thrilling story, no deadbeats to make the book longer, and no BS to save the main character.

The fact that this book happens during the Tri-Wizzard Tournier is an excellent plus because there are events happening throughout the year and there is no dead time where nothing happens. In the other books, I felt that the book was about the school year and at the and after the exams coincidentally Voldemort strikes... It was very nice of him to wait until after the exams since it could affect the academic performance of Harry and his Friends.
But in this book, since Harry does not have to write any exams there is action all year around.

There were several great twists, which are slightly hinted at, making the twist surprising but not unbelievable. Except for one which I will be commenting on at the end since I want to keep this review spoiler free.

I also liked that this book is no longer as childish as the previous ones since this book treats more serious topics such as Death and love since harry is slowly becoming a teen. That's great writing from J.K. Rowling.

All in all, until this date my favorite Harry Potter book. I am excited for the next one since the books have gotten better with time.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
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Now I will be commenting on the one scene which I thought was a little BS.
The Duel between Harry and Voldemort. The fact that now twin Wands lock with each other and force the Previous incantation is all a bunch of BS. This scene gives me the feeling J.K. Rowling found herself in the duel and dint know how to save Harry since Voldemort would have won. It is true that he is weaker than in his prime, but harry is an inexperienced teen wizard, he doesn't stand a chance against the Dark Lord.
She could have hinted at it in the class of defense against the dark arts. We could have visited one of Lupin's classes and he could have mentioned: “btw twin wands when they fight against each other they lock and one of them makes the other cast all previous spells in reverse order.”. Just the same explanation that Dumbledore gives, but between phases of the Tri-Wizard Tournier. Or maybe the Waesly twins could have twin wands (bc they are twins idk) and in the summer when Harry is visiting for the Quidich Championship, they could start an argument and fire at each other, such that Harry sees that twin Wands can indeed lock.
Don't Interpret me wrong, I don't have a problem with the wands locking but at least mentioned it before it happens.
Al in all this not a deal breaker, I still enjoyed this book a lot.

Having established a winning setup with The Prisoner of Azkaban - slow start, long and baffling middle, big batch of clarifying reveals at the end - it seems that JKR decided to go down the ‘if it ain't broke don't fix it' route With The Goblet of Fire and stretched the same format out to fill an extra two hundred pages, when really she could just have cut out the bits with the blast ended skrewts or Hermione's quest for the emancipation of the house elves and written a shorter, tighter story. Im giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that these points must evolve into something significant in later books because they were unnecessary here.

It's interesting to note that The Goblet of Fire, like the previous books in the series, came out a year after its predecessor. The remaining three books have two or three years between releases. With this book being significantly bigger than the first three, I do wonder if JKR rushed it and if that's what's responsible for its many niggling mistakes. Her inability to punctuate Sirius's name properly throughout was incredibly irritating, not to mention her continued insistence on using ellipses where they're completely redundant, for the third book running. She's also come to rely on a select few favourite phrases so much that their repetition now jolts me entirely out of my reading (Hagrid's ‘beetle black eyes', or ‘bottle brush tail' in reference to Crookshanks being the worst offenders).

On the plus side the Weasleys remain absolutely adorable, and I think Mr and Mrs Weasley might be my favourite characters of the whole series. I could have wept when Mrs Weasley and Bill turned up in place of Harry's family for the final task in the tournament. I enjoyed the introduction of Mad Eye Moody and his roaming, magic eye, and I hope we'll see him again after his convalescence. I'm looking forward to finding out what that glint in Dumbledore's eye meant, and also if Fred and George do invest all that gold in a joke shop. I suspect not though.

3.5 stars.

Shit went down in this one, didn't it?
THE book in this series where things take a dark turn and it isn't fun and games anymore.

Turns out, halfway through the book I realize I haven't read goblet of fire. Believe me, am rolling my eyes as well.
Always a pleasure to dive into the magical universe. Barty Crouch Jr's escape from Azkaban story was interesting.

Why does Stephen Fry make Voldemort sound like a rich snob lol.

10 / 10 narration. I think Goblet of Fire is my favorite out of the series because you don't require a backstory to understand this book. A perfect way to introduce a muggle to the wizarding world :)