Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

After the high level of excitement in the last Potter novel, this one seemed like a bit of a let-down. I'll admit that the ending is rather emotionally draining, but there isn't a lot of build-up towards that. Instead we get a lot of exposition about Voldemort and his relationship to Harry; it's obvious that this is mostly just set-up material for the last book in the series, although it is definitely necessary expository information. It would have been nice, however, if that information had been spread out a bit more evenly over the series, rather than being placed in the penultimate book through the ultimate plot device, the Pensieve. At the very least, however, it does a very good job of creating anticipation for the last novel in the series.