Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This is a real ‘coming-of-age' type novel - the kind of book that could be a wonderful revelation if you read it when you're fifteen, but beyond that, it loses a lot of its emotional punch.[return]In some ways, as well, this novel is driven by a desire to coope with the events of the last book - the eponymous Order has to deal with Voldemort's return, and Harry has to deal with the emotional trauma of having a friend die in his arms, as well as all of the issues normally associated with being 15. I've talked to a lot of people who have sad they didn't like this novel, because in it, they claimed, Harry becomes somewhat insufferable. I think, though, that you can't understand Harry's attitude in the book without keeping cognizant the fact that he is only a teenager, and that he lacks the psychoemotional maturity to deal with a lot of what's happened to him. Additionally, the book also has a nice, strong ‘stick-it-to-the-man' sort of attitude to it, which is a refreshing change from the other books, and which helps to firmly place Harry into the realm of adulthood and adult responsibilities. Arguably the best Potter book in the series.

Oh how I hate to give this two stars; I mean there's always a ton of praise surrounding this series and I did give the first four of this series four stars.

I think to myself, “You are just too old to appreciate these books,” but then again, when the books originally came out in the late 1990s, my stepmom read them alongside my step-nephew and kept encouraging me to read them. She thoroughly enjoyed them; I am now her age. I just don't get all the hoopla surrounding this series.

This one seemed to drag on forever. Umbridge was cartoonish at best. A point system that was always a bit ridiculous in that there was no rhyme or reason to the points a teacher or staff could add or dock from a house for a nefarious deed/great accomplishment. SpoilerAnd now a student can add or subtract as they see fit?!? Come on . . . how does that not lend to abuse of the system – Spoiler”my house is going to get more points, and all the other houses are going to continually have points taken away?” Ugh.

Anyway, I guess I'm gonna have to go against the flow on this one and give it a low rating. Hopefully, the last two books of this series will be better.

Edit #3: 27/3/2015
I am still getting positive feedback over this and every time I read what you guys and girls have told me, my heart swells.
Gosh, I am so proud of this review.

Edit #2: 25\7\2014So I came across this article today, and for some reason, it made me happy!! I feel evil evil laugh http://mea-news.net/en/index.php/2014-04-12-10-49-53/world-news/81-economy/795-amazon-s-heavy-investing-eats-into-bottom-line-shares-drop
Edit #1: 8\3\2014
It has been four months that I posted this review. And so far I have received great feedback. Thank you everyone for yo#ur support ^^
Remember, this is not a benign cause.

6/11/2013
I know that I have neglected the subject of the new Goodreads policy a lot recently, and I ought not to have done that. You see, I wasn't very free recently, and well because I didn't know what to either say or on what book should I post it.
And then I read this book, and the rebelliousness in this book made me think that hey, this book is perfect for what I have in mind. Oh, and guess what! I am going to be aggressive.

Let me tell you something maybe a lot of you people are not aware of. We, people who live in the Middle East, look up towards the west, where presumably, everyone is free to say and do whatever they want, bounded by no tradition or religious law whatsoever. But when this kind of law is forced upon everyone from the west itself, we lose hope. We lose hope that anything will be good again. And well for someone (me), who has suffered a lot because of that (Facebook only made my freedom of speech more restricted), I found a haven for myself in Goodreads, where apparently no one gives a damn whether you insult or disagree with them because well, they don't care. And because they are mature enough to ignore any insults under the pretext that it is “your opinion”.
Do you know how much I love that? I have suffered A LOT because of that. Let me tell you something about myself. I never EVER stay quiet about something that I believe to be true – even if I was wrong to many other people – and now Mister Money-Head-Of-Amazon has to ruin that for me.

All right, I realized that everything that was said about the new policy was said in the utmost civilized way. But guess what! I am a teenager. I don't give a damn about manners, and I am about to say what everyone has wanted to say for a long time.

Goodreads by succumbing to the green papers have restricted my freedom of speech. In the last few years, I have been bullied, put down, humiliated, insulted, punished... just because I wanted to say what I had in mind, just because I always stand up to what I believe in. And since because ALL OF THAT HAPPENED TO ME, I turned towards Goodreads where I was surprised that no one cared about whatever I said, and always respected me when I wanted to express myself.
No review of mine has been removed, but a lot of people's reviews have been removed. Since it didn't affect me yet, I should shut up, right? No! Just the fact that it exists is bothering me. It is like having this law around forbidding people to eat chicken, and I hate chicken, but that doesn't mean I should keep quiet. Okay, that was a bad example, but the closest I had to the ridiculousness of what we are fighting for. No one should fight for his right to express himself freely. It is a right. We are born with that right. And no number of reviews removed is going to change that. It is not going to frighten us. It is not going to make us back out. You can remove all the reviews you want, Goodreads, but this is something I believe in. So I am fighting, even if you have to ban me. Well, according to your own policy, you can't do that. Well, you can't even remove the reviews that have been put before the declaration of that censorship but you do it anyway. So you are bunch of hypocrites.

You, Goodreads managers, anyone with the IQ of a peacock can realize that what you have done is so wrong on so many levels.
If I were the Goodreads manager, I would say this to the Amazon Manager when he came offering the new law “You can take your money and your pathetic ass out of my office! You cannot threaten us with money or hold it over our heads! This company has so far made you millions of money just by existing and promoting your books! More than half of our members buy regularly from your website! In fact, according to this logic, you owe us!” GR Manager slaps Amazon Manager.
Jackie Shan bursts into the scene wearing nothing but a newspaper around his waist.
Kung fu! Jackie kicks Amazon Manager's head off, and his body goes around looking for its head. Meanwhile, GR Manager holds both the head and the body and throws them from the window of the headquarters. BOOM! The end.

This policy is so wrong. If people like us cannot express themselves online, then where will they? I might not insult your precious little authors, Amazon Manager (in my opinion they shouldn't be called authors if they can't take god damn criticism. Not everyone should approve with them), but I have every god damn right to express myself freely without having to worry whether my review would be removed or not.
The management even has no right to go around reading whatever we say online because well, I thought they had better things to do. It turns out I was wrong, don't you think? Anyway, what we say online is OUR concern, not yours. You shouldn't threaten us. You shouldn't condemn us.
Maybe to you, you are only deleting a review, but to us you are restricting our freedom. And no one really appreciates freedom but the ones who have been deprived from it. I wonder how the Goodreads Management even agreed to this.
I had a lot more to say about this on my mind, but I think I have made my point quite clearly. Us, readers, and the ones who write a bit like I do, find words our strongest weapon.


Back to my review about this book.
THIS WAS THE WORST BOOK I HAVE READ! I have cried 50 pages straight. why did she have to kill Sirius?WHAT DID HE EVER DO TO HER? I AM STILL CRYING YOU KNOW!
The 5 stars I have given it, it was not a “WOW I LOVED THIS BOOK AUTOMATIC FIVE STARS!” No. It was this kind of books “it deserves 5 stars, with a little dash of wow at the end”.
This is the kind of perfect books that makes you feel as though all happiness, innocence and hope had been sucked out of the world, and until everything in the book is fixed, nothing in the world will ever be right again.
I have really a lot of controversial feelings about this book, but it all goes down to one point. It is good. It is worthy of five stars. And it had hooked me up five days straight.

It was ok...

This entry in the series has been until now the one I´ve struggled the most to get through. The story is uneventful and boring.
I understand that this book serves as a setup for a future big battle with the one that should not be named. We still have a lot to learn for a great payoff at that battle.

My main problem does not lie in the story, in fact, I found the character of Dolores Umbridge a good choice to break up the monotone and boring school year. But I believe she was an underused asset.
The greatest problem I had with this book is how unlikeable Harry Potter was. He is the main character and therefore I should support him and want the best for him, but his attitude throughout the book was simply irritating. Suddenly he becomes an egocentric idiot that thinks he now everything better than the rest of the world. Props to J.K. Rowling for writing an accurate teenage boy, but accurate teenage boys don´t make for great main characters...

I previously mentioned Dolores Ambrige to be an underused asset, and this is because the only moments in the book where I sympathized with Harry were when he was interacting with her. Turns out Dolores is a Character even more unlikeable than a teenage boy, which is great when you have her to be the main antagonist throughout the school year.
She was indeed a great antagonist, but she was just portrayed as a dumb puppet of the ministry. I would have liked her to be more mastermind evil, at the end of the day she got outsmarted by 15-year-olds several times... I would have preferred if she was always one step ahead of the main characters and they only got to outsmart her at the very end, I would surely have been a lot more satisfying in my opinion.

All in all the weakest entry in the series until the moment. The story was more interesting than the source's stone, but Harry being an ass the whole book took it down a lot and made it a chore to get through the book.

whew this took me a while to get through. although i think a lot of the info in the book is important for world building & setting up the plot in the next two books, i do think some parts really dragged on and tbh could've used some editing. like 800 pages wasn't really necessary tbh. NONETHELESS, still amazing & still loved

While this book isn't my favourite in the collection, I appreciate the plot development within this book. I loved the blossoming relationship between Sirius and Harry in this book and I found Sirius's demise in this novel as heartbreaking as the first time. While the plot is slower that the goblet of fire or the prisoner of Azkaban, I understand that this book is a stepping stone that gives context to the wider and richer plot of Harry and Voldemort's connection. This book also lays the foundation for the next few books to solidify the main plot points between those fundamental characters. This book is also the first book we start to question Dumbledore and understand Snape more. We also get that first glimpse into the faltered characters of Harry's parents and father figures in Snape's memory in the penseive. We also start to connect with characters like Neville and Luna and Tonks who become more significant in the later books. Overall I enjoyed this book but not as much as the goblet of fire or the prisoner of Azkaban and so I give it a 3.5/4 out of 5 stars.

This used to be my least favourite of the series and the only one I've reread just once.

Surprisingly this time around, there was a lot that I greatly appreciated, a lot of nuances that I may have ignored or missed while reading the series as a teenager. I didn't like it much for the fact that it made me awfully angry and frustrated. I'm trying hard to not let the series consume me as I find myself teetering off the edge into an obsessive mania that I'd once possessed growing up.

And aahghvbjnlkml Harry why couldn't you use that mirror x(((((((((

Another great book from J K Rowling. This year is even more darker than the last. Harry is the typical angry teenager - brooding, snapping, bottling up his thoughts and then screaming out at everyone. Definitely was shocked by this character change the first time I read the book (now I'm more sympathetic). Sirius's death was a horrible chapter. And from this book onwards, Dumbledore's weaknesses and frailties begin to surface increasingly. 

So this book DEFINITELY takes a darker turn than any of the other 4 books in the series but it is so good. Warning: You will end up crying if you're the type of reader to get attached to characters. You will also wind up RIGHTEOUSLY ANGRY because there are some, for lack of a better term, INFURIATING characters who make you want to either hurt someone or bang your head against the wall! But it really is such a good book.

MY PRECIOUS SIRIUSSSSSSSS! i ABSOLUTEY ADORREEEEE BELLATRIX AS A VILLAIN. HOWEVER i do not think i will EVVER be able to forgive her for that - I understand WHY it was necessary but NO. course the main reason i love bellatrix so much is because of Helena - she is LITERALLY AMAZING

This was far better and more intense then I ever thought possible to read thus far in the series. The movie doesn't come close to the justice of brilliance that lays within these pages. The battle in the ministry and neville with bellatrix was amazing. and I'm so anxious to begin Half Blood Prince now...well done rowling...very well done. I'm glad I waited to read this as an adult it hit all the feels so much better than a younger version of would have taken it.