The Half Blood Prince is the sixth and penultimate book in the Harry Potter series. To jump straight to my thoughts on it – I feel like it doesn’t really move a lot on, has a lot of unnecessary filler and only satisfies the reader with a few important elements to help build up to the final book in the series and the finale we’re all waiting for.
This article contains affiliate links. This means if you choose to purchase any products via the links below, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. These affiliate links do not affect my final opinion of the product.
Before reading this review, make sure you’re up to date with the books and read my review of The Order of the Phoenix, the book before this in the series, or you might find yourself reading spoilers from that book here.
The Half Blood Prince picks up in Harry’s sixth year at Hogwarts and despite the crazy environment everybody’s living in, where they all know Lord Voldemort is back and the Death Eaters are at large, they continue to go to school and try and get on with things as normal.
There are some changes to life at Hogwarts and Harry and Dumbledore’s relationship is now very different from what it was before.
The Half Blood Prince plot – 4/5
I’d argue that The Half Blood Prince has the weakest plot of all of the Harry Potter series. Yes, some big moments in it help us understand Voldemort a little better but I felt these weren’t fleshed out enough and I definitely feel there could be a whole book on these alone. Also, this book does set up the massive finale that is the final book so all of the plot moments that lead to that are worth nothing.
But outside of these, not an awful lot really happens and there’s not a lot that is even that memorable. Unlike The Order of the Phoenix where at times you understand its length due to the sheer amount of content it’s trying to pile in, I can honestly say that The Half Blood Prince really just feels like filler a lot of the time.
The fact that, where we find ourselves in the Wizarding World, Rowling was still trying to set the book around the school felt a little forced. Yes, that’s the point of the series but I feel like they should have moved away from this for this book, as realistically, once the events of the previous book had happened in real life, I would like to think any modern Government would likely have closed schools for a bit.
The Half Blood Prince characters – 4.25/5
I did feel in The Order of the Phoenix that Harry was starting to get a little short and a bit of an ar*e and thought that in The Half Blood Prince too which began to take away from my enjoyment of our three main protagonists. Now, I understand the boy’s probably a stressed and in fact that all three of them are probably a bit annoyed everything’s that going on but it doesn’t turn the idea of Harry being this perfect protagonist into one where he seems to be a little more of a spoiled brat who’s started to get short with people since he got big. It’s good that Ron’s always there to humble him though.
In terms of new characters, there are a handful of notable new names, with the only two worth mentioning being that of Professor Slughorn who has come in as Potions master after Snape takes on Dark Arts and the new Minister for Magic too. Slughorn is cleverly shoehorned (pun intended?) in to help guide a particular plot point along that it would have been difficult to manage using a long-standing teacher or character.
I can’t say either are particularly great, though Slughorne is quite eccentric which offers a light relief throughout!
The Half Blood Prince final rating – 4/5
The Half Blood Prince is the weakest in the whole series – there I said it. Though how many people will argue with me on that fact, I don’t know, as it does lack any real plot, there’s only really one new character worth getting interested about and they’re brought in to serve a plot point and a lot of the book feels like it’s simply leading up to the final book in the series. Don’t get me wrong, if you’ve enjoyed Harry Potter up until this point, you’re not going to be put off reading the final book, but also prepare yourself to come out of this one feeling a tad underwhelmed but oh so ready to read the final book! In a series that’s set such a high bar throughout, calling The Half Blood Prince the weakest isn’t saying it’s a bad book – it’s just not as good as any of the other incredible books in this legendary series.
Get a copy of The Half Blood Prince
