Rowling's stories are also structured as mysteries
Excellent point. I think that hadn't really occurred to me because a lot of the books I read for fun are somewhat cross-genre in that respect - Huff's Blood, Keeper and Shadow books are just one example.
the world's not quite the same as it was in the beginning.
Yes. The repreared iterations of the basic formula are, in my mind's eye, a spiral rather than a circle. Each year takes you back to the beginning, but you're on an expanding trajectory, and there's no reset button. It's what has happened in the previous book that results in the trials of the next year being more challenging, full of greater risks and rewards.
I was discussing the Potter novels with my partner last night. He has treid but does not enjoy them, and one of his criticisms was that it appears to him that Rowling is doing her world-building as she goes along, adding new chunks of the wizarding universe and how it co-incides with the "Muggle" world as they occur to her.
While I have no way of knowing if she's actually doing that, the effect of how she does introduce new aspects of her world seems very appropriate to me, becasue we're learning all of this through Harry's eyes. He knows nothing of the wizard world when he first comes to Hogwarts - and as the series progresses, he (and the reader) learns only about those things that actually touch him in one way or another - so there are huge gaps that only get filled in, and even then not completely, over time, because we only know what Harry knows, and Harry's knowledge is always incomplete.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-06-16 05:26 pm (UTC)Excellent point. I think that hadn't really occurred to me because a lot of the books I read for fun are somewhat cross-genre in that respect - Huff's Blood, Keeper and Shadow books are just one example.
the world's not quite the same as it was in the beginning.
Yes. The repreared iterations of the basic formula are, in my mind's eye, a spiral rather than a circle. Each year takes you back to the beginning, but you're on an expanding trajectory, and there's no reset button. It's what has happened in the previous book that results in the trials of the next year being more challenging, full of greater risks and rewards.
I was discussing the Potter novels with my partner last night. He has treid but does not enjoy them, and one of his criticisms was that it appears to him that Rowling is doing her world-building as she goes along, adding new chunks of the wizarding universe and how it co-incides with the "Muggle" world as they occur to her.
While I have no way of knowing if she's actually doing that, the effect of how she does introduce new aspects of her world seems very appropriate to me, becasue we're learning all of this through Harry's eyes. He knows nothing of the wizard world when he first comes to Hogwarts - and as the series progresses, he (and the reader) learns only about those things that actually touch him in one way or another - so there are huge gaps that only get filled in, and even then not completely, over time, because we only know what Harry knows, and Harry's knowledge is always incomplete.