Ever wanted to read a book about wizardry? A book that has the typical good vs. bad theme in it? If you do, The Harry Potter Series is the series for you. The Harry Potter Series, by J.K. Rowling revolves around a boy wizard, named Harry Potter. Each book in the series describes of one year of Harry Potter’s life at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In the first book, Harry’s parents died in a car accident when Harry was just a few months old. Harry then has to lives with The Dursley’s, which consist of his Aunt, Uncle, and their son, Dudley. The Dursley’s is also a family that likes to be well liked by there neighbors and dislikes Harry for some reason. A strange letter then appears one day and is addressed to Harry Potter. It turns out to be from Hogwarts and Harry is overflowing with ecstasy, knowing that he would not need to spend the school year with the Dursley’s. In Hogwarts, Harry makes quite a few enemies and friends which consist of Draco Malfoy, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger. Harry then finds out that there is a dark wizard called Voldemort (a.k.a The One Who Must Not Be Named) who is loathing and wants revenge against Harry. The reason, because Harry defeated Voldemort when he was just a baby. Voldemort’s spell somehow backfired on him when he was planning to take Harry’s life. Instead, it left Harry with a lightning scar on his forehead, and a very livid dark wizard who is plotting his revenge. In the rest of the six books, it goes on talking about Harry’s adventures with his two best friends, Ron and Hermione outside and inside Hogwarts.

When I first picked up the book and tried reading it, it bored me to tears. The beginning wasn’t the least bit attention-grabbing and the topic wasn’t either. I decided to give it a second chance in 7th grade, and was astounded that I couldn’t put the book down until I finished it. JK Rowling did an extraordinary job unfolding each adventure. When I read the book, I felt like I was Harry, himself, going on his quest. When I say a quest, I don’t mean a voyage that takes Harry to a far out place that isn’t Hogwarts. What I mean is that Harry has these problems that come up relating to Voldemort. He decides to solve them since these problems are mostly always related to him. Some problems that he faced, was when someone opened the Chamber of Secrets and a lot of people in Hogwarts were petrified for an unknown reason that was related to it. Another problem he faced was when a prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius Black escaped and some said he was on the loss in Hogwarts. In all these problems, Harry decides to solve them. Along the way, he discovers some shocking things about himself that changes his life for the good and worse. Out of all these problems, the most important one hovered though. Voldemort was returning no matter what and when he does return, he would be looking for Harry seething for revenge. He would also be trying to take over the wizardry world and Harry would have to do something about it, since he was the only person who survived Voldemort’s death spell.

Even though I loved The Harry Potter Series, there were some parts that I felt were too cliché. The Harry Potter Series evolved around the topic of good vs. bad. As many would know, Harry is the good and Voldemort is the bad. There are also a lot of other characters in the book that is good or bad, but the two main important characters are Voldemort and Harry; they basically shape the whole tale. The series to me just felt too ordinary. It’s like any good vs. bad book except much longer and is about wizardry. If you compare the book to The Cirque the Freak Series, by Darren Shan or The Demonata Series that’s also by Darren Shan, you would notice that they are all the same, or close to the same. In these two books, the main character is the good guy and he/she’s trying to get rid of the bad guy. They all have the same theme of good vs. bad, except that they are about different creatures, but the rest of the story goes just the same. J.K. Rowling’s series doesn’t really have anything that’s out of the ordinary in it. In Cirque the Freak, the series is about vampires. In The Demonata Series, it’s about demons. The Harry Potter Series is a very intense, action packed book that made me not be able to put it down until I was done; but all in all, there was nothing different about it and after the first three books, I sort of already understood how the story would go and end like. This made the series a little tedious and less fascinating since I knew how it would end.

Though, The Harry Potter Series had a lot of pros and cons, there were a lot of messages I got out of it. One message I got out of the series, was to not judge someone by there appearance, because Harry thought that Severus Snape was part of Voldemort’s team and at the end, it didn’t quite turn out that way. Another message was to not be too confident in everything, because in the last book, Voldemort was way too confident in thinking that he was going to kill Harry with this powerful wand (The Elderly Wand), but that totally back fired. A message that sort of stretched out in the whole series was to be careful of what you say and who you say it to. In the first book, Hagrid told Harry a secret to getting the sorcerer's stone, and he also accidentally told another random stranger at a bar the secret in exchange for a dragon. Harry also had to be careful in who he told things to because anybody could be on Voldemort’s side and it wouldn’t be really entertaining for your foe to know your plans. Once, in the fourth book, Harry told this guy about a lot of things going on with him, but in the end, the guy wasn’t who he said he was.

The Harry Potter Series is one of the best series I’ve ever read. Something I liked that JK Rowling did was that she didn’t stretch out one mystery into three books, but to do a new mystery every book, while she had a much more important mystery that goes along with all the others. In the Immortal Series, by Alyson Noël, the author stretched one mystery into about three books. It got annoying after awhile when the next book isn’t out yet, so when you do get it, you totally forget what the book before that was about, and then it gets all mixed up. The Harry Potter Series doesn’t do that because there is a new mystery in every book. Even though there were some cons to the series, I really enjoyed reading the series. It captivated me and made me stay up late at night reading it. So all in all, the book was a huge victory.