The sixth installment in JK Rowling’s apparent seven-part series was much anticipated and, as with previous entries had been kept under strict guard to stop the storyline leaking out before its official publication date.

Nevertheless, the latest adventures of the now-maturing boy wizard were revealed when bookmakers stopped taking bets on which ‘major character’ had been killed off when there was an unusually high number of bets placed in the town closest to the printing works putting the pages together. Needless to say, those predictions were correct.

Below this point, this review will reveal key plotlines, including the identity of the unfortunate character.

The book opens, as previous form would have us believe, with Harry spending an unhappy summer holiday at the Dursleys, and follows on seamlessly from the fifth book. Re-reading that earlier instalment may be beneficial since this storyline frequently refers back, and many people I’ve spoken to about this book remember little if nothing about book five.

It starts out well. Very well, with three exciting chapters to kick us off, and an air of menace as Voldemort’s power continues to grow. But it takes an age for Harry and his friends to reach school and, when they do, the story takes a serious dive.

There is much going on here. Dumbledore is frequently leaving the grounds to go on secret missions, but we do not follow him. Harry finds a book full of curious and highly useful spells, but when he is eventually found out, it is a serious anti-climax. Malfoy is getting up to mischief, but we do not see anything happening - instead, when he had been getting up to is eventually explained to us in the closing pages, when it has all happened with us totally unawares. There are barely even any clues as to what he is doing, beying Harry’s suspicions.

But it’s a book worth sticking with. The closing third recaptures the excitement of the opening - and indeed goes much further. Dumbledore takes Harry off on a mission, on which the former is so weakened that he cannot defend himself when he returns to the school. There are shocking revelations about Snape, which will finally confirm or deny where his loyalties lie, and then there is, of course, the death of the ‘major character’ Rowling had promised.

Perhaps it is because this death was so widely trailed, though, that it comes as something of an alti-climax. You can see it approach a good 20 pages in advance of it taking place, and as such it is neither a surprise or a shock. Even the after-effects, and then funeral, feel long and drawn out, and somewhat unnecessary.

And then comes the real surprise. Hints that Hogwarts may not open for business in the next year, and a vow from Harry that even if it does he will not return but will, instead, head off on his own to hunt down Voldemort once and for all. Hermione and Ron intimate that they will come with him.

So the reader is left to ponder what will come next. We have always been led to believe that book seven will be the last, but there seems to be a lot of ground to cover, even within the pages of one of Rowling’s perennially weightly tomes. Could it be that Hogwards will indeed close for a year, giving our characters time to complete most of their mission, and then return to the school for one more year in an eighth book? Could the next story really take place ourside of the school grounds, and still retain the flavour of the earlier entries.

We will, in time, find out, but Rowling has done well to leave the reader on a curious high, despite the gentle lull into which the book sinks, like a sagging tight-rope in the second and third quarters.

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