Book details of 'Harry Potter (Book 5): Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'

Title	Harry Potter (Book 5): Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Author(s)	J K Rowling
ISBN	0747551006
Language	English

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Related pages for Harry Potter (Book 5): Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix : Harry Potter book series, US edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'Harry Potter (Book 5): Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix':

There are in total 206 reviews for 'Harry Potter (Book 5): Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix', viewing numbers 1001 through 206.

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Unknown reviewer wrote:
overall i thought that the 5th book was just okay...there was a drawn-out 3-yr period since the last book and all this hype about the book just kept piling up but i think that it turned out to be quite overrated. sure, its a hp book and its got all sorts of adventures w/harry, but it did seem kind of bland and vanilla when compared to the goblet of fire. i'd hoped that jkr would have picked up a little from where she last left harry in the 4th book, but she didnt. harry seemed really angry and moody in the 5th book, and im not saying thats bad, but it made me sort of like him less. "mate" was used far too much in this book, when it had not even been said once in the previous books. that irked me a bit, after 50 "mates" had spewed out of harry's and his "group's" mouths. i also think grawp was kind of useless and had nothing to do with the main plot. and the death in the book? kind of sucked. i mean, there was not really a good explanation, like all of a sudden, he's just up, gone, disappeared, and dead, apparently. i was saddened by sirius's death. yes, and it also sucked when harry did not use the two-way mirror, because if he did, then he could have seen that sirius was alive and well, and nobody would have died. cho also annoyed me, when she started bawling in the hog's head. just shut up already! she seemed all whiny and overly-dramatic, creating a soap-opera-like scene in public and running out. i half-expected her to throw her drink at harry and slap him, it seemed so unrealistic. and when she kept wanting harry to talk about cedric, i thought that maybe she had just wanted to meet harry so that she could find out more about cedric and how he died and how cedric felt about her and blah blah blah. finally, the ending...i didnt really like the ending because there were still a lot of unanswered questions. like, for example, what's going to happen to grawp/hagrid, cho, sirius, and fred/george (wouldn't mr/mrs weasley be incensed at fred and george's leaving the school?! i dont get it!). oh yeah, one more thing...quidditch! harry never got his broom back to play on the gryffindor team again! wth?! he hbetter be back on the team next year, and ron had better be much improved at playing Keeper (nobody can ever fill oliver wood's shoes!)! one last comment: umbridge sucks! so overall, the book was okay, a little overrated and less eventful and less action-packed than the previous books, this book had a more serious tone, a few parts i didn't particularly enjoy, fewer funny parts (but omg mariette's face...hahaha hilarious i love hermione!), but i'll read the 6th book, hoping that it will reinstate my past uber-enthuasiasm for the hp books.

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Reviewer Amanda wrote:
Like many others, my primary emotion after finishing this book was disappointment. I felt like JKR spent too much time on certain plot points such as Grawp, while on the other hand, not spending enough time on plot points that many readers enjoy such as the budding "Hermione and Ron" relationship. I'm not saying I wanted a romance novel, but in the 4th book there seemed to be a lot of progression to the eventual getting together of Hermione and Ron, and almost none at all in book 5. They were constantly bickering, which was funny only a couple of the many, many times it happened. By reading the first few of these reviews you've probably realized that Sirius does indeed die if you hadn't before. Anyways, I know that Harry often feels, especially after book 4 that he's responsible for many of the deaths and pain that occur, particularly cedric's. I know JKR wanted to show that Harry feels emotion and makes mistakes, but couldn't she achieve this by having someone get seriously hurt, but not dying? I just thought Sirius' death was a little over the top, and not very well explained at all. For ten minutes after reading it, it still hadn't completely sunk in. If you're going to kill such a great, well liked character, at least do it in the appropriate way, not with the "Bam-he's dead!" technique. I had this image of Sirius being proven innocent and living happily ever. Hopefully he'll still be involved in some way later on. I would have liked in Voldemort was doing more stuff throughout the book, like more attacks of Deatheaters, stuff like that. Fudge would try to prove that it was all nonsense, then it could be shown later on that they all were connected and Fudge would look like a moron yet again. Moving on, I felt the Cho, Harry thing was pointless. I think it would have been better if everyone could accept that they would never end up together without portraying Cho as some blubbering cry baby. I think the character deserved more than that. Grawp was completely pointless. Hagrid was just being plain stupid when it came to that. JKR didn't even explain what happened to Grawp or anything at the end. I was hoping that loose end would have been tied up and never to be seen again. Now for positive points: I was glad to learn more about Sirius and his family life and I thought it was cool that so many of the pureblood families were interconnected. That, at least, made sense. I was also thrilled that Lucius and his crew were finally placed in Azkaban. About time! It was great that people started believing in Harry too. I loved Neville and Ginny a lot more in this book! Hooray for them! One thing I have to say about that though is that I wished Ginny's shell opening would have been a bit more gradual and her and Harry spent more time together. Then Harry could see her more as someone to trust and they would become closer. Overall, I can't wait till book 6, but I don't know if I could handle another 3 year wait. I hope this series is done by the time I graduate high school, but I doubt it will. I didn't mind the darkness, it just sometimes seemed a little intense. Parts if it were very slow or just unnecessary. Not the constant action we're all accustomed to. As many of you probably know, there are many fanfic websites out there stories written by non-JKRs. Many rumors and assumptions were created from these such as Arabella Figg would be the DADA teacher and Hagrid or one of the twins would die at the end. I felt that at times JKR thought of creative ways of going against our previous beliefs about the plot, but at times I think she focused too much on proving our speculation wrong. Some twists and events just didn't make any logical sense. I believe she should have written what would keep the steady flow going, even if many of the readers had already said that would happen. Don't worry so much about what's going to surprise the readers and focus on what's going to make the story more enjoyable. Well, I'm done, finally. Glad to get it off my chest!

Reviewer JC wrote:
I all in all enjoyed the book. I aggree that it was no Goblet and Azkaban but i still feel that the book was decent if not good. It felt a bit choppy and seemed somewhat hard to follow. JKR seemed to waste most of the readers time explaining things in the begining of the book that i personally feel were over done. Even though the book is 870 pages I still felt that there was more that could have been said or done and it felt rushed towards the end ( with a good 100+ pages left they were just now getting into the Department of Mysteries). I also felt that there wasnt as much sparkle and suprise that the past books have had. Maybe Im getting bored? Or maybe she jsut failed ot spice things up as usual? But it was not a terrible book. I hope JKR goes back to her roots for the 6th book and doesnt stray from her past techniques for masterpeices. The book did accomplish its major goal of making me get lost inside of it and gave me a hard time in deciding on whether or not Harry really existed.

Reviewer Christina wrote:
First of all I would like to say to those of you who think Harry Potter is a (boring, offensive, dull, rude etc. etc.) book, you need to pay more attention to the details and tone of the story. I understand that not everyone would find interest in a book that dared to stretch the imagination further than the limits of reality, but please give this one a chance. The 5th Harry Potter book is great, no doubt about that. Rowling is has a wondrous imagination, and shares her thoughts with the world. Harry comes back as being more like a sort of �rebelish� teenager who is torn apart by what he is forced to go through (and me being Harry's age myself, I can understand what that's like). He even makes a few cracks at Dudley, and is obviously becoming cockier. The book goes on, explaining everything in a beautiful artistic language that makes you read it quickly, and then want to go back and read it again this time more slowly. It�s amazing... up until the end. If I could change one thing about this book it would be the end. The long anticipated "secret" of the Potter's is pretty... disappointing. "The only disappointment I had was the big secret, hinted at in the press releases leading up to the sale of the book, wasn't really all that major and something that I pretty much figured out before I had even started reading the fifth book. -Someone else who rated this book. Then the "extremely important character" is murdered. I wanted to slam the book down, jump out of bed and hide under the kitchen table. Not only did Rowling kill off my favorite character but she did it without making him (and his death) seem that important. It almost made the third and fourth books a complete waste of time. I am hoping Rowling will make these little "issues" important in the next two books. Besides that the 5th book is, like the others, a thrill beyond all expectations of the "average book".

Reviewer J. Rose wrote:
I agree with the fact that the book was a little disappointing. Although I could not put it down I wanted to alot. There was so many things that did not have to be said. On the other hand there was some cool stuff too. The pensieve with Snape was a great insight to how James Potter was. I did not expect him to be like that. Someone said that it is getting old that bad things always happen to Harry, but the book is about him and if only good things happened to him than the book would get boring. The end of this book was so entertaining that I did not realize that I started sweating. I feel that the last two books were not that good until the ends which were unreal. I am very excited for book 6 and I hope it comes out soon. The overall rating out of ten would be 8.5. The books in order from best to worse go 3,1, 4or5, then 2.

Reviewer Justine Lancaster wrote:
This was a great book. But I cannot compare it to the perfectly written Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. All of my guesses as to what happens in the story were wrong. I thought that it would be Hagrid, Dumbledore, Snape, or Ginny that dies. I then narrowed it down to Hagrid or Snape, seeing as how it wouldn't be logical to kill of Dumbledore... and Ginny is supposedly supposed to date Harry later on. Snape however, being the possible double agent that he is would be a logical death, or Hagrid (the man just can't stay out of trouble.) But I soon discovered I was wrong, so wrong. I had heard that Sirius was going to play a bigger role, but never did I ever think he was going to be the one to die. By big role I thought it meant that they were going to find Peter or something and come closer to clearing his name. I cried so hard reading about his death, not that it was tragically descriptive (it wasn't, it was very simple and left myself as well of others saying "what? what just happened?") it was just the fact that Sirius was gone that brought tears to my eyes. Poor Harry, having the closest thing he had to a family snatched away (There is always the Weasley's but Sirius was his bloody GODFATHER for crying out loud!) And poor Lupin, having his best friend being taken away from him. He is the only Marauder left, unless you count that stupid git Wormtail... which I certainly don't. When I got into reading the first chapter I was like "Oh boy! The dementors' are going to eat Dudly's face! (okay okay, so they were going to suck out his soul, but eating his face would have been more amusing.) And why Harry stopped them? I have no idea. I would have just let them suck out Dudley's soul and made a run for it, hurring back to the Dursley's, telling them that Dudley was still off with his friends then packed my things and hitched a ride on the Knight Bus to Diagon Alley. But noooooo Harry had to stick around and save Dudley's fat arse. Of course Harry was to be blamed for Dudley almost getting killed, but never in my life did I expect Petunia to try and stick up for him. I am quite sure that Vernon would have attempted to rip out Harry's tongue, wrap it around his throat and strangle him with it if he continued to tell any more riff-raffy lies about "Dementoids". But then out of the blue there goes Petunia "Dementors. They guard the wizard prison of Azkaban." right as Vernon is deeply considering pounding Harry into mush. Then, she recieves that howler, oi, that was a weird one, then she argues with Vernon "The boy must stay here." I mean it was just getting weirder and weirder and I was only a few chapters in. Now, onto The new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher. How many people thought the teacher was to be Arabella Figg or Fleur Delaceur? I for one thought it was to be Figg, many other's thought it was to be Fleur. Then with discovery that Figg is a squib I quickly changed my mind. I still didn't think it was Fleur, and I was right, it wasn't. That damn blood Professor Umbridge! I want to rip her face off, I hate her twn million times more than I ever hated that blasted Rita Skeeter woman! Dolores was the definition of evil, she could make Voldemort look like a Chocolate covered, marshmellow filled easter rabbit. I WILL NOT TELL LIES! I WILL NOT TELL LIES! She had me bloody terrified. Now we are to the second near death scene of the book, Mr. Weasley. While reading this chapter, I thought the death was his... but I also didn't think it would be. It was too early in the book for THE death to take place. Relieved that Mr. Weasley didn't die I continued to read. Hagrid was pissing me off in this book. He was being damn stubborn and was hiding to many things. But he wasn't bothering me near as much as Umbridge. Banning Fred, George and Harry from Quidditch was too much. How would she feel if someone insulted her mum? I wouldn't be surised if her mum was half house elf and half... human or something really ugly (take that Umbridge! I know how much you HATE halfbreeds!) Luna Lovegood... I like her. She's really neat. Trelawny's removal from teaching... That pissed me off. She was such a cool person. Fred and George's flight... That was by far the best part of the entire book. I read it like four times and laughed my ass off every time. GO FRED AND GEORGE! Speaking of the Weasley's... I HATE PERCY! HE IS THE BIGGEST PRAT EVER! Okay, now that that is out of my system I can go on. The DA was awesome. Harry makes a great teacher. And I love the way they just happened to also call it Dumbledore's Army... Too bad it got him to a tad bit of trouble. Hagrid's removal... This was another part that scared the shit out of me. When Minerva was hit with all those spells... and they said they didn't think she would make it because she was so old... I was thourougly convinced that she was the one to die. But when Harry had the vision of Sirius dying I was like "OH SHIT! WHICH ONE IS GOING TO DIE!!!??" and I was left in a state of suspense. I was saying "PLease dont be sirius, please dont be Minerva." Then when Harry made his way through the room of mysteries and Sirius wasn't there I knew he wasn't dead. And when he jumped in to help save them from the death eaters I sighed in relief that he was still alive. But then I was like "OH SHIT! ITS MINERVA!!! NOOOO!" Untill I reached the end of the chapter "beyond the veil" and I was saying "oh god no! not Sirius!" then when they said he was dead I, as was Harry I'm sure was really confused. He had to have simply been behind the curtain.....right? But when it hit me that he really was gone I turned on the little taps in my eyes. It wasn't tear jerking, and heart wrenching, it was just the utter shock that Sirius had died. The Prophacy was a bit odd... I had first assumed he was going to tell Harry that he is Heir to Gryffindor... but I was wrong again. I actually managed to laugh a little when the thought came into my head "Neville could have been the boy-who-lived... and these books could have been called 'Neville Longbottom and The Philosopher's Stone/ Chamber of Secrets/ Prisoner of Azkaban/ Goblet of Fire/ Order of the Phoenix.'" Luckly Neville wasn't the one, don't get me wrong, I adore Neville but it wouldn't have been the same (THEY SHOULD BE CALLED 'DRACO MALFOY AND THE --insert title here--' HEHEHE!) This book in the end, left me with more questions than when I started... like what exactly lies behind the veil? what ever happened to Gwarp? How did fred and george's mum react to their running away? what ever happened to the death eaters? is harry heir to gryffindor? Will Umbridge get booted from the Ministry? Can the Ministry get anymore corrupt then it already is? Who will Harry get with in the end? Will Harry even live to see the end? What's the deal with Luna Lovegood? Which side will Snape end up fighting for in the end? What are the Lupin/Sirius fangirls going to do now that Sirius is dead? Will Draco and Harry get together? (okay okay, so thats only in the minds of the draco/harry loving fangirls... but who cares :P) How did Lily and James end up together? And ton's more... I am anxiously awaiting book 6.... let's just hope Jo doesn't take a million years to write it.

Reviewer MH wrote:
Well, I have to say that Prisoner of Azkaban is far and away still the best book in the series and I know that a lot of fans agree, so why didnt JKR take that into account when killing off MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER? Otherwise the OotP was quite well written, but lacked some of the sparkle of the previous ones. Grawp...totally unnecessary...wish Hagrid had just stayed out altogether if he couldn't do anything relevant-he also seemed to have lost a few more brain cells here. (That said, I think JKR does care so much about the characters that she wanted to give Hagrid a subplot of his own...pity she didn't care more about others) Despite many faults, the book is still better than anything else I've read this year(unless you count re-reading the others in the series.)I'm looking forward to book 6.

Reviewer Nathan Lamb wrote:
What a waste of paper! I can't believe how everyone is fawning over this book. It is terrible. I will have to say I was looking forward for a couple of reasons, the first of which is to find out which 'important' character would die. Well, about five chapters in it was pretty obvious who was going to bite it and um...how can someone be considered an important character when they have only been in two previous books? I was expecting to be sad over the loss of someone like Fred or George Weasley, Hagrid, or god-forbid, Dumbledore. Basically that angle was just a load of hype to sell the book. I don't want to give away more, but still...what a crock of crap! Second, I was a little bit intrigued about the side-story between Harry and Cho. Things started off good and then...what? It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Just like most of Harry's tirades. To be honest, some of them really made no sense at all in his character. Yes, I know this is a transition book and Harry changes from a boy to a teenager or something. But still...it was way over-done and did not make any sense with how the book ended. Then echoing another reviewer's complaint, how does the relationship between Malfoy and Snape make ANY SENSE now!? Snape being my favorite character and all, I don't understand this unless there will be some major swerve later. For now...whatever. After reading this book, I might be a little more inclined to believe the lateness in publishing had to do with major writers block as the plot seemed quite ill-conceived and there are holes all over the place. I compare it to seeing Episode I of Star Wars. I thought it was a terrible movie and only saw it once in theaters. Only when the DVD came out did I force myself to watch it over and over again until I could fit it into my love of the Star Wars series. I fear it will be the same with this book. I will probably read it again (it cost enough!) and eventually will come to peace with the fact everyone has a bad day, but in the end it is still a Harry Potter book. But maybe next time I will just buy myself some coffee and read the book at Borders instead of wasting my money on a hardback copy.

Reviewer Laura wrote:
OK, have to say first of all -- how can anyone have thought that the fake book, which apparently inculded a rape scene, was real? Obviously a children's book would not inculde sexual scenes, let alone violent sex, and I think people must have really trivial view of rape to think that HPOOTP would include it! And on to the book -- I do love the HP books, and enjoyed this one a lot, but I was a little disappointed. The Umbridge thing was overdone and unrealistic, Harry and Sirius were quite annoying in their bitterness -- Harry as a 15 year old is expected to be angry, but you'd expect Sirius to have more sense. Also, the 'revelations' at the end of the book were nothing we didn't know, and there were none of the plot twists of the other 4 books (I read this one looking for clues to twists and was disappointed to find none). Overall I think the book was overwritten (though I still enjoyed reading it all and hope the next one iseven longer), and lacked the humour of the others. I don't mind at all about the book being 'dark' as I think the way Rowling has darkened the tone of the books are the characters get older is excellent, but I would have liked to have a little more empathy with the characters. Still looking forward to Bk 6 though

Reviewer Brian O. wrote:
Book 5 shows signs of a greater confidence and sense of artistic license on the part of J. K. Rowling -- for both good AND ill. The result is a book that isn't terrible, makes you think a lot(probably more than the other books), but is for me the least entertaining book in the series. Gone is the reliable formula of the earlier books -- the fast pace that never detours too much from the main plot; an overriding mystery that the book builds up to; a final surprise worthy of O'Henry; and moments of delight to offset the dark threat of the villain. Moments of delight are not much in evidence here in Book 5, and the plot takes many, many detours not connected in any obvious way to a central mystery. As other reviewers have noted, the book is the darkest yet and Harry is unrelentingly angry throughout. What does Rowling gain, for all these extra pages and less-defined plot? She does gain some things. She explores her magical world in greater depth, adds to her growing constellation of characters, and gives the story more the feel of a serious, adult novel. One episdoe that I was taken with was Harry's magical experience of Snape's past -- providing us with a memory that tremendously deepens our understanding of Snape as a character. This is more psychologically real writing, and perhaps that is what Rowling was after. But it's disturbing, too. The whole series was predicated on a sense of wonder... and much of the wonder surrounding Harry was not merely in his identity as a wizard, but the power of love and goodness he supposedly inherited from both his parents. Now we learn that his father was not only conceited, but shockingly callous toward an unpopular student. Harry, to his credit, asks his mentors about this, but the answer given -- "all 15-year-olds go through a stage" is glib and unconvincing. We rightly expect heroic characters to be imperfect but not cruel without reason, even as a teenager. I wonder if Rowling intended this book to be quite as dark as it turned out to be. The new Defense of the Dark Arts teacher is not only antagonistic toward Harry, but indulges in torture of students that clearly exhibits a strain of sadism. Her self-assumed title of "High Inquisitor" is all too close to the "Grand Inquisitor" of Spanish Inquisition fame. She is both Big Brother (Big Sister?) and Napoleon the Pig of Animal Farm; she would do Stalin proud. And all the time Dumbledore seems unwilling or unable to restrain her in any way. Hogwarts Academy has become not just a frightening place, but a depressing place as well. All of this might be fine in the right setting (after all, in "Lord of the Rings," the land of Mordor is meant to be truly oppressive); I worry, though, that this turn in the series risks losing the sense of enchantment that brought us to it in the first place.

There are in total 206 reviews for 'Harry Potter (Book 5): Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix', viewing numbers 1001 through 206.

Other selections: 1-10 11-20 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70 71-80 81-90 91-100 101-110 111-120 121-130 131-140 141-150 151-160 161-170 171-180 181-190 191-200 201-206
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