A review in two parts
(This
review contains mild spoilers. However, there will be a section where I go
no-holds-barred about the entire book. There will be a red warning at the
beginning and end of the spoiler section.)
Allow me to make something clear. I love Harry Potter. It is by far my
favourite book series of all time. I make it a point to read the series at
least once a year if I can, and I’m always ready to watch one of the first four
movies (anything by David Yates can go die in a hole as far as I’m concerned).
My house is full of Harry Potter merchandise, from a Lego Hogwarts, to the
Sorting Hat, to replicas of various wands. I’ve even tried to make my own
Butterbeer. This is one of my favourite franchises out there.
And yet, when it was announced that in
2016 we would be getting an eighth book in the form of a play script, I was
apprehensive. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is one of the best finales
of any fictional series in my opinion. Could another book improve upon that or
ruin it entirely?
Well, as it turns out, neither. The
Cursed Child stands entirely on its own, because I refuse to accept this
charade as part of the official series canon. This package being sold for
around $30, being labelled as “The Eighth Story, Nineteen Years Later” is no
more than glorified fan fiction, written by talentless hacks with zero respect
for the original books.
Where to begin? Well, let’s start at
the beginning. The basics of the plot (without giving anything away) start
where Deathly Hallows ended, with Harry sending his son Albus to Hogwarts. Now,
while this is a sweet scene at the end of the final book, here, the dialogue is
terrible, everything feels clunky, and the characters all feel like pale
imitations of themselves (almost like the movie characters! Ha ha).
I thought to myself, “No way is this
it. It’s going to get better.” But as the first act came to an end, and the
second act began, it sank in. I realized how it must’ve felt to see Phantom
Menace on opening night after more than a decade without a Star Wars movie. It
was a feeling I couldn’t describe, more than disappointment, yet less than
anger. I just felt straight up bad.
As the book progresses, the characters
don’t. They stay the same throughout the book, with their one-note
personalities only barely resembling the original characters. Harry is a jerky,
big headed loser, Draco is a stressed out father, Ginny is a doting wife,
Hermione is the cool headed logical one, and Ron…well…Ron is slapstick comedy.
As for the new characters, we only
really spend time with two: Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy. Albus is
essentially hormone Harry from Order of the Phoenix times ten, because he’s
horrendously irritating on every single page he’s on. He never listens to
anyone to the point where you want to scream, he’s a jerk to nearly every
character, and there is NOTHING likeable
about him.
Scorpius gets the better end of the
deal, but he’s mostly a splice of the basic elements of Ron and Hermione from
the original books. He’s got some wit (although a grand total of zero of his
jokes land), and he uses his book smarts to get Albus out of trouble. Out of
everything in his book, he’s probably the best part, although I can’t see
myself wanting to spend any more time with him.
As the book goes on, things start not
great, then go to bad, to worse, before we finally arrive at a climax so terrible,
it’s almost funny.
(SPOILERS
BEGIN HERE)
(I’M
NOT KIDDING, I GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING.
IF YOU STILL WANT TO READ THE BOOK, KEEP ON SCROLLING)
Okay.
Let’s begin at where things really
took a tumble: the main magical element of the book. The writers (I refuse to
believe Rowling had much of an influence on this sham) have decided to bring
back the Time Turner. This was their first of many mistakes.
See, when it comes to storytelling,
time travel is an especially dangerous element to play around with. You really
need to think it through, all the implications, and exactly how it works.
Otherwise, you’re left with a broken mess of a plot device. One of the main
reasons the Time Turner worked in Prisoner of Azkaban was that Rowling had
thought it out so well, and when it proved to be too dangerous of an element to
keep around, she had them all destroyed in Order of the Phoenix.
In bringing one back into play, the
writers decide to break all the rules and go nuts. In Prisoner of Azkaban, it’s
made very clear that you cannot change the future or past. When the past/future
you visit happens, the version of you that used the Time Turner will be there
regardless. We see this when Harry uses his Patronus to save Sirius. He sees
himself do it in the past, then he goes back in time to cast it. There was no
timeline where Sirius and Buckbeak died, because Harry was always there to cast
the Patronus.
In Cursed Child, no such rule exists.
New timelines are created left and right, as Albus and Scorpius go on their Back
to the Future adventure to stop Cedric Diggory from participating in the
Triwizard Tournament in order to save him from dying because…that’ll make Amos
Diggory happy? I guess?
What results is a visit to a “darkest
timeline” where Voldemort won, Umbridge rules Hogwarts, Snape is still alive
(and is written horribly out of character), and Ron and Hermione lead a
resistance, complete with Mad Max style outfits.
I wish I was joking.
Thankfully, this timeline straight out
of a seventh-grader’s emo fanfiction is left rather quickly, which leads us on
a one way street to the disaster that is the grand finale.
A character by the name of Delphi
exists in this book, and at first glance, she’s about on the same level of
Scorpius in terms of how good her character is. Parts of her seem spliced from
Tonks from the original books, and her only character trait is “I’m quirky!”,
but when compared to the rest of the book, she has a term that I’m now coining
“The Plastic Effect” (named for the character Plastic from Mirror’s Edge
Catalyst). “The Plastic Effect” dictates that, when there’s a character who
injects some levity and life into a sterile story just by being quirky, goofy,
or a big personality just in general, you will quickly find yourself enjoying
them more than the others.
But then the reveal happens, and
Delphi shows her true colours. She’s the villain, by the way, and a pretty
lackluster one at that. As it turns out, she’s the daughter of Lord Voldemort
and Bellatrix Lestrange, born just after the Battle at Malfoy Manor!
It was at this point I had to stop
myself from throwing the book across the room.
This is so wrong on so many levels.
After doing some research, I learned that it’s considered a Class A sin in writing
Harry Potter fanfiction to give Voldemort a child, let alone make him have one
with Bellatrix. There’s no way Rowling gave this her blessing.
The fact that Voldemort, someone so evil that people are
still scared to speak his name after baby Harry defeated him, someone who is
stated repeatedly in the books to be incapable of feeling love, someone who
split his soul into seven pieces just to escape death, could conceive a child
is completely asinine. As someone who wasn’t a fan of the Voldemort/Draco hug
in the Deathly Hallows Part 2 movie, this feels like a slap in the face to such
a fantastic villain.
We then jump back to the night Harry’s
parents were killed for a complete failure of an ending. Between Harry being
transfigured into Voldemort to trick Delphi (ugh), Harry’s fourth-year son
Albus figuring out how to open a cursed door whereas Hermione Granger, the
brightest witch of her age, could not (ugh!), and Harry and the gang staying to
watch his parents die (UGH!), we come to an ending where the reader is left
with a bad feeling in their stomach and two and a half hours they’ll never get
back.
This is to say nothing of the plot
holes (Everyone says Voldemort’s name in the darkest timeline, the Fidelius
Charm on Lily and James’s house seems to have vanished inexplicably, Harry can
use Parseltongue again, and Cedric Diggory, the perfect representation of
Hufflepuff house’s ideals, turns into a Death Eater in the darkest timeline
because he lost the Triwizard Tournament). And don’t even get me started on the
pointless fanservice! (Hermione is Minister for Magic! Harry has a chat with
Dumbledore again! Harry and Draco are friends now!) It also comes to a
conclusion thanks to a complete deus ex machina, and that’s just painful to see
in a series that prides itself in planning ahead and leaving nothing up to
luck.
There’s also a scene where the
Hogwarts Express Trolley Lady attempts to stop Albus and Scorpius from leaving
the train by throwing exploding candy at them and turning her hands into
drills. That’s stupid. Moving on.
(SPOILERS
END HERE)
I wanted to love this book. I really
did. Harry Potter is a huge part of my childhood and my life in general. But
what I got was nothing more than fanfiction, and not even good fanfiction at
that. It’s just sad. I refuse to accept this as canon. Maybe it’s better as a
play, but as I have no way of flying across the Atlantic to see it, I couldn’t
tell you.
Hopefully Fantastic Beasts will be
better, but given the choice of director and how the Comic Con trailer
looked…less than ideal, I don’t have high hopes.
To paraphrase someone on Reddit: “Do
not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and pity everyone who paid money for
this book.”
So, it is with a heavy heart and a
plea for my money back, I rate Harry Potter and the Cursed Child…
FINAL SCORE
2/10
Awful
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