J.K. Rowling has once again proved to be one of the greatest authors of our time with her latest installment of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This book shows Harry as a 16 year old wizard who is dealing with life and love, and trying to rid the world of the horrible dark wizard Lord Voldemort.
A New Year at Hogwarts
Harry has returned to Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry for his 6th year, but things have changed, he has help from the Half-Blood Prince and Dumbledore is absent from school for long periods of time. Hogwarts has new teacher by the name of Horace Slughorn whom everyone expects to be the new defense against the dark arts teacher but to everyone’s amazement is teaching potions, the former potions teacher is teaching defense against the dark arts, a job he has wanted for many years, but dumbledore mysteriously kept him from the job, possibly fearing that his old ways as a death eater would come back to him.
The Secrets of Tom Riddle
Dumbledore has decided to give Harry personal lessons but Harry finds out that Dumbledore is not going to teach him special magic or defense spells, but teach him more about Lord Voldemorts past. They search through memories using a pensive and are able to find out more about Voldemort but there is one memory that is missing and this memory comes from the new potions teacher Horace slughorn who is not so willing to give the memory up, Dumbledore sends Harry on the quest to retrieve the memory from slughorn.
Horcruxs
Harry retrieves the memory and finds that Tom Riddle (Lord Voldemort) has been using horcruxs to keep himself immortal. But in order to make these horcruxs Voldemort would have to murder one person for each horcrux splitting his soul and storing it into objects of value. The only way to kill Lord Voldemort would be to destroy all of his horcruxs.
The Quest
Harry and Dumbledore set off to find a horcrux, Dumbledore is forced to drink a horrid potion in order to get the horcrux at the bottom of the goblet. They barely escape the cave and the creatures that inhabit the cave. But when they reach Hogwarts they are met by the dark mark sparkling over the castle ( lord voldemorts mark) and in a twist Harry is frozen solid and invisible by Dumbledore as Draco Malfoy attempts to kill Dumbledore but was unsuccessful, but then Snape shows his true colors and kills Dumbledore afterwards Harry finds that the Horcrux that they retrieved from the cave was not a horcrux at all but merely a fake, the real one was taken by the mysterious RAB.
This book is definitely a good read for people of all ages. It keeps you on your toes and leaves you wanting more. J.K. Rowling has an amazing talent for fantasy novels and she keeps the magic alive in this one, making it in my opinion the best book yet.
