Half Blood Prince

This past week, not being encumbered by leisurely reading such as:

John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars, “Transnational Criminal Networks”
OR
Richard A. Best, “Intelligence to Counter Terrorism: Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, 27 May 2003

I picked up the much anticipated 6th installment of Harry Potter. After a friend remarked that he would be disappointed if the Harry Potter franchise really did run out after the 7th book, that he wished to decorate his children's nursery with Harry Potter themed items and read them the stories at night, I wondered if Harry Potter would have the lasting effect of Lord of the Rings.

Maybe my brain is too fried between graduate school and answering questions at 3 AM in a poorly ventilated office building, but for some reason I think not, and why not? For these reason:
1. The enemy pretty much stays the same in every book, Voldemort. So it becomes the same plot line in almost every book, with some variation.

And I'm annoyed with Potter:

2. He's clearly popular now. And he's cocky, I guess that's expected of a teenager, but he's kind of whiny, like Anakin the in the 2nd Prequel of Star Wars.

But there are places the series can be redeemed, for instance, the 6th book hints at a journey to come in the 7th book. Every hit fantasy has to have some sort of long journey.

Although I adore LOTR and have read the books at least three times and own the entire extended DVD edition, which I've seen even more times, the fantasy novels that are keenly tied to my adolescence is Mercedes Lackey's Herald Mage Trilogy. I didn't even read LOTR or Harry Potter until I was out of High School.

In some ways, I feel Lackey's books shaped my ideas of multi-culturalism and sexual identity. The main protagonist is GAY, and I read this first while in elementary school. How forbidden of me. Like Harry Potter, Lackey's books are just as easily read by an adult as a fourth grader.