Caution: Possible Spoilers Ahead

I stayed up until 3AM last night to finish Harry Potter VI: Harry and the Half-Blood Prince, after receiving my Amazon pre-order on Saturday. This was far better than when I took only one day to read the quite hefty Harry Potter V two summers ago and had to go to lab on no sleep.

The saga continues, and I think that Rowland set us up for a nice epic journey into the far reaches of the Wizarding world for the next book. There really weren't a whole lot of conflicts in this installment, despite the Death Eaters on the loose and deaths occuring around the country. In that sense, I guess the book felt sort of flat. We learned some new info about Voldermort, and tangentially dealt with frictions in the friendships of the main characters, but there was not a whole lot of action until the last 100 pages or so. My favorite parts were when Harry talks to the Ministry of Magic head, mainly because I have a hard time picturing a 16 year old being so cheeky and dead-on with a loser bureaucrat.