I flew through this book in a day. I'd forgotten how addictive this series can be. (It also helps that I've been home all week with the plague. Being sick is great for catching up on pop culture.) This is probably my third time through the book, and once again I enjoyed it a great deal.
What strikes me, though, is how passive the protagonists are throughout the book. In Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets they spend a good deal of time trying to unravel the respective books' central mystery. Harry's primary concern in Prisoner of Azkaban is sneaking down to Hogsmeade to buy candy, and playing quidditch. Keep in mind that the central mystery of this book is far more personal to Harry than the other two were: the man who supposedly betrayed his parents is breaking into Hogwarts to kill him! You would think Harry might try to get to the bottom of the whole thing, but in general he just goes on about his school business, and the plot only resolves when Sirius Black makes his final move.
That said, the Sirius Black plot was a very interesting one. I never bought into the idea of him as a murderer, even the first time I read the series; I had learned by this point that whatever conclusion Harry jumps too, it will be the wrong one. I didn't see the reveal of Peter Pettigrew coming though, nor everything else that surrounds it. As I said in my previous post, I'm a sucker for back-story reveals, and this book delivered in spades on that front.
I have a final observation that doesn't really relate to this book in particular, but more the series as a whole. I had been under the impression that the magic in Harry Potter was pretty well-defined, with solid rules that Rowling stuck too pretty well. I don't know where I got that idea from because it's all pretty loosey-goosey. She does keep it pretty tight within each individual book, but across the series she's constantly introducing new things, and very little of it is rigidly defined. This isn't a negative; on the whole I think she does a fine job of keeping things consistent while maintaining a sense of whimsy.
I had previously mentioned how tightly plotted the first book ended up being, with the second book slightly less so. This book is looser still, yet it still manages to pretty well integrated at the end. The next volume is a brick in comparison, and I get the feeling that it will be the tipping point, where Rowling started plotting more for the series as a whole than for the individual novel. We'll see!
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