Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

I've mentioned it before, but when I first read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix some ten years ago, I was disappointed.  The previous volume had ended with some serious business going down, and my expectations were high.  After all, Voldemort was back, and he was actually for real killing people.  There was no way that book five could be more of the same Hogwarts boarding school drama.

And yet, when it came out, that was exactly what I got.  More of Harry and his friends at Hogwarts, and very little of Voldemort and his crew.  I had not gotten the book I wanted, and that, combined with this being the first in the series that I had to wait for, led to disappointment.

Here's the thing: I was wrong, because this is a cracking book.  A little long in the tooth, but cracking nonetheless.

The lack of Voldemort was one of the things I criticised it for in the past, but what I've realised during my reread is that Voldemort is really not all that interesting.  He's effective as a super-evil villain, but as is often the case with super-evil villains he's a bit one-note.  The real villain of the book is the Ministry of Magic, particularly Dolores Umbridge, and that's a much more complex thing.

Umbridge herself may just be the best villain of the whole series.  I never had a particular hate for Voldemort, despite the frequency with which he tortures and murders people.  Umbridge, on the other hand, I have genuine loathing for.  She just so easy to hate, much easier to hate then Voldemort, even though her brand of evil is a lot less extreme than his.  I think I know why that is.

I think most of us has met an Umbridge in real life.  We've all been punished by vindictive teachers, or become the victims of bureaucracy, or met seemingly lovely people who are horrible, horrible racists.  Hers is a real-life brand of petty evil, whereas Voldemort is on another level entirely.  I doubt many people interact with murderers and would-be despots on the regular, at least not the sort of people reading Harry Potter novels.  It's not very likely that I'm going to be tortured when I go to work, or suffer from ethnic cleansing.  Plus, Voldemort's a badass.  He's got that I'm-a-killer coolness factor going for him, the sort that only fictional killers have.  Umbridge has no coolness, she's just a terrible person of the sort we have to deal with every day, and therefore she's much easier to hate.

I don't have a lot of other notes about this book, except to say that it really is better than I remembered.  I finished it ages ago, so the details are hazy.  Hopefully I'll do better with book 6, but I finished that a long time ago as well.  As usual, I've been slack.