Alex Lee's Reviews > Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

This is a very strange book. In a way, it reproduces a past conflict (between Harry's dad and Voldemort) in order to highlight a current conflict (Harry's dad and Harry).

What is literally to occur is that Harry and Hermione must travel to the past (not to change the past) but to save the future (by saving an innocent man). In reward, Harry's inability to participate with other wizardlings is solved.

In a way, this book is more about finding the truth than anything else, but it also appears weaker than the other books because, in a sense, nothing really happens. No one (but Dumbledore) recognizes the need for anything to have happened. As it turns out, the past is so traumatic that the revealed truth here, that no one really discovers as the truth, is kept private, suggesting that more is to follow. Harry is rightfully disappointed but the authority of granting him leave with his friends is what distracts him from the seemingly pointlessness of the encounter.

This book is a clever way for Rowling to give us more of the past so that we can understand what is to happen in the future. For her to do that, she wrote a book entirely about the past in the manner of discovery. So Harry and his friends are passive, for the most part, bumbling around aimlessly. In this book we see how weak they really are, as they are just kids.