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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

J. K. Rowling

Scholastic Press, 2000
$25.95 hardcover
734 pages

The Triwizard Tournament, the first one in over a hundred years, is happening at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year. Each school -- the other schools are Durmstrang and Beauxbatons -- has one champion, and each champion has to complete three tasks. (And I'm not going to give you details about the tasks; suffice it to say they are big ones.)

Harry is too young to even try to be the Hogwarts champion. But somehow his name gets entered as a fourth contestant and by Tournament rules he has to go through with it. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang cry foul, thinking Hogwarts is trying unfairly to give itself two chances at winning. The other Hogwarts students are indignant, feeling that Harry is stealing fire from the true Hogwarts champion. And Harry's best friend Ron is furious, because Harry always seems to get all the lucky breaks.

Harry is not so sure. He thinks maybe someone entered his name hoping he might be killed during a difficult Tournament task. He's also had a couple of strange dreams about evil Lord Voldemort recently, and his godfather Sirius took those seriously enough to risk coming back to England. Something big is definitely brewing.

Life at Hogwarts is always exciting, but this year Harry may have more than he can handle.

Harry Potter IV -- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Does it merit all the months of hype that preceded publication? Hard to say -- there was an awful lot of hype to live up to. Is it as good as the first three Harry Potter books? Most definitely.

It's fun. It's laugh-out-loud funny and edge-of-the-seat tense. And where the first three books left me wanting more by J.K. Rowling, preferably more Harry Potter, Goblet of Fire has me eagerly wondering what will happen next?

Rowling's world is growing more robust and complex. This time we get a glimpse of the wizarding world beyond Hogwarts and England. There is the Quidditch World Cup with teams from other countries. There are other wizardry schools in Europe, whose locations and existence are closely guarded secrets (not even Ron, who grew up in a wizard family, knew about them). There are even cultural differences, as hinted at, for instance, by an embargo against flying carpets from the Middle East.

And Harry himself is growing up. Besides participating in the Tournament and dealing with his own unusual past, he still has to handle everything an ordinary boy would. He is fourteen in this book, starting to notice girls but too shy and awkward to do much about it (it's no surprise when he and Ron ignore the girls they invited to the school dance; the girls want to dance, after all). He and Ron have a serious fight which lasts for weeks. At least when homework gets to be too much, there is always the old standby to fall back on: "What -- make it up?" he asks Ron, and they proceed to have a grand time inventing gloomy horoscopes for their Divination class, instead of using the astrological charts as instructed.

"Next Monday," he said as he scribbled, "I am likely to develop a cough, owing to the unlucky conjunction of Mars and Jupiter." He looked up at Harry. "You know her -- just put in loads of misery, she'll lap it up."

"Right," said Harry, crumpling up his first attempt and lobbing it over the heads of a group of chattering first years into the fire. "Okay . . . on Monday, I will be in danger of -- er -- burns."

"Yeah, you will be," said Ron darkly, "we're seeing the skrewts again on Monday. Okay, Tuesday, I'll . . . erm . . ."

"Lose a treasured possession," said Harry, who was flicking through Unfogging the Future for ideas.

"Good one," said Ron, copying it down. "Because of . . . erm . . . Mercury. Why don't you get stabbed in the back by someone you thought was a friend?"

"Yeah ... cool ... " said Harry, scribbling it down, "because ,,, Venus is in the twelfth house."

"And on Wednesday, I think I'll come off worst in a fight."

"Aaah, I was going to have a fight. Okay, I'll lose a bet."

"Yeah, you'll be betting I'll win my fight ...."

The puns are subtle but howlers when you notice them (I particularly liked the Pensieve). Rowling has a definite knack for names (I laugh every time I read Pigwidgeon). And she has a stunning variety of nasties: Rita Skeeter, the vicious gossip columnist; groveling Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew; sneering bully Draco Malfoy; Professor Snape who has no qualms about arbitrarily and unjustly demonstrating his dislikes (and who still has Dumbledore's unwavering trust). In fact, Lord Voldemort, supposedly the ultimate evil here, pales in comparison to these other despicably lively characters.

Goblet of Fire is not perfect. Its 700-plus page length is daunting, even for an adult reader. And it does get off to a slow start, with some hundred and fifty pages devoted to the Quidditch World Cup; only small parts of this are later revealed to be pertinent. Hermione's new obsession with house-elf liberation also becomes tedious, especially since this cause does not seem to go anywhere.

Then there is the single major weakness of the world: While funny, it still strikes me as highly unlikely that the wizard community would be so appallingly ignorant of non-magical Muggle society. After all, they do live in the same world, with their magic simply an added dimension. "Please men" (policemen) and "eckeltricity" are just two of many ridiculous misunderstandings. Even the explanation given this time -- "All those substitutes for magic Muggles use -- electricity, computers, and radar, and all those things -- they go haywire around Hogwarts, there's too much magic in the air" -- doesn't really work. It's too late for Rowling to change her approach, but we could hope she might downplay it.

The quick and dirty summary? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is tons of fun. Now how many days to the sequel?

Visit the Harry Potter website at Scholastic. Send Owl Post!
Visit the Harry Potter website at Bloomsbury. Send a Howler!

The Harry Potter series:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Scholastic, 1997
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Scholastic, 1998
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Scholastic, 1999
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Scholastic, 2000

Reviewed by Wendy Morris. © 2000 by Wendy Morris.

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