I was curious about the path the storyline was going to take from the very begining. We've been given certain clues and leads (Bertha's dissapearance, and later Mr. Crouch's strange appearance and dissapearance) in the begining but none of them are leading to any big showdown. We're looking forward to the last Triwizard task to be one of the large events at the end but when the school-based conflict is suddently merged with the real-world conflict and Voldemort appears in-the-flesh, I was suprised. I put a few things here and there together but overall, the suprises really caught me by suprise. I have to express my disapproval at the Crouch-as-Moody discovery. It seemed like the easy way out of things and although the backstory of the younger Crouch was feasible, I don't think we were given any 'clues' to it's occurance and that bothered me a tad. I prefer to look back on the storyline and say "Oh yeah! This and that are all connected! Why didn't I catch that?" rather than being dumbstruck by a feasible story that seemed random at best. Regardless of how I didn't like parts of it, I couldn't put it down in the last hundred or so pages. Unfortunately, I felt the book was a little too putdownable throughout the first three-quarters of it. I didn't question if I actualy wanted to read it when I picked it up every few hours (that's the sign of a really boring book) so it must not have been too boring but the early chapters didn't engage my interest like the later ones did.

All that said, I enjoyed it as much as the others. I really intend to read the Bourne series but I think HP number five may take precedence if I can get my hands on it. Also, in my attempt to revive the better posts from the old blog, I've reposted my review of the Prisoner of Azkaban.