3.5 Stars. Rounding down because she doesn’t deserve rounding up.

As said previously and what will be said in future comments, I’m coming from a place of not having a pre-established relationship with this series. My bias against the author is always going to bleed into her work and muddy my perception. I am a bitter man with only a droplet of joy left in his heart and I’d be mad to spend it on some rich git who’d call me a slur slathered in a gaudy varnish of transphobic dog whistles. That being said:

After a very shaky start from Philosopher’s Stone, Year 2 of Hogwarts showcases significant improvement, but you wouldn’t know that from the first chunk. It takes Harry a wholloping seventy-odd pages to get himself out of his absurd-yet-upsetting-to-sift-through home situation. Rowling continues to treat fat people as subhuman, and her descriptions of the Dursleys have only gotten worse. There are also a couple of lines in this book that read as inexcusably transmisogynistic, and that’s not from taking the author’s current streak of bigotry into account. Minus 12 points.

House Elves make their debut in this book, to my immense chagrin and displeasure. Dobby’s interest in Harry’s safety, while presenting an interesting bit of intrigue, is sullied by literally everything else about it. It’s a bit jarring to read a scene where a meek and mild character like this continually attempts to hurt himself, but at least Harry is appropriately disgusted with the concept of slavery (unlike Mrs. Weasley, who laments not having a house elf of her own to help with cleaning). Minus another 30 points.

It helps so much that this story is less about the world-building (for what little world there is) and more about being a horror mystery extravaganza. The humor is a lot stronger for it, with a fair number of gags and goofs hitting the mark even for me! And I’m usually an old grouch when it comes to that sort of deal. I think a lot of it is that J.K finally figured out (at least for now, because no doubt she’ll forget) that punching up creates better results than punching down. She got a bit more adventurous in her concepts here, a big favorite of mine being Nearly Headless Nick (the second-most desirable twink in Hogwarts) feeling slighted at getting rejected from a social club that only accepts ‘fully headless’ huntsman. Very cute. Very camp. 5 points to you, Jo!

Now we come to the star of our show, Gilderoy Lockhart AKA the first-most desirable twink in Hogwarts. This man is my problematic meow meow, my grifting husband, my lilac-loving fop who I can fix, thank you very much. He is a delight, a showboating grifter who even had the luck of getting graced with a homoerotic duel with the third-most desirable twink in Hogwarts, Snape. Such a fun villain. Every moment he graced the page was a welcome one. 15 points for giving me something to ogle at.

Compared to the utter sluggish pace of the first book, CoS covers a lot of ground in a short bit of time. We have a lot going on here, and a surprising amount of it is pretty good! Some contrivances to keep the conflict going were a bit of an annoyance, like Harry being suspected as the culprit for his special snake-talking powers despite him using said powers in front of a crowd of people to protect a classmate (who then claims that Harry was trying to kill him which just??? What??? The whole scene there was pretty unambiguous. The snake is described as falling limp ‘like a garden hose’) or Harry somehow being too damn daft to ascertain that he’s looking at a giant spider in Tom Riddle’s memory bank. Minus 10 points, Jo.

I actually got a little mad at how well Queen Terf was able to set up the attacks. God forbid she manages to bang out something on the typewriter that’s actually clever. A reluctant 2 points.

Hermione is great in this book. Seeing her take part in as much rule-breaking as Harry and Ron for the sake of good (and at times even going well beyond them) was great. Sad that she got somewhat fridged near the end. No points for that, but I won’t take any away either. Likewise, Draco stands out as a fun minor troublemaker. Poor boy clearly has a crush but in that self-eating toxic way where he can only express his affection by being a bit of Helga G. Pataki type prick. Dumbledore continues to dazzle as the old queen godparent of my dreams, and his flamboyant phoenix familiar gets plenty of time to shine as well. 20 points.

To the nitty gritty of it all, Rowling’s prose is obnoxious. I’ve never seen an author more obsessed with dashes and semi-colons than this woman. I get that she’s trying to elevate her pacing for her action scenes, but it just kinda. Sucks? Like it’s not good, is what I mean. It’s like skimming through Wattpad’s One Direction Apocalypse xReader bad at times. It’s a shame, too, because it’s not always bad. Some of her imagery does carry charm to it when she’s describing the daily routines around her magical boarding house. There’s a kind of coziness there.

Overall, hey! This was better. Whatever points have been gathered have now been taken away Whose Line style. None of it matters. This review is but a drop in the bucket. Nowhere to go but forward, and I hear the third book will vanish my bones just like Harry’s arm with a werewolf AIDs allegory. Fun, fun.