It's tempting to rate this lower. In comparison to the later books in the series this is really only a two or a three. Rowling's prose style is juvenile, the characterization is broad for the supporting characters and thin for the main characters, and the pacing is really quite awkward.

But it's really not fair to evaluate this book in terms of the much more ambitious, dense and polished novels that followed it. On its own terms, Sorcerer's (or Philosopher's) stone is quite good for what it is: the whimsical adventures of a Dickensian downtrodden orphan in a magic school. For all its faults, there's some real intelligence going on here and that's what excited me so much when I read this at age eleven. Which is the target age group for the first couple books of the series.

So. Four stars, in the abstract sense that I appreciate it for what it is, but it's still a bit of a chore to get through in my overall re-read. If when I first read this book I were a 23-year-old who had heard the hype and was curious to see what it was all about, I don't think I would have enjoyed this enough to want to read a second book.