Alberto Diago Diago itibaren Kontikal, Karnataka, India
Let me begin this by saying that I am a fantasy geek, post-tolkien fantasy from Neil Gaimen to Scott Westerfield has been my mainstay for years, and although I first read this in 1998, about three months after it was first published, and I loved it. Since then though, I have refined my views (if not my propensity for run-on sentences). Harry Potter is admittedly, a good childrens book, a very good young childrens book. However, it is not fantasy, so much as a random mix of other genres, mostly school story. The magic in it is simplistic and a random mish-mash of popular culture, rather than earlier myths and legands, and the plot is almost insultingly cliched. I realize that it has brought many young children into fantasy and into books as a whole, however it has done so badly, like someone getting into music through Hillary Duff. Only to those that have barely read fantasy at all, would I recommend this simplistic and childish book.