Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I, just like countless millions around the globe, love all things Harry Potter, from the first day the first book was in my local bookstore through my nth re-read of the entire series, as well as watching all eight movies more times than I can admit. But then I read the new Harry Potter play/book and I hated it. I will ill try to say why without spoilers. The characters. We have spent over a decade watching Harry, Ron, Hermione and even Draco Malfoy mature from children int young but strong adults. Those are not the characters we will see in this play. In THIS play, Hermione is a shrew. And is employed in other than expected after reading Deathly Hallows, and after Rowlings' post-Potter interviews. This Hermione is NOT a nice lady. Treats her friends as underlings and her husband as she would an unwanted stray. With mange. Her brilliance has dimmed to a few riddles weak enough for the reader to get long before the protagonists. Harry is a workaholic who seems to have avoided his life since Book 7. His desk reflects his personal life, a mess. And his great, hard-won abilities in Defense Against Dark Arts? Not evident in this story. In fact, he seems weaker now than he was in his Triwizard Tournament days. And he, too, is barely tolerable. Not at all the sympathetic waif-turned-savior who we cared for, feared for, and many of us secretly wanted to be... And Ron. Poor Ron. Always the third in the trio. Harry had his Scar and his Destiny. Hermione had the brains. But Ron... Ron was their heart. Ron was no idiot - "the best played game of chess" from the first year days showed us that. But really, without him and his devotion to both Harry AND Hermione, Voldemort would have won. Ron was Harry's first, last, and best friend. And he was all that and more to Hermione. It was Ron, really, who taught Harry what love is. But here - here he is only the Comedy Relief. More pathetic than a three legged dog following the master who kicks him, he becomes less important, less interesting, and less credible as the same Ron Weasley we followed for seven years of his life. Luckily enough, they are really only background. The protagonists are Albus, Harry's middle child, and Scorpius, Draco's only child. Albus seems the main protagonist, but the story would go nowhere without Scorpius. Unfortunately, Albus is... Thoroughly unlikable. He lives in the permanent pity-party of a middle child raised in the showdown of a famous father. He divorces himself from his brother and cousin moments after the play begins. He creates his own misery, despite plenty of options. And Scorpius never fleshes out into more than a weak copy of both Ron and Hermione to Albus-as-Harry. Friend, but with definite suggestions that under the right circumstances, there could be more than friendship between the boys. And and almost all of Albus' troubles are his own immaturity (even taking his age into account) and his own self-pity, perhaps even self-hatered. Even his his attempts to undergo trials to better himself, to prove himself worthy to be a son to the Boy Who Lived... Well, unlike Harry, Albus seeks his own trouble, deliberately, with warning after warning, and nearly causes irreparable harm everyone he should have loved. So, yes. The characters were a let-down. The setting? Replace "Hogwarts" with "the Tardis" or "the USS Enterprise" and you do not change the story one iota. Just substitute "sonic screwdriver" or "phasers" for "magic wand," as appropriate. And as for the plot: I basically told you that it is the story of a middle child of a famous and distant father who tries to find value in himself, but not in any good way. I won't mention plot devices, but let's just say this one has been so overused in the science fiction, fantasy, and even comic book literature of the past decade that there was no doubt that only the use of the Harry Potter name got this play produced in the first place. In short, there is nothing new. Nothing special. Nothing interesting. Just used plot devices and the destruction of characters the world has loved for nearly two decades to tell the story of an unlikeable, slightly spoiled, self-pitying boy with middle-child syndrome who, when offered a new life, a new chance, time and again held on to his daddy issues so hard that I, for one, only finished reading this play because I wanted to see how low it would sink. As a middle child myself, I had no pity for Albus. Rowling sold out on this one. Audiences will love to go back "home" to Hogwarts and our heroes (with a villain or two, or there is no conflict to resolve). But when they leave, and re-read the original books, re-watch the movies... How many will see the magic in this play was all in their own desire to get more time in a beloved world that ended with the Deathly Hallows?