Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is radically different from the first three volumes of her Harry Potter novels, in ways that would not necessarily have been expected.

Unsurprisingly for the fourth novel in a series, it was bigger than any of the first three, although how much bigger was noteworthy – it was to be the last novel in the sequence that she would deliver in consecutive years.

It was the first novel by a Briton since Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise (twenty-one years earlier) to win the Hugo Award, and only the fourth British novel ever to do so. More significantly, showing the growing power of fantasy over science fiction, it was the first ever fantasy novel to capture this most inherently science-fictional of awards.

The Goblet of Fire begins differently from the first three volumes, showing that Rowling’s story arc was moving in a different direction, that the series was going to be that much bigger than anyone would have expected, and was already beginning to move even from best-seller to global phenomenon, all still a year before the first film was released.

The first hundred pages are an extended prologue set at the World Quidditch Cup, showing, together with the presence of much more ‘real world-ly’ characters such as Rita Skeeter of the Daily Prophet the intrusion of a more realistic here and now feel to what had until then been still a prevailingly classic boarding school and Enid Blyton-esque outside world (Blyton could be very dark at the beginning of her stories).

Upon their return to Hogwarts however, Harry and the others are soon involved in a second competition, The Tri-Wizards Tournament, in which Hogwarts compete in a contest reminiscent of a mediaeval tournament against two other acadamies, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons.

At the same time as Harry begins to display signs of (to adult eyes) irritating adolescence, the story arc involving Harry’s ongoing battle with Lord Voldemort is cleverly woven into the story of the quest for the goblet.

When there are times when Harry seems a little too precocious for adult eyes, and the world seems a little Potter-centric, it is worth remembering that although J.K. Rowling has been taken up by adults the world over, and lauded with awards such as the Hugo, that this is very much a book for young adults, and should be judged as such, rather than as a best-seller. Standards for YA books are no easier than for adults, but the criteria are different, demanding a simpler and less complex world-view in some ways, and it’s a measure of Rowling’s achievement that she sometimes makes her readers forget that her books are primarily for young adults.

However, while the Goblet of Fire is at least a hundred and fifty pages too long, and could have been cut to a ‘mere’ five hundred, the winning of the Hugo proved that popularity will often win out over perfection.

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