Book Review

Okay, so the only review I ever wrote of the Harry Potter books was a review for the entire set. I've never reviewed them one by one and since I'm re-reading the series for the first time in a few years, I thought I'd give a go at reviewing them one by one. If you're one of the few people in the world who haven't read it, beware of some spoilers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Next to the third book, this one is definitely my favorite for the simple reason that it's a terrific whodunit mystery; one of the best ever in my opinion.  Several years afterword, I bought a book called Murder by Magic which was a compilation of short stories that married murder mysteries to the supernatural and although many of them were good, I was expecting something more like what I'd originally gotten out of this book. There were a lot of twists and turns in unfolding the story line that was unique to this book - who entered Harry into the Triwizard Tournament and murdered a judge and why. Tons of misdirection and otherwise busy, brilliant storytelling making it almost impossible to guess who the culprit was until the end of the book. Of course, the ultimate climax would result in the return of Voldemort and another face off between him and Harry. This time the demise of one or the other would have to be put off again due to the actions of their own wands. The wand factor is a complication that wouldn't be fully understood until the seventh book. This is another reason why it's important for a long series of books to each have their own unique story line separate from the connecting, underlying plot. And when you take away the underlying plot, this is a great stand alone mystery novel.  But it doesn't leave the reader completely empty handed in regard to the Harry/Voldemort conflict. You'll note that the endings of books one, two, and four all have Harry facing Voldemort, but now they're not entirely disconnected. This book ties in with the first book by giving Voldemort an equalizing edge that he needed to finally battle directly with Harry - the ability to touch him without feeling tortuous pain. The fact is, that all endings involving Voldemort directly are tied together, they are just explained over the course of several books instead of in the course of one like the episodic events unique to each installment. That's part of the brilliance of this series and also part of what keeps the readers interested in what is a very long tale.
And still there are new things in the wizarding world to discover and explore. The Quidditch Wold Cup is a marvelous creation and everything that went with it including different methods of travel... Portkeys to add to brooms, the floo network, apparition, and the knight bus which had been introduced previously. As well as hiding a huge sporting venue from the muggle world which is more difficult than simply hiding Diagon Alley or the Hogwarts castle. The magic world is expanded to foreign countries as international fans show up at the Cup. Later on the story focuses on the French and Bulgarian contemporaries of Hogwarts as a selection of each school is invited to England to participate in the Triwizard Tournament.  The Tournament is a feature of this book only, but it's another spectacular original creation of this world outlining an international school competition akin to Olympic events. All of this alone is enough to distract the reader from working out whodunit without the deliberate feints like the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, the tension between Harry and Ron, a more detailed look into the lives of house elves, and even the tasks of the Tournament themselves. Along for the ride is a nosy, unscrupulous reporter who specializes sensationalizing and scandalizing everything and everyone. And the thing that I think anyone who reads this series can appreciate is how "evergreen" it is. It doesn't matter what your political leanings are, you'll always see the story as favoring your own views. I, as a conservative, see Rita Skeeter as CNN or the New York Times.  A liberal would see her as Breitbart or Fox News. But since these characters are literally in their own world, you can't really affix any character or social issue like house elf rights (which is not as straight forward as it sounds) to any kind of specific real world equivalent.  Skeeter is only the first layer of this particular backdrop. It would continue in the next book to thread into magical politics while retaining a neutral distance from any real life political alliances. It's a very fine line to walk when telling a story and, I would think, extremely hard to do, but it's also why the Harry Potter series reaches so many different types of people and has spread like wildfire throughout the years.
An important component, the Pensieve, makes its debut in this book. One of the most ingenious flashback mechanisms ever dreamed up, it is a bowl of magic substance that allows the user to view the memories of others as though on a television set and even to step into them and walk through them as they play out. Similar to Tom Riddle's diary, only not a sinister piece of hardware like that was. It helped to move the mystery plot along and it was a great device to generate more depth and background material that would further the personal involvement of characters and reader. It was an indicator that there was still so much left to learn about this world and the people in it. The Pensieve, along with the return of Voldemort, make a critical turning point in the story that will touch off the momentum shift that will build into the climax.
The only problem with this particular book is that the recapping was becoming cumbersome at this point. The books had been getting thicker and thicker since some passages had to be devoted to recapping the events of the previous stories, more with each installment. The first movie had just come out before the fourth book was released, so I think more time was spent recapping in this book - instead of an explanatory sentence here and there that didn't disrupt the natural flow too much, there were many paragraphs devoted to summarizing large portions of story.  Perhaps it's because a person who didn't normally read probably wouldn't have started on the books until after seeing and liking the first movie, so the editor thought it necessary, but it was slightly overdone.  However, there would also be no more detailed recapping like this, so if you were to begin reading the series in the middle, I wouldn't advise starting it after this book because, although they give a brief summary of the main conflict between Harry and Voldemort at the end of book five and continue with creative ways of recapping in book six, you'll miss out on a lot of the rich layers that make the last three books a meaningful climax to the series.