Aug 17, 2016 04:08 PM
24703 Views
My inner child was break dancing with the exuberance of a 15-years-old. Its been more than a decade that Harry Potter was back on the bookshelves. This plight can only be understood by the potterheads. Still living my life around Quidditch and naming the evils of my life after Slytherin-clan. The news of eighth story in the series made my heart brooming over to stores to catch hold my first copy. The crowd was more than at 9 ¾ platform.(Too much, ain’t it?)
That the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child evokes so many memories and I think it is just perfectly garnished with nostalgia for story that uses time travel to explore what-ifs and alternate futures.
Let’s get the first thing out in the open, this book is not a novel, but a rehearsal script for the play that opened in the Palace Theatre in London’s’ West End. This has been clearly confusing for many of us. It was actually, kind of a killjoy. I don’t want to crib, but it definitely did not let my imagination flutter it wings as most of the scenes described were related to curtain calls or change of scene.
Here I am writing a non-spoiler review so that I get other potterheads a time to know and go back to reading.
The best parts of The Cursed Child are the beginning and the epilogue. The story focuses on Albus Severus Potter’s(Harry’s son) arrival at Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat(as Albus feared, he’s a Slytherin) and seeing friendships and alliances reconfigure in a new generation. There is an amazing moment when Albus and Scorpius meet the first time, Scorpius is Malfoy’s son but has been rumoured to be someone else’s(read to know). The friendship that develops between Albus and Scorpius Malfoy, each so unlike their fathers, and the character of Rose Granger-Weasley, (like her name, see the name) also so not like her parents Ron and Hermione.(For starters, she’s an epically good quidditch player.) The kids focused are the totally the most Rowling-esque part of the story and frankly the most fun.
Seeing how the children of Harry & Ginny, Ron & Hermione and Draco are both like their parents and also distinct characters is fascinating, and the relationship between Albus and Scorpius feels genuine(though Rowling had a better ear for kid’s dialogue than Thorne). I kept wishing somewhere that this was book one of Harry Potter: The Next Generation and the story really wallowed in everyday life at Hogwarts in the same way as the original book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Instead, The Cursed Child becomes a convoluted time-travel adventure that honestly is a bit of a slog. Without giving away too many plot details, Albus and Scorpius travel back in time to save a life and in doing so they set off a domino wave of changes that radically alter the present. As in Back to the Future, further attempts to fix the timeline result in more changes and still more attempts to make it right, even as their parents are rushing to rescue them. Some of the alternate future versions of familiar characters are fun and others don’t quite work. But understanding any of it assumes a pretty deep familiarity with the Potterverse.
The book kind of, slightly, on a minuscule scale made me frown, because I wanted to live that imaginary world all over again. The first timers or newbies may find this book “magical” but still it lacks few spells.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child doesn’t feel like an eighth book of series by the end of it, more like it feels as a peek into the future of a character and a world that never quite stopped. It is still running in Rowling’s head and is coming out in bits and pieces through Pottermore and plays like this.
This story can easily be used to see if us, the potterheads, still come back for more juice, and Rowling proved that though Harry’s story might be over, she definitely doesn’t need him to keep telling stories. The Cursed Child is certainly interesting episode that adds more value to the wizarding world.
My rating: 3.5/5
