A series finds its voice, but not quite its pacing

Continuing on my Hogwarts adventure, I finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This book is darker than the previous works and I believe because of the success of the first 2 (and the book deal for a series) the voice of the series is finally heard. YES, the first two set up “things” but never leave any major point untouched. Anything left unresolved in them is secondary. This is the first work where definitive series things happen such as plot points very clearly designed for later works, characters that need more than one volume to be expressed (we are talking Black here specifically).

As a result of this arch being available and the experience of the first 2 volumes, I think the writing is much improved. I think the dark themes are nice too. Yes, nice dark themes. Not everything is happy go lucky. I think this volume defines the voice of the series nicely. A nice break from the first 2 in several ways

• Voice - As I have said - the voice is defined here. Her use of longer plot lines with sub-plots starts to appear, though the very linear plot is still there. It still has adventure theater points in that every chapter seems to end with “SOMETHING!” happening.
• Harry is a hero, but not the only one. The one things I found frustrating about vol2 was that the battle at the end had too much in common with the battle at the end of vol1. This work does not suffer that. Harry was NOT the only one involved. This was a much improved move, if you ask me.
• We get out of Hogwarts!. Hogwarts is cool, but like an magic in any fantasy, it can be used to change things exactly how you want (aka see hat in Vol 2). In this vol we briefly get out of the school.

Again Harry’s story fleshes out and this volume has better than the first 2. I still feel like vol1 and 2 could nearly be combined.

On the note of pacing, I think this volume falls short. I think there are parts that move to fast. That’s right - fast. And others too slow. I think that if the book was approximately 100 page longer, those items could have been resolved.

Of course, by the length of the next few books, she may have taken this too far. I mean Vol 5 is 896 pages!!