Hogwarts horror

Critics are falling all over themselves to praise the latest Harry Potter release, but the book has all the moral problems of earlier volumes with considerably less charm | Susan Olasky

J.K. Rowling promised from the beginning that the Harry Potter novels would grow progressively darker and that important characters would die. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince she's kept that promise with an intensity that may trouble younger readers.

Hogwarts School remains the familiar setting for most of the book, but Ms. Rowling seems bored with it. She throws in familiar bits—quidditch, Dobby the house-elf, oddball teachers, spells-gone-awry—and adds romance, with Harry and his best friends all developing crushes. But war in the magic world overwhelms cuteness, and that war has spilled over into the ordinary world: The book opens with the prime minister weighed down by worry because (due to magic, he learns) a bridge has recently collapsed, several people have been murdered, and a gloomy mood has settled on London.