Book review about Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban.

My book review is about Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban, the author is JK Rowling and the year of first publication is two-thousand.
I will be telling you all sorts of information about the book and its background.

At first I will give you some information about the author and about the book itself.
Secondly I will give you a small summary of the book and some technical aspects.
Then I will conclude my review with my personal opinion.

THE AUTHOR

Joan Kathleen Rowling was born on July the thirty-first in nineteen-sixty-five in Chipping Sodbury England.
In her youth she lived next door to a family named Potter. This is how JK Rowling got the last name for her main character.
After highschool Joan studied French, but when she was twenty-six years old she moved to Portugal to be an English teacher. In her spare time she began working on a story about a wizard.
In Portugal ms. Rowling got married and had a little daughter. But it wasn’t meant to be, the marriage ended in divorce. JK en her infant daughter moved to Endinburgh in Scotland.
Here she lived in poverty. As her flat was not heated she often went to restaurants to keep herself and her baby daughter warm. To get her mind of her troubles she further wrote her Harry Potter “wizard” novel and was not only determined to finish it, but also to get it published.
When her first real novel was completed and after a lot of rejection from publishers, it all moved very quickly. And before she knew it , she was a famous writher. Everybody wanted to read her book. She quickly wrote a sequel and also this became a great success.
By the summer of two thousand , Ms. Rowling had reportedly earned over four hundred million dollars for her first three Harry Potter books, which have been printed in thirty-five languages and sold over thirty million copies.

EXPLANATION OF THE TITLE AND SUMMARY

Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban is the third book in de HP series.
The book is called Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban because in the book a prisoner escapes from the heavily guarded Azkaban and goes after Harry Potter.

I’ll now give a short summary of the book.

Summary

In ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’, Sirius Black has escaped from the wizard prison Azkaban. This prison is guarded by creatures called Dementors. They can suck your sole and all the happiness out of your body.
As Black supposedly killed 12 people with a single spell, the entire magical community lives in fear of another massacre. It is also known to a few people that Black is after Harry. This is why Dementors are placed all around Hogwarts. But Black still manages to get inside. To make a very long, but interesting, story short: Harry finds out that their defence-against-the-dark- art-teacher, Remus Lupin, is a werewolf and that Sirius Black is his godfather. He also finds out that Sirius Black was not after him but after Ron’s rat Scabbers, who turns out to be Peter Pettigrew a former friend of James Potter (Harry’s father) , Sirius and Lupin. He was the Potters secrets keeper, only he knew where they were staying, he betrayed them to Voldemort. Sirius was furious and went after Peter. When Sirius cornered him, Peter caused a massacre by using one of the forbidden spells and quickly transformed into a rat.
Sirius was innocent but yet sent to Azkaban because everybody thought that he had caused the gigantic massacre. When Sirius escaped Azkaban he was determined to catch Peter so he would be declared a free man. He did catch Peter but the “rat” manages to escape. Sirius can’t prove his innocence and has to run after all with the help of Harry and Hermione.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban is fiction, even though some elements in this novel are based on things in real life, the main part is still fictional. I think that’s hardly surprising because magic is a big theme in the Harry Potter series. Magic and everything involved is simply impossible, so this book couldn’t have happened in real life.

The narrator time is three-hundred-and-seventeen pages.
The narrated time in this book and also in the other books of the Harry Potter series is estimated one year. It’s common to start in the summer holidays at Harry Potter’s aunt’s and uncle’s home and progresses during a year at Hogwarts school for witchcraft and wizardry.

Which is also the case in this novel, but it also takes place in Hogsmeade, a nearby village. Harry is actually not allowed to visit Hogsmeade because he has no permission, but he still does.
The story probably takes place in our time, but this is very difficult to establish because the story is extremely far fetched.

Characters

Now I’ll tell something about the main characters, these are all round characters because the have real and several character traits :
1. Of course Harry Potter himself: Harry is in fact a very normal boy, but with magical powers. He has no parents, because ‘the-one-who-must-not-be-named’ (Voldemort) killed them. Since the murder of his parents Harry had to live with his uncle Vernon, aunt Petunia and his spoiled nephew Dudley. Harry is very considerate and helpful, he is also very heroic.
2. Then there is Ron: he is Harry’s best friend. He has red hair just like his parents and his five brothers and sister. He is always a bit jealous but he wouldn’t harm a fly.
3. Hermione Granger: is a friend of Harry and Ron. She’s from a mugglefamily, which means that one or both of her parents can’t work magic. Never the less she‘s still the best pupil in her class and that’s also why she is a bit “know it all”. Harry and Ron think she’s behaving a little bit weird this year at Hogwarts. What they don’t know is that Hermione is taking so many classes that she repeatedly has to travel back in time to manage.
4. A very good friend of Harry, Ron and Hermione is Hagrid. Hagrid is the gamekeeper at Hogwarts, and this year also the teacher in Care for Magical Creatures. He is a bit shy but has a hart of gold.
5. Sirius Black is the man who escaped from the maximum security prison Azkaban. He was kept there already 12 years while he was innocent. He was charged for betraying Harry’s parents to Voldemort. But actually he was a very good friend of Harry’s mother and father.
I think the genre of the book is adventure and fantasy.
Harry goes on several adventure and has to conquer a lot of obstacles, like defending himself from Voldemort and his followers.
And all most every element in this book is complete fantasy. It’s all made up and can’t happen in real life.

The theme is Good against. Evil . This is pretty obvious, because in every part till now Harry has to defend himself against Voldemort or other peoples or creatures. Harry represents good and his enemies, who are mainly followers of the dark-arts, represent evil.

PERSONAL OPINION

I’ll now give my personal opinion about the book
- The subject is witchcraft or magic. I find this very gripping and interesting because the story isn’t about every day life. I think the author has done a very good job, she has elaborated the subject very well. Sometimes it’s even a little confusing because the story is so well thought through.
- The most important event in the book is in my view when you find out that Peter, Ron’s rat, is the villain instead of Sirius Black. All the events are very well put together, everything that happens in the book has a reason.
- In my view Harry is very heroic, he continuously risks his life to protect others. I approve of Harry’s behaviour. I don’t know if I would act as courageously as Harry when in such situations.
- In some ways the set up of the story can be very complicated and confusing because all events are linked to one and other. This makes the book also very thrilling at some moments. The book fascinated me from start to finish.
- The language is very suitable. For example, Hermione talks very intelligent in comparison to Hagrid.

I really enjoyed the book, I found it very thrilling and gripping. The writer is very talented. I would recommend this book to everyone.

This was my book review. I hope you all enjoyed it.