My Harry Potter Boycott

So Jana and I have decided to have themes for each day to guide our posts.  Of course a dominant theme will be Jana's number one fandom of Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling, so Tuesdays will be set aside for any and all conversations related to the world of Harry Potter. On the first official Dreamatorium Potterverse Tuesday, I’d like to talk about how I caved in late 2003 and finally dived into Harry Potter. It’s true that Jana gets the credit.

I adore YA (Young Adult) fantasy fiction.  It’s my genre.  99% of my reading material (of which there is an abundance) falls into this area, including my favorite author of all time.  This would be Tamora Pierce.  She writes fabulous fantasy novels set in realms different from ours, where magic is natural part of life, and gods interfere in the lives of mere mortals. Think King Arthur and Merlin meet Ancient Greece. Pierce’s novels usually center around a young female character who learns she is strong, special, and worthy of being a heroine.  The beauty of Tamora Pierce is how real her characters are. She’s created several different heroines, and they are all so different from one another, yet strong and powerful in their own right.  Any person could find themselves depicted somewhere in her worlds.

Anyway, this is my soapbox, and I’ve loved Tamora Pierce since I was saving my twelfth birthday money in 1997 to buy her books.  At some point, Tamora Pierce started ending up on these lists like “If you like Harry Potter, then you should read…”  I seriously resented this.  I took a stand, and refused to endorse Harry.  Love Alanna! Love Daine! Who needs Harry?

Then I met Jana in college, and she adored Harry. He was worth the attention.  We pretty much bargained it out- I’ll read Harry and she’ll read Tamora Pierce.  (Despite the length of HP books, it took longer for her to live up to her end, but she did end up watching seven seasons of Buffy, so it balanced out.)  I’ve now read all the Harry Potter books.  I read each in one day, but I always read good books in one day.  I read the first four right away, then took a break.  A while later I invested in the fifth, then the sixth and finally the seventh. I believe that the sixth book was coming out soon when I began the series, so the only time I was really waiting was for the seventh. 

Harry Potter is a wonderful adventure series.  Harry will never equal the awesomeness of Alanna in my mind, but it’s an amazing story of friendship and strength.  I do love the fact that as the characters grow, so does the difficulty and the content of the novels.  That is unique.  Through her use of Hogwarts and Houses, Rowling has created a world that people can place themselves in, whether or not they identify with the main characters.   I appreciate the world that J. K. Rowling has created that intrigues the mind of so many young people. 

(Read Tamora Pierce, too, though!)

Stay Shiny!

Kristin