Book review - Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince

This book tells about the sixth year of Harry Potter in Hogwarts. The war between the wizards and Voldemort was getting more and more fierce.

In this book, Lord Voldemort’s most important secrets which helped him believe to live forever were finally discovered. With this clue, Harry and his friends had a clear path to beat Voldemort. Voldemort had learned from Professor Slughorn about how to split a human’s soul and hide it in different things, which are called Horcruxes. This invention was so evil that each Horcrux had been made when killing someone. At the end of this book, Harry and Dumbledore searched for a Horcrux together in a cave. In order to retrieve this Horcrux, Dumbledore managed to drink all the harmful potion under which the Horcrux was hidden.

Unfortunately, this was not the real Horcrux and Dumbledore was severely weakened by the potion, which led to his death caused directly by the killing curse of Snape. After Dumbledore’s death, Harry had decided to continue looking for all the other Horcruxes in the next school year so that Voldemort could be thoroughly destroyed. His friends Ron and Hermione would also like to join him to finish this glorious mission.

There are some very interesting details in this book. I am especially interested in the “Felix Felicis” (or lucky potion). Harry won a bottle of this potion from his lessons thanks to a used textbook of “The Half-blood Prince” and a number of useful tips and spells in it. This wonderful potion also helped him a lot with finding out the secret of the Horcruxes from the memories of Slughorn. If I had Felix Felicis during my exams or interviews, that would be excellent!

I was also moved by a paragraph at the end of the 23^rd chapter:

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore know – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world.

Some expressions:

Exasperated

Indiscriminately

Inconsequentially

Unceremoniously

Unrecognizable

Flailing hand

Tactics