Rating: 
Summary: wonderful book
Review: as with all of the harry potter books, i read this book within a day. it was an extremely good book, and i am looking forward to the next one.it was a page turner, as always and had some glorious new twists. i would also like to comment on one of the other reviews, where the reader said that it was a bad book because it taught us to disobey our parents ect i find this accusation untrue and without grounds to support it. considering the government and parents in question are those of fantacy, i find no reason what so ever to crtitisize the book. and considering the reader in question was 12 years of age, i find no reason to believe they have a valid opinion anyway.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding book, what else could be said?
Review: The problem kids have with books is that in school they make them read books that are not intresting at all and drag on and on without any action. I should know because I am a sophomore in an advanced highschool. We read books that are so boring that it actually turns us students off from reading any other books. I should also know this because the only reason I started to read Harry Potter was because my mom had bought them years ago, and I didnt want to let them go to waste. Also the idea of going on an airplane for a 5 hour flight from New York to California also persuaded me to read the books.
So I read all four books within I would say about a week and I didnt think that any book could be better. I do not see how anyone can say the "classics" that we have today are better than these books. Your so called "classics" are what turned me off from reading. For instance Frankenstein, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, and any book by Shakespeare. While these books increase your reading ability and vocabulary that is all they do. They do not bring you into a world where you can enjoy a book for what it really is supposed to be. The "classics" are ruining books for kids today, and maybe they should be assigning these books for children to read in about 6th -7th grade, and highschool teachers should strongly reccomend that highschool students read these so we know that not all books are horrible.
So as to my review for this book, it is an incredible book. It expands on everything that JK Rowling has previously written and makes you feel as if this world could somehow be co-existing with ours. It answers questions that have been present from the 1st book, which no one even remembered to even ask because of JK's understanding of how to trick people, and at the end of the book it leaves you with questions that you know will be answered in the next 2 books. All I can say is that I hope that JK Rowling continues to write in such a way that captures everyone's imagination and writes a story that keeps people coming back. I hope that some day that these books will replace some of the "classics" so people will be able to actually enjoy reading and not be put off by it.
Rating:
Summary: Think twice before buying this in CD format
Review: The Harry Potter Audio Books are fabulous. I believe this is the BEST way to experience these books. Jim Daly does an amazing job breathing life into the story. My comments are about the FORMAT. I bought the CD's this time instead of the cassette tapes because I thought they would be much more versatile in my life (I have access to more CD players than tape players). I have been very disappointed. There is no way to figure out where you've left off. The reading just flows from one tract to the next, so you have to watch the display to figure out where you are before you shut down the CD player. Which is okay if you're leaving the CD in the player, and your player maintains your position, but if you need to move it (because you need to change locations and you want to continue listening to the story), it is a pain. A cassette tape just stops and saves your place. Not to mention the cassette tapes are cheaper. I do HIGHLY recommend the Audio Books, just think carefully about which format you decide to go with.
Rating:
Summary: Jeez, this book rocks!
Review: It's a great book and everyone should read it. Alot of my questions were answered in this book, including why did Voldemort try and kill harry? Its my fav out of the entire seiries, and the longest. I read it in about 7 hours. 800 something pages! A must read.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful narration. A brilliant page turner.
Review: I was originally aprehensive of the novel when I realized its length and was praying that it would not turn out to be like The Goblet of Fire, which I only found mildly enjoyable.When I started to read the first few pages, I was quite turned off. It sounded almost too much like Fan Fiction to me. However, they were still nonetheless enjoyable, and kept me happily turning the pages. The story, however, picks up a great deal when Harry goes back to Hogwarts. There, Rowling's narrative goes into it full powers, working like the Imperius curse, causing you to loose all form of self- awareness. All you will want to do is Read. Every page is filled with suspense, each one bringing on a new surprise nearly always. And when TOoTP isn't dishing out excitement, it's handing out laughter. Fred and George have never been funnier. Characters are even better fleshed out in this novel. Professor Snape for one was given such amazing depth, and the character of his that Rowling has been hinting at in the prevous four books come out finally in this one. TOoTP is a well concoted potion of adventure,horror,comedy and even a little teen-flick romance, which I thought, before reading, might be a little akward in the book. But Rowling excecutes it with some amazing delicacy, contancy and accuracy that I cannot help but applaude her at the successful effort. The only thing lamentable would be the seemingly rushed ending, where I felt it too obvious that she was expressively trying to tie up all the 'loose-ends' with Dumbledor's revelation in his office after the battle in the ministry, and well, basically trying to end the story. I had hoped for more attention to be paid to a certain evil character (minor spoiler*) Umbridge (//minor spoiler) before term ended. Basically, the ending was rushed. It would have been, while not exactly a masterpiece, nonetheless, a brilliant work of fiction that won't be quite so easily forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: Slow magical action!
Review: Lets face it - Rowling experienced quite some pressure to write this fifth book and although I give it a four I found that the action was a bit slow compared to the third and forth book.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, Exciting Read
Review: J.K. Rowling promised that "Order of the Phoenix" would be dark, and she does not disappoint. In fact, even at age 47 I found the novel disturbing to say the least. Still Rowling wins the reader over once again with her impeccable plotting, and with her ability to write about a fictional world in such detail as to make it very real for the reader. All the major themes that Rowling has explored in the other books in the series are reiterated here: the meaning of "Family", the power of Love, of memory, and of loss, and the continuing influence of those people that have made us who we are as human beings, even if those people (i.e. Harry's parents, and presumably the major character who tragically dies in this novel) are no longer physically present. Rowling also has begun to explain, and flesh out some of the more intriguing characters in the series such as Snape, who is interesting enough to be the star of his own novel I think, and James Potter who Harry comes to see was all too human. We begin to get the sense of Harry growing into a man in this book, and Rowling shows a healthy respect for the nascent intellect of young people that is so often overlooked or dismissed by adults (to tragic consequence here.) "Order of the Phoenix" is not an easy read by any means, and I defy any fan not to cry upon reading the "death" scene, but I was pulled deeply into Rowling's world once again, and look forward to the next installment of the series, which promises to be even darker if possible.
Rating:
Summary: Great outing of Harry and the gang.
Review: This is the darkest chapter in the Harry Potter saga yet, although there is still a healthy dose of humor. The Order of the Poenix is a group of wizards who fought Voldemort, when he was last in power. Harry meets them after he fights of dementors that attacked him and his cousin Dudley, which subsequently lands him in trouble with the Ministry of Magic. Harry has to attend a hearing about his imprper use of magic at the Ministry. Upon his arrival at Hogwarts Harry finds that a new defense against the Dark Arts teacher has been installed named Delores Umbridge who makes Snape look like a pussycat in comparison.
My favorite part of the book is the DA or Dumbledore's Army , a group of students who band together to learn Defense against the Dark Arts from Harry, and also I suspect to fight the power of umbridge who becomes more and more tyrannical as the book goes on. The power that Umbridge attains is truly frightening and serves a powerful reminder of how evil absolute power can be. Sadly one of Harry's supporters is killed in the struggle against Voldemort:( The ministry of Magic is depicted in the book as a cold organization and Fudge becomes quite frieghtening. This is a great book and will leave Harry fans wating eagerly for the next book.
Rating: 
Summary: Where has all the love gone?
Review: The first 3 books in this series got progressively better, but the last 2 morphed into a book for adults. It's not a bad story and adults may enjoy seeing a more flawed--if not realistic--hero. You may surmise from my review that I didn't enjoy the book, but that isn't true--disappointed may be a better description. My rating of 3 stars should be viewed relative to the others in the series. My children seemed to enjoy the simple formula of a child hero beating impossible odds and saving the day for all wizardkind as well as getting lost in the fantastic setting. Long gone is the warmth, friendliness and sense of belonging that you felt when Harry finally arrived at Hogwarts. Instead much darker feelings abound. The heroes are less heroic, the wizarding community--on the whole--is as prejudice and repressive as any society today and, quite frankly, Harry isn't nearly as likeable. More explicit death, slightly crude language, disrespectful/bad attitudes, self-pity and contempt fill the pages. My 10 year old daughter and I are reading it together and we often stop to talk about the behavior. I was dismayed by Rowling's published comments that you can't write good children's literature without being a ruthless killer. I'd point to the success of the first 3 books in the series as contradiction. In all, the book is still an enjoyable read, but in comparison to the first 4 works, I enjoyed this one the least.
Rating:
Summary: Respectful dissent
Review: It would take a great wizard indeed to calculate how many lines have already been devoted to the latest Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, even after having been in circulation for less than two weeks. The book's record-breaking advance sales are by now well known, and have helped propel its author, J.K. Rowling, past the Queen of England herself in terms of personal wealth. Also helping are the mostly favorable reviews the book has received, such as one that appeared in the July 29, 2003 edition of the Boston Sunday Globe. The review concludes: "I know no other writer simultaneously so domestic and so untamed, so full of tiny beauties and panoramic effects. How lucky we are, really, to live in a time when such works are coming to us fresh and new." Unfortunately, that review was superficial and inadequate. First of all, it is not great literature, as the review (and a piece in the Sunday magazine section) suggests. The review and the magazine piece make claims on Rowling's behalf that are unfair to a number of other authors writing today, who, according to the review, don't have the gifts that Ms. Rowling has. She is superbly clever and inventive, to be sure. Each new novel increases the catalogue of wondrous characters, creatures and objects that exist solely in this fictional wizarding world: the Mirror of Erised, Moaning Myrtle, Blast-ended Skrewts, Azkaban Prison and its Dementors, gillyweed, thestrals and Dolores Umbridge. And it can fairly be said that the Harry Potter novels are of greater literary merit than another prodigously imaginative work that has recently reemerged in the popular imagination, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But as a literary artist, she is unquestionably excelled by some of her contemporaries. Rather, the Harry Potter novels are enchanting and engaging stories, what Ms. Rowling's compatriot John Mortimer might call "rattling good yarns." What has been particularly compelling about the series thus far is its unpredictability, its departure from formula, the "fresh and new" quality described in the Globe review. Several of the novels have had unexpected endings that reveal much about the complexity of the characters and their motives: a stuttering milktoast serving as the puppet of the arch-fiend Voldemort, a diary that keeps its author, a seemingly stalwart ally who turns out to be a villain in an impenetrable disguise. Until now, that is. In The Order of the Phoenix, readers are presented with a straightforward, even pedestrian, clash of good and evil, of love and hate. Albus Dumbledore confesses himself to be hardly more than a "foolish, fond old man," in the formulation of the greatest of Rowling's literary antecedents. And Dumbledore's and Harry's nemesis, Lord Voldemort, is an unsubtle straw man for blind hate and violence (bearing an equally unsubtle resemblance to another well-known purveyor of hereditary exclusivity and superiority). A much more subtle point, one that would be worthy of Ms. Rowling's talent, but perhaps beyond the scope of the narrative, is that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Hatred, like love, is a sentiment that consumes. What defense could Dumbledore muster against a Voldemort who had no agenda of purity of blood, but manipulated and murdered indiscriminately? All of these are, of course, facile observations, and demand much more serious consideration, but their presence (again a freighted word) underscores the absence of the ambiguity that made the previous novels so compelling. Testimony in support of that compulsion can be found in the huge Harry Potter subculture that Ms. Rowling's previous works have generated. Prior to the release of the latest novel, thousands of websites and newsgroup threads imagined its plot, the places where the characters found themselves at its threshold and where they might be at its end. A great deal of speculation, for example, focused on the anticipated death of one of the leading characters (revealed, not by any clues in the previous novels, but by the author herself in interviews she gave during the writing of the fifth book). Even more sites and discussion groups consider more generally the mad, enveloping world Ms. Rowling has created, to which even self-described adults have succumbed. It can hardly be a secret now which character meets his end in Order of the Phoenix. Nor can it be a secret that Harry's budding love interest has withered on the vine. Indeed, unlike many of the other developments in the series, these events may have been foreseen without Professor Trelawney's questionable powers of divination. Along the way, the reader discovers that Harry is an angry, petulant, rash, thoughtless, self-absorbed boy. He indulges in all-too-common adolescent rants about isolation and mistreatment. For example, when Harry complains loudly that he believes his mentor Dumbledore has been purposely shunning him, the reader may be tempted to sympathize with Dumbledore, and to tell Harry, as former Hogwarts headmaster Phineas Nigellus does: "Have you never paused, while feeling hard-done-by, to note that following Dumbledore's orders has never yet led you into harm? No. No, like all young people, you are quite sure that you alone feel and think, you alone recognize danger, you alone are the only one clever enough to realize what the Dark Lord may be planning..." Which brings us back to the aforementioned Globe review. Much credit there (and elsewhere) has been given to Ms. Rowling for depicting adolescent development so unsparingly. It is hardly new literary ground, however, which, until now, had been precisely the charm of these "rattling good yarns."
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