Next-to-last in the Harry Potter series (as read by possibly the last person on Earth to read it) focuses less on the scholastic goings-on at the academically suspect Hogwarts than on the ongoing battle against Lord Voldemort and the Death-Eaters, who have pledged to destroy our teen protagonist. This outing also spends a lot of time in a parallel story with Harry and his mentor, the wizard Dumbledore, exploring the mysteries of Voldemort's upbringing.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, despite its length, is a fast and entertaining read; I laughed out loud in several places, and continually enjoyed how Rowling plucked at threads from all the other books in the series. It was so much fun, in fact, that it wasn't until about three-fourths of the way through that I realized that nothing much had happened at all. The last quarter is an explosive battle royale with a fairly surprising body count, including one of the major characters (one of my favorites, who I hope appears as a ghost or in flashbacks or something in the last book, or I fear a loss of steam).
I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana, in the excellent audio book series by the incomparable Jim Dale.
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