Product Description

This is the fifth book in this award-winning and multi-best-selling series, supported by a dramatic marketing campaign.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8482 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-21
• Released on: 2003-06-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 766 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
As his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry approaches in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 15-year-old Harry Potter is in full-blown adolescence, complete with regular outbursts of rage, a nearly debilitating crush, and the blooming of a powerful sense of rebellion. It's been yet another infuriating and boring summer with the despicable Dursleys, this time with minimal contact from our hero's non-Muggle friends from school. Harry is feeling especially edgy at the lack of news from the magic world, wondering when the freshly revived evil Lord Voldemort will strike. Returning to Hogwarts will be a relief… or will it?

Book five in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series follows the darkest year yet for our young wizard, who finds himself knocked down a peg or three after the events of last year. Over the summer, gossip (usually traced back to the magic world's newspaper, the Daily Prophet) has turned Harry's tragic and heroic encounter with Voldemort at the Triwizard Tournament into an excuse to ridicule and discount the teenager. Even Professor Dumbledore, headmaster of the school, has come under scrutiny from the Ministry of Magic, which refuses to officially acknowledge the terrifying truth: that Voldemort is back. Enter a particularly loathsome new character: the toad-like and simpering ("hem, hem") Dolores Umbridge, senior undersecretary to the minister of Magic, who takes over the vacant position of defence against dark arts teacher--and in no time manages to become the high inquisitor of Hogwarts. Life isn't getting any easier for Harry Potter. With an overwhelming course load as the fifth years prepare for their examinations, devastating changes in the Gryffindor Quidditch team line-up, vivid dreams about long hallways and closed doors, and increasing pain in his lightning-shaped scar, Harry's resilience is sorely tested.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, more than any of the four previous novels in the series, is a coming-of-age story. Harry faces the thorny transition into adulthood, when adult heroes are revealed to be fallible, and matters that seemed black and white suddenly come out in shades of gray. Gone is the wide-eyed innocent, the whiz kid of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Here we have an adolescent who's sometimes sullen, often confused (especially about girls), and always self-questioning. Confronting death again, as well as a startling prophecy, Harry ends his year at Hogwarts exhausted and pensive. Readers, on the other hand, will be energised as they enter yet again the long waiting period for the next title in the marvellous magical series. --Emilie Coulter

Review
At last the waiting is over. Millions of bleary-eyed children from Sydney to San Francisco who queued overnight for their copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix have put their wands and wizard hats away for another year or two, and have now got down to the serious business of reading this monumental book. Will it live up to the hype? The answer must be an unqualified 'yes'. For every adult critic who grumbles about the occasional clunkiness of Rowling's prose, her profligate use of adverbs, her tendency to repeat herself, there are several hundred children who simply, my dear, don't give a damn. Because the fact of the matter is, Rowling can tell a cracking good story; a story which leaves you on the edge of your seat, reading into the small hours; a story with good and evil, love and hate, the familiar and the bizarre, not to mention bucket loads of excitement - all the ingredients which are guaranteed to engage a young audience. Book 5 begins dark and gets darker, and as Rowling warned, Harry is altogether angrier, and more volatile. Once again Rowling goes straight for the jugular. How many times has a child cast a book aside saying, 'I can't get into it'? No excuse this time; Harry is battling Dementors down the road from Uncle Vernon's before the end of Chapter 1, and the action hardly lets up from that point on. Threatened with expulsion from Hogwarts, Harry has to face a disciplinary court before he can go back to school; released from the charge of using magic out of school, he earns himself a powerful enemy - the toad-like Dolores Umbridge who is soon to become the new Defence against the Dark Arts teacher. The nightmares begin, and Harry is convinced that his old adversary, Voldemort, is back on the scene. It is only a matter of time before they confront each other in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic. Adults readers will relish the way Rowling incorporates the trials and tribulations of the 21st century into her fantasy. Harry and his friends are suffering stress and insomnia as they prepare for their OWLs, complete with revision timetables, desks set out in daunting rows in the school hall and constant nagging from every teacher about the importance of the exams; Professor Umbridge bears an uncanny likeness to an OFSTED inspector as she marches from class to class with her clipboard; Harry falls for Cho but is completely incompetent - he has no idea how to read Cho's hidden agenda - 'Why doesn't she just say she fancies me?' he asks Hermione, in bewilderment. Rowling handles such episodes with tact and humour - Harry's adolescent yearnings are dealt with sensitively by Hermione, but Ron is his usual tactless self, possessing, as Hermione says so cuttingly, 'the emotional range of a teaspoon'. There are giants and centaurs, vile plants and flying horses, as the action builds up towards its horrifying climax. Harry learns some painful truths about his past and has to realize that his father whom he has always idolised, may have had feet of clay. So Rowling has done the seemingly impossible, simply by realizing what children really want - a combination of make-believe and reality, with plenty of danger and not too much snogging. In The Order of the Phoenix she has got the combination just right - and that guarantees her an avid audience for Book 6. (Kirkus UK)

Synopsis
This is the fifth book in this award-winning and multi-best-selling series, supported by a dramatic marketing campaign.

Customer Reviews

ONE VERY BIG YAWN
What's all the fuss about? Watch the films instead: that's enough. Only just OK for a quick skim through if there's nothing better on the shelf or in your bag: so much of this book is unnecessary and should've been consigned to any decent editor's bin.

But, one of the most profitable franchises in history, so what do I know? However, look at any chart - what does everyone else know?

This book is sooooooo captivating!
This book is written by J. K. Rowling. It is unmissable! You can not put it down, even for 1 second! This is the most exciting book in the whole world. You have to read it. All of my brothers enjoyed it very much.

I give this book 10/10

By Mohammed Ali 3H

GENIUS !
I Loved this book !
was great to be out of Hogwarts for a while at 12 Grimmauld Place ! indeed it is a Grim Old Place !
Loved the idea of the headquarters of the Order of the Pheonix, ie those against Voldemort to be in a family home of the ancient Pure Blood Blacks (big voldemort followers(except Sirius of course!)) with Siruis's mother screaming obscenities at everyone from a Picture on the wall ! JK Rowling is a genius !
this is the Darkest book so far and was very sad in parts but fabulous !
GENUIS !