The fifth book in the world famous Rowling series begins whilst Harry is spending yet another summer holiday away from Hogwarts and the rest of the wizarding world at the home of his aunt and uncle, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, in a sleepy town in Surrey, England. As ever Harry is bored to tears by his family’s arrogance and his feelings of isolation; however this year things appear to be even worse as he has had almost no contact from his best friends from Hogwarts, the Wizarding School.

One afternoon Harry and his useless and overweight cousin Dudley are unexpectedly attacked by dementors, terrifying dark spectres with the power to suck all the happiness from your very soul. Thankfully, Harry knows the charm required to project himself and his cousin from the creatures, however after casting the spell Harry receives a letter declaring that he is has been expelled from Hogwarts and worse even, will face a trial to decide whether he should be punished for using magic whilst he is still legally underage.

Harry leaves the Dursley’s, as they blame him for their son’s trauma after the dementor attack and eventually finds himself at the home of his godfather, Sirius, whom he has only recently became acquainted with after Sirius spent several years wrongfully incarcerated in the wizard prison Azkaban. At his godfather’s Harry finds his best friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, along with the rest of the Weasley family, and a mysterious group of adult witches and wizards, who are calling themselves “The Order of the Phoenix”.

Members of the Order include teachers from Harry’s school, magical security staff from the Ministry for Magic and others who were involved in fighting the evil Lord Voldermort when he first rose to power almost twenty years ago. The Order have decided to reconvene after Harry’s encounter at the end of the previous school term when he witnessed the death of schoolmate Cedric Diggory and Voldermort’s ascension back into human form.

Thanks to the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Albus Dumbledore, Harry is cleared of the charges he faced and is allowed to return to school. Once there he learns that Dolores Umbridge, an snide and uptight employee of the Ministry for Magic has been made Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, by the Minister for Magic himself no less; one Cornelius Fudge, an insecure man who is sure that Dumbledore is out for his job and that the rumours of Voldermort’s return are fallacies designed to un-hinge him.

Umbridge is a terrible teacher and refuses to teach any of her students actual defensive spells and begins taking tyrannical control of Hogwarts during long periods when Dumbledore is inexplicably absent. In an attempt to ensure that his friends are well armed against the rising threat of Lord Voldermort, Harry and his friends start a secret club in which they teach the other students how to perform accurate defensive magic.

Harry is also instructed by Dumbledore that he must learn to protect his mind from Voldermort’s prying magic, as Harry has had a strange connection with him since birth. Harry begins taking “Occlumency” lessons from his most hated teacher Severus Snape. However Harry struggles with these lessons and begins to dream about Voldermort and his plans to break into the Ministry for Magic, in search of a secret artefact which he and his Death Eaters hope will help him take over the magical world.

The book reaches it’s climax when, after a dream, Harry and several other members of the student’s secret club the“DA” ( Dumbledore’s Army) venture to the Ministry of Magic to prevent Voldermort from torturing Sirius. However, Harry’s dream was in fact a manipulation by Voldermort that he knew would force Harry to make his way to the Ministry. When the students arrive they find themselves in the Hall of Prophecies, a library of all the prophetic visions ever made magically sealed in glass balls. However, they learn that only the person whom the prophecy is about may remove the ball from it’s place upon the shelf and that this was Voldermort’s plan all along, to lure Harry to the place so that he could retrieve a prophecy which is about both Voldermort and himself.

The students find themselves surrounded by Voldermort’s loyal followers, known as Death Eaters, joined now by dangerous escapees from Azkaban. A battle begins in the underground cellars of the Ministry and it looks as though all is lost for Harry and his friends until suddenly Dumbledore and other members of the Order appear.

However tragedy strikes and Voldermort’s presence is finally revealed to the entire wizarding community.

The Order of the Phoenix is when the Harry Potter books begin to get complicated: throughout the next few books seemingly tiny incidents will happen which will eventually become fundamentally important to the story as a whole. These range from simple character developments, to personal flashbacks and important discoveries which will eventually help win the war against Voldermort.

In many ways this book is a very emotional journey for Harry, Rowling writes his teenage mood swings and attitude brilliantly, disguising them as reactions to specific incidents, just as Harry himself believes them to be. The general disbelief of the magical community that Voldermort has returned, along with Harry’s stubborn reaction to his isolated summer perfectly compliment the development in the age of most of the characters. Meanwhile, thanks to Harry’s temper tantrums, Ron and Hermione are able to develop their friendship even further, beautifully encapsulating the awkward teenage friendships between boys and girls, and highlighting in some brilliantly witty moments the stark differences in teenagers maturities.

The Order of the Phoenix is also the most violent of the books thus far in the series and was criticized upon release for being immoral and anti-authoritarian. However I believe that this is just the natural progression needed for the book; both Harry and his readers are becoming adults throughout the duration of the series, the progression into a young adult is made evident through both the characters physical and the narratives’ physical development. Without the violence of this novel the book would be patronizing, besides which the plot could not be held without it.

Henceforth the books begin to get darker and more troubling, both for Harry and the reader. Yet, as ever, they are written brilliantly, the images Rowling creates and the characters themselves are so strong that they translate beyond the poor editing that afflicts all the books. Things are finally beginning to get interesting here and upon closing the Order of the Phoenix you will simply find yourself even more excited and intrigued than you were upon first opening it.

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In the second book in King’s epic Dark Tower series, Roland, recently bereft of his single companion Jake, finds himself in search of a few new friends.

Published in 1987 The Drawing of Three follows The Gunslinger, the book that introduced a dying parallel world where a great war has left civilisation in tatters, nature ravaged by some kind of nuclear weapon and demons and dark magic running rife through the shadows. Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger of this world, is on a quest to find the Dark Tower, the central source of magic and power in this world, in order to save a world that has already “moved on”.

Having been told that he will encounter a Prisoner, a two faced Lady of Shadows and Death the gunslinger’s journey in the first book ends with him finally catching up with the elusive man in black.

Awaking from a strange prophetic dream one hundred years after falling asleep Roland walks to a lonely beach on the Western Sea. This part of the book is a slow, grey and bleak stretch of writing that seems – much like the beach it is describing – to extend on into the endless distance. In a strange way, although it makes this part of the book quite difficult to read, King’s writing is spot on here. He throws you straight back in, and uses his writing to drag right down into the depths of despair and loneliness that Roland is feeling.

A savage encounter with a seemingly innocuous sea creature – brilliantly referred to as a “lobsterosity” – Roland finds himself short several fingers; from here he sinks into a fever induced madness that, after the effectiveness of the earlier writing, is a little underwhelming. Roland quickly learns that the vicious lobster creature’s creep from the sea after dark as the tide rises and that he must stay away from them at all costs. He doesn’t learn this until it’s a little late for his right hand however, and an attack from the strange creatures who speak in riddles leaves him short three fingers. Whilst dragging himself away from his assailants Roland spies something of great significance in the distance: a door.

What Roland quickly learns is that these doors lead him into the subconscious mind of people in a parallel world, our world to be precise. Walking through these doors allows Roland to either hide within the person’s mind, as some kind of innocuous passenger, or to step forward and take control of their thoughts and actions.

Through the first door Roland finds “the Prisoner”, a young man named Eddie Dean; a heroin addict smuggling cocaine on a plane into New York. The plane has almost reached its destination when Roland, addled by a sickness he has developed from the lobster bites, enters Eddie Dean’s head. Roland’s naivety finds Eddie in police custody on suspicion of possession, and it is up to Roland to get him out of the situation, for both their sakes.

A few inter-world journeys with the cocaine and the occasional hot dog lead to Eddie being picked up by his dealer and local mob boss who has been holding his brother Henry Dean captive and drugged up to the eye balls as insurance against Eddie reneging on his deal. This part of the book is when things finally begin to pick up. Previously the story had been somewhat over zealous, as King tries to make Roland’s situation seem as desperate as possible. What he in fact does is make you feel a strange sense of manipulation as King forces you to feel sympathy for a character that has already alienated himself from the reader, and provokes very little emotional response over all.

Roland’s encounter with Eddie shake things up a bit, finally a character with an actually personality is introduced and, despite his drug addled state, you can’t help but warm to the younger of the Dean Brothers. This part of the narrative builds on various concepts set up in the previous book, notably the overlapping and interlocking of the two worlds. Eddie Dean’s world, the New York of 1987 is filled with references that implicitly and explicitly refer to things that were encountered in the first book. Two examples of these are the blindingly obvious reference to the bar named “the Leaning Tower”, which Roland immediately believes is the mystical tower of his world; the other is the fantastic mentions of Johnny Cash – the infamous Man in Black.

Roland’s excursion into our world ends with a violent and naked shoot out and an exit back into his world for both Roland and Eddie; who spend the next few pages simultaneously fighting a fever and heroin withdrawal.

However a handful of antibiotics seem to hold off Roland’s combined death and madness just long enough for him and Eddie to walk further along the beach and find a second door.

Through the second door is a young disabled black woman living in New York in the 60’s, who lost her legs in a terrible subway accident. When we first meet Odetta Holmes she is an intelligent civil rights activist. However a rather strange series of excerpts make it quickly apparent that Odetta is not all she appears to be, as Roland discovers upon first entering her mind that Odetta has a psychological multiple personality disorder.

Odetta’s other personality is a crass, violent and disturbed kleptomaniac named Detta Walker, a stark contrast to her alter-ego; and unfortunately it is this difficult and dangerous woman that takes over as Eddie and a degenerating Roland continue to cross the beach. This part of the book is a little tedious, it’s clear that Detta is not going to be a permanent fixture in the story and this part – what seems to be an incredibly large percentage – of the book is a tedious distraction from the real story.

Detta spends the majority of her time using vulgar and racist language, refusing to eat and trying to kill Eddie and Roland in their sleep. Whilst the occasional appearance of Odetta proves to that neither personality has any awareness of the other’s presence. Roland’s fever returns and Eddie fears the gunslinger will die unless he gets any more antibiotics.

Finally the three companions reach the third door, at the end of the shore of the Western Sea; on it are two ominous words that take some explaining: “The Pusher”. This part was by far the most interesting part of the book, and took an annoyingly long time to get to.

Roland walks into the Pusher’s mind and stays hidden briefly in the background, until he recognises the scene that is unfolding before him. He is standing on the corner of a New York street in 1977 and in front of him is an upsettingly familiar face, the face of Jake Chambers, the boy Roland allowed to fall to his death in the previous book.

However, Jake’s final words “There are other worlds than this” resonate here when Roland takes complete control over the Pusher’s body and prevents him from pushing Jake into the on coming traffic. Whilst inside the mans’ head Roland learns that for years the man has been stalking people and then committing violent, life altering crimes against his chosen victims. He learns that earlier on in his life Jack Mort, the Pusher, dropped a brick from a window onto the head of a black child as she walked the street with her parents, leaving her brain damaged and with a psychological disorder. Later in life – unbeknownst to him – he encounters the same girl and pushes her under an on coming subway train. The fall severs the woman’s legs just above the knee.

Roland quickly realises that this man is an integral part of his story yet that he can not bare to be in his presence for too long; he decides therefore to use the man to help him with gather products in this new world that may be of use in his own world. Thus an attack on a gun store, holding up a drug store and attacking several civilians and police men culminate in the death of the Pusher whilst Roland returns to his own world with a supply of bullets and enough antibiotics to see them through several fevers.

Before this happens however, Roland realises that he can utilize the Pushers strange connection with the other members of his group to help reconcile Odetta’s personalities. He convinces both Detta and Odetta to look through the open door into the Pusher’s world, at which point they are both suddenly made aware of each other’s presence and simultaneously remember Mort dropping the brick on her head as a child and being pushed in front of the subway train. At this point Odetta and Detta finally combine and a new, complete personality is born, that of Susannah Dean. A feisty yet observant young woman who falls in love with the now reformed Eddie.

The book closes upon the trio’s ascent into the hills behind them with the knowledge in Roland’s mind that he is now in the presence of something magical, a Ka-tet: an important group of people, whose destiny’s are linked, but that once again, he may have to sacrifice his new friends on his quest for the Dark Tower.

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