Well - it didn't happen to me. Nothing at all that Rowling could do would get me to abandon Tolkien and LeGuin, for example! But I do think that, if Rowling had truly loved fantasy as a genre, she would have thought more about the world-building you mention and done it more carefully. I don't know that I would have liked her story any better if she had had clear rules of magic, though! I did spend some time questioning why I liked fantasy when I did not like magic, though, and I'm still reluctant to pick up any book that deals with witches, wizards and magical schools!
As for casual readers - I saw, in DH, a definite effort to diminish Snape, but most casual readers still saw him as a hero, if not the hero of the piece. Thus the child's question - did you always mean Snape to be a hero? - and Rowling's horrified gasp in reaction. So I suppose we should be grateful that she was not in perfect control of her material, after all! Snape got away from her, and Harry didn't.
(I should mention that I did thoroughly enjoy The Bartimaeus Trilogy. Stroud did a good, honest job on those books. On R. J. Anderson's recommendation, I also just finished The Demon's Lexicon . That, too, is a well-crafted book that tells a worthwhile (if creepy and disturbing) story. About Bartimaeus - a child told me that they were far better than Harry Potter. I did not believe him, but, on reading them, I discovered he was right. They are.)
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Date: 2009-07-29 02:25 pm (UTC)As for casual readers - I saw, in DH, a definite effort to diminish Snape, but most casual readers still saw him as a hero, if not the hero of the piece. Thus the child's question - did you always mean Snape to be a hero? - and Rowling's horrified gasp in reaction. So I suppose we should be grateful that she was not in perfect control of her material, after all! Snape got away from her, and Harry didn't.
(I should mention that I did thoroughly enjoy The Bartimaeus Trilogy. Stroud did a good, honest job on those books. On R. J. Anderson's recommendation, I also just finished The Demon's Lexicon . That, too, is a well-crafted book that tells a worthwhile (if creepy and disturbing) story. About Bartimaeus - a child told me that they were far better than Harry Potter. I did not believe him, but, on reading them, I discovered he was right. They are.)