(No spoilers!)

After a three year wait that's seemed like a decade, we finally have 759 pages worth of new Potter material: phenomenal plotting, consummate characterisation, explosive excitement and superb suspense. There's no doubt that Joanne Rowling has worked her magic once again.

The feel of the whole book is dark.. and sinister foreboding hangs stubbornly in the air even through its lightest moments to its Poe-esque ending. While the book explores little in terms of fresh themes, ones that have already been foreshadowed in the previous books are taken to chilling depths. With 'Phoenix', the Harry Potter series has definitely come of age.

The most startling departure of this book from its predecessors is the added emotional dimensions of nearly all the characters. Almost everyone is struggling with feelings of frustration, guilt, rage and loneliness. Harry comes across as the very personification of angst, though managing to avoid lapsing into plain churlishness. He deals with his loathing of the Dursleys, his frustration at being left out of the loop by his friends and mentors, his confusion at being forced to recognise the weaknesses in his friends and nobility in his enemies.. and an overpowering sense of rage at the life in general for the hand he's been dealt. The other characters are also given a new emotional depth, perhaps because Harry himself is only now beginning to see it. I love the way Ginny and Neville have grown, I'm delighted to see Hagrid become a little incomprehensible to Harry and I'm drawn to the way Sirius and his relationship to Harry are so convincingly portrayed... but the Weasley twins take the cake, icing and all.

With the new characters, however, Rowling falls short of her usual standard. Some members of the Order, most notably Tonks and Mrs Figg, draw so much on stereotypes that they fail to engage or convince. On the other hand, two of the female characters, Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge, are both alive enough to give anyone nightmares. Most other people in the Order (Mundungus Fletcher, notably) simply fail to make any impact. Which is probably fair enough as they don't figure in the narrative much anyway.

The plot itself, to me the most important factor in judging any book, is great but not superlative. It's probably forgivable, as the real life events do need to be quite chaotic.. (my chief complaint with the other books, after all, is how nicely everything that happens to Harry happens at the end of the academic year, right after exams! Only Goblet of Fire was sophisticated enough, plot-wise, to pull this off) but I find myself looking back fondly at Book III and IV, where there was such an effortlessly natural progression to everything, and all the plotlines reached their climax with a spectacular flourish and neatly bowed out, leaving behind more questions than ever but also a peaceful satisfaction. Book V has an ending that is considerably weakened from being completely predictable: no twists, no surprises, just plain old what-you've-known-since-book III.

Another plot gripe I have is with the big death. It's too pointless, too sudden, too easily preventable - too much like real life, I suppose. It just rips your heart out. Well.. I, for one, like my fictional tragedies rooted in fiction, so shoot me. I'm so in denial.

The superb climax deserves a special mention. It gives you the feeling of being caught in a Salvador Dali painting. It's impossibly imaginative, breathtaking, but oddly dreamlike, sitting just a little way from a plunge into the unknown. Which is why, even when you're well on your way into the denouement, you find it hard to shake off the Dali mood.. you find you're still floating a couple of inches above the ground, and tilting a little sideways. Though unsettling, this effect is so interesting that I like to think it was intentional.

On the whole, I'd give this book an 8.5 out of 10. Most of the points come from how effectively it manages to transfer its mood, through the narrative as well as the characters. From the very first chaper it grabs you by the neck and glues your nose to the book.. the pages seem to turn all by themselves. It's deliberately breaks out of its own mould and leaves you struggling to find a foothold. It's been a supremely satisfying read.

A summary of the story

(SPOILERS!!)

It's been a tense, frustrating summer. It's been a month after Voldemort's return to life, and Harry is desperate for news but all he's getting is the Dursleys' disagreeable hospitality and his friends' deliberately vague letters.. reduced to hiding in bushes outside the living room window to listen to the evening news and venting his frustrations by taunting Dudley. He's simply itching for a fight.

Harry's wish for an end to the boredom comes true in the form of a dementor attack - right there in Privet Drive. The magic he uses to repel them lands him with charges of Unauthorised Underage Use of Magic by a Ministry of Magic that refuses to acknowledge the fact that dementors are now outside the control of the Ministry. Harry has to face a hearing and give evidence in order to keep his wand, and his place at Hogwarts.

He is soon whisked off from Privet Drive at Dumbledore's orders to his godfather's house, while he awaits the date of the hearing. Harry's anxiety about an impending expulsion is forgotten upon his reunion with Sirius, Remus Lupin, the Weasleys and Hermione - Sirius's house is the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, a defence league headed by Dumbledore. His angst, however, is always simmering just below the surface... he can't bear not knowing what's been happening any longer.

There's not much help for him, though - no one who isn't in the Order knows anything and Sirius has been forbidden to tell Harry anything. A few more uneventful, very frustrating weeks pass, as Harry makes his acquaintance with a number of people in the Order (Snape is in it!) and out of it, most notably, Kreacher, Sirius's house elf.