Customer Reviews

New Clues to Harry Potter Book 5: Hints from the Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

For those legions of Harry Potter fans, this Hint book will test your devotion to the young wizard and his friends. While Galadriel Waters Ultimate Guide deconstructed the first 4 Harry Potter books chapter by chapter and laid out the clues, hints and subplots for us to read, this hint book is just that: HINTS. The Hufflepuffs among us will be in their glory. Waters does not draw the conclusions that made the first book so popular; rather she and her co-authors plant signposts and clues for the dedicated Harry Potter Sleuth to find answers on their own. Make no mistake: this book is for those who regard reading as a full contact sport. I found myself dusting off long-unread volumes of Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Bullfinch's Mythology and my Oxford Unabridged Dictionary. Those Harry Potter fans who want answers spoon-fed to them need NOT apply! If you enjoy digging through books, searching out history, facts and allegory and closely examining the genius of J.K. Rowling, this book is your cup of tea. I kept looking up and finding that 3 hours had suddenly zipped past me! But every time I looked up, I realized more and more how J.K. Rowling truly is the heir to the Inklings. Ms. Waters and her co-authors throw light on these supposed "kids book" and reveal them for the ageless classics they will surely become. Loved it!

I like the fact that this guide is "hints only". I didn't expect a complete analysis like in the first book, and not sure why other reviewers had a problem with that. The authors warn you right upfront about it. I think that's ok...it takes some work but I am having a blast trying to figure out the clues. You have to be up for solving JKR's puzzles yourself, but if you are, this is a really cool book! I'm still working on a lot of the clues, but I can see now what Galadriel was saying about Peter Pettigrew's whereabouts and why Percy has been acting like such a jerk. It was so awesome when I saw that. I'm still working all the other stuff, and I can see that there's lots to keep me engrossed until Harry Potter 6! This book definitely kept my interest and it's a really good deal too, considering it turned out to be really a lot more than I expected. I wouldn't recommend it for casual readers, but I'd say it's a must for us "die-hard" Potter fans!

Quite the contrary actually! This book gives readers the process, rules, and sources that Ms. Waters and her colleagues use to figure out JKR's clues. We all know that JKR is a well-read individual; it only makes sense that she would indeed refer to 'classics' from literature and other sources. Unlike Ms. Waters first guide, this book is intended to give those who would like to try their hand at figuring out JKR's clues a sort of blue print to follow. It does not spell out everything like the first guide. But, it does separate what is actually their speculation and what are decidedly clues. Order of the Phoenix is incredibly complex and this book will help you to understand underlying clues in the text. It is not fanfic or some useless book of theories. It helps you to sift through the red herrings and see what JKR intended. However, this book IS NOT for the faint of heart. It will take critical thinking and a lot of reading to truly use this guide to its fullest. This book is intended for our enjoyment while we wait on Ms. Waters' update to her unofficial guide AND the all important HP Book 6! Just as a footnote...there must be something to Ms. Waters' process; after all, she only had one mistake from the first guide to Order of the Phoenix! That seems like a pretty good track record to me!

I like the fact that this guide is "hints only". I didn't expect a complete analysis like in the first book, and not sure why other reviewers had a problem with that. The authors warn you right upfront about it. I think thats ok...it takes some work but I am having a blast trying to figure out the clues.
You have to be up for solving JKR's puzzles yourself, but if you are, this is a really cool book! I'm still working on a lot of the clues, but I can see now what Galadriel was saying about Peter Pettigrew's whereabouts and why Percy has been acting like such a jerk. It was so awesome when I saw that. I'm still working all the other stuff, and I can see that there's lots to keep me engrossed until Harry Potter 6! This book definitely kept my interest and its a really good deal too, considering it turned out to be really a lot more than I expected. I wouldn't recommend it for casual readers, but I'd say it's a must for us "die-hard" Potter fans!

Ok, here is this thing about this book:

-Good:
*Book is Nice looking and formatted very well
*A lot of insight and ideas you might not have thought of while reading, along with FAQS for each chapter to help everyone understand some of the mysteries
*There is a good sized introduction that helps the Sleuth keep everything in order
*Very interesting commentary- was not boring to read even though it was only hints and questions most of the time...

-Not so good:
*Many of the clues are VERY vague and required a lot of work to actually solve.
*As someone else said, some of the possible theories the authors thought up are mostly just overanalyzed
*More info and less Questions would make it helpful and more informative, it seemed a lot of the time that the authors want you basically to make your own theories from there questions, which is good, but can be done without buying the book.
*This might just be me, but I found the "Running Bits" a complete waste of space and time. Basically, the authors would list words like "Eye" and point out how many times that word shows up, saying it might be a clue. You'll have to make your own opinion about that.
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So this is the book for you if you like to do the detective work. But let me stress again... Many of the theories are VERY stretched, but for the good ones, it is definitely worth your money if you are into Harry Potter. For an example of the set up of the book, it is divided into Chapters, then in the chapters they have FAQS, Hints, Items of interest (Clues), and Running Bits. They might say, "We saw something suspicious about the disappearance of the certain rat... Did you see a connection with the new Junior Undersecretary to the minister?"

I have fun solving stuff like that, which is why I gave it four stars (Had to knock one off for lack of some basic info I believe definitely should have been included in the questions). There is a good amount of stuff to keep you engrossed until Harry Potter 6.

(...)

Hopefully you found this informative, and a good summary of what the other users have basically been saying.

J.K. Rowling's writing is deceptively simple. On the surface, her books are populist fairy tales, Tolkien for tweens. It's easy to to dismiss Rowling on the grounds of her immense wealth, the licensing of her characters, and the merciless onslaught of merchandising, but Rowling is actually a master storyteller and a linguist of Lewis Carroll proportions. What seem like fun children's books are really meticulously crafted pieces of art. Anyone who doubts this can consult the "Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter," which explains the subtleties and nuances of Harry Potter books 1-4 in an understandable, intelligent way.

While the previous Guide was fun, easy to read, concise, and well-informed, the Guide for book 5 doesn't quite do Rowling's massive maze of a novel justice. This Guide is "hints only" -- which means that you are expected to seek out references and clues on your own. The authors send the reader on quite a few wild goose chases and seem to confuse "literary allusions" with "important and vital clues." There is also the tendency to reinforce the importance of a "concealed clue" without giving the reader sufficient information to dig it up.

For instance, there are constant references to a "big mythological deity" relating to baboon/simian running bits in book 5. The Guide tells us that this is important but we are never told where to look. Norse mythology? Greek? Egyptian? You have to give us a little more to go on, Guide! Eventually, I tracked the big mythological baboon deity down (hint: Egyptian god Babi) and after reading up on him, I wasn't sure ol' Babi had anything to do with the story at all, especially not in the context in which these supposed references to him were made. The Guide duped me, wasted my time.

Most of the "suggested reading" that the Guide refers back to throughout the book contains literature that is ALLUDED to in book 5 (and many of these allusions are questionable), and this is an important distinction. Emily Dickinson's poem "I'm Nobody" certainly seems to be directly referenced by Rowling. However, there is nothing new in this poem -- at the very most, it hints at what we discover about Neville at the end of the book. You won't miss anything if you don't hunt it down and read it, though. As for T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" and "Murder in the Cathedral," well, you could say those works have related themes, but they're really reaching. And Saki's "The Open Window" and Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Sir Galahad" and the lyrics to the Moody Blues song "The Dream?" Don't bother. There's nothing there, nothing at all.

Sorely missed are the "Rowlinguistics" sections at the end of each chapter -- the Guide is not nearly as enthusiastic about explaining the nuance of Rowling's use of language as they were in the previous guide, and that's a pity, considering most of us are not fluent in Latin and French and have trouble working these things out on our own. The Guide instead devotes its time to a few pet theories (Lupin and James performed a Switching Spell and Lupin is Harry's dad!) that frankly DO NOT have much evidence to support them. These theories are largely intuitive, without a logical leg to stand on, and we know what Hermione would have to say about that. To spend more time defending strange theories than dissecting what is ACTUALLY contained in the books is... well, does Galadriel Waters work at The Quibbler? Maybe I should try reading the Guide upside-down.

Ultimately, this guide was very disappointing, especially when stacked up against the guides to the previous books. I felt it was sloppy and rushed in places, desperate and far-fetched in others. If this is your first outing with sleuthing guides, start with the guide for books 1-4 -- they will give you most of the tools you need to unlock "Order of the Phoenix" on your own. Don't go out of your way to get this one.

After having read the Ultimate Unofficial Guide that covered the first 4 books and I felt was very interesting (providing bits of the story and explaining the underlying who what and why as you whent along), I was sure that this would follow suit.

First, know that this does not include the narration that the initial guide did, which, depending on what you're looking for, could be good or bad...

Basically, they go through each chapter, picking out phrases, and relate to things that happened in the previous books, and give very ambiguous clues as to what they're referencing (I'm still trying to figure some of them out!).

The 'Rules' and standards that they devised in the first book have been thrown out the window, and there's a whole new set of rules now, which makes things VERY confusing.

It's interesting to see where they go in this collection of clues, and a Die Hard Potter Fan should be challenged by a book like this.

The bonus punch-out laminates in the back of the book are neat too.

The only reason I'm going 4 starts instead of 5 is that I had trouble figuring out what they were referencing in each chapter, even though I had a book in front of me! Give it a shot - this really is a unique way of looking at the series!

A thoroughly enjoyable HP sleuth effort. I read the entire extant HP corpus 5 times last year (I AM NOT obsessed!) But this little gem made want to read OotP again. I missed many clues, apparently! This one goes into my permanent library for re-reading after the new HP 6 is read! WWP SCORES A PERFECT 10!

I am a 29 year old mother who has loved Harry Potter for many years. I was excited to find the first book (Mysteries of Harry Potter 1-4)and I loved it. I was a little unnerved by some of the predictions they made, but still thought-provoking...

So when I bought this book, I didn't read the title well enough and was surprised it was a hints-only book. Putting that aside, I decided to give my HP Sleuth skills a shot. I was sorely disappointed that their recommended reading list was pretty much required (not recommended) if you were to understand at all their hints. I have 3 small boys and have no time to read 80 books and poems before I even attempted to read the hints-only book. I have a Bachelor's degree in education and I still had a hard time following their running-bits, theories, and trying to decipher the character's names and such. I wanted a book that would do the really difficult, time-consuming work for me so I could spend my time making connections of my own based on really well though-out hints. This book doesn't do that for you. It was written in less than 3 months and it is obvious. THIS BOOK IS AN AUTHOR'S VERY ROUGH DRAFT THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED. I wish I could return the book and get my money back.

A waste of time, money, and energy. I have yet to see the completed version she promised everybody in 2003 to be done in a year and it is now 1/4 of the way into 2005. I would have been much more content to have sat and waited for her to complete an in-depth analysis of book 5 rather than have to pay money twice. I feel duped - and I was.

I was really disappointed in this book. While I realized it was advertised as a "hints only" book, I didn't realize how little they actually tell you. They refer you to many other books and literature which I do not have access to. And then leave you hanging. I also think the "running bits" parts are just going way too far! I think people are reading far too much into these books! I do LOVE the Harry Potter books with a passion, but this hint book was completely useless to me!