So this past weekend Potter mania once again reared its head as the “eighth” book about “the boy who lived” hit the shelves at bookstores all over the world. The latest book, which is in script form is based on the new play by JK Rowling “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”. They held a Potter event at my local Barnes and Nobles, which I attended. Barnes and Nobles had a lot of events going on, there were scavenger hunts, a Hogwarts sorting stations where you put on a sorting hat and got sorted into the various houses. there were puzzles, stations to draw pictures. even a Harry Potter quiz. if you did not pre-order the book, you got a ticket with a letter on the back of it designating which group you lined up with. I was lucky enough to get a ticket with group B on it, which meant i was in the first group after the pre-orders. the bookstore i was in, was not that cowded, but as it got closer to the midnight onsale time, more and more people started showing up. Barnes and Nobles kept things very orderly, and once midnight hit, and the book went onsale, i was probably through the line in around 25 minutes.
I have not read the book yet, however my fiancee read it in under 2 hours and she enjoyed it very much. she is a big potter fan, so the fact that she read it in one sitting is the best review i can give for it. Although harry Potters story is done, the next book to be released will be a script format of the next movie “Fantastic Beasts and Where to find Them”, which will be released in November 2016.
It is a wonderful continuation of the series. You can tell by the writing style of the play that J.K. Rowling is not the only writer. (Which we already knew.) However the new story fits comfortably in the Harry Potter world and takes places directly after the epilogue of the Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. Overall a very enjoyable play. My only critique is unlike the books that take time to build up to the main story; because The Cursed Child is a play the story is very fast.