Blog

Yesterday, I watched the 2008 movie The Secrets of Moonacre for the first time. My parents were really excited for me to see it, since they know how much I love fantasy. It’s based on the book The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. I’ve never read The Little White Horse, but I understand it’s a good book. The movie is supposed to be a loose adaption of the book. I liked it.

The movie starts with the main character, Maria Merryweather, becoming an orphan when her father dies. He leaves her a book about Moonacre. Soon after, Maria and her governess, Miss Heliotrope, leave London and head to the countryside to live with Maria’s uncle Benjamin.

Maria and Miss Heliotrope are attacked by bandits as the enter Moonacre Valley, but Benjamin brushes it off and tells them not to go into the nearby forest. Maria does and learns that Moonacre Valley has been cursed, thanks to the Merryweathers and their neighbors, the De Noirs. The only way to save Moonacre is to find a magical pearl necklace and throw it into the ocean. Maria suspects that the pearls are either in Merryweather Manor or De Noir Castle.

I liked how the story never lost my attention. It introduced us to quite a few characters, but I was easily able to tell them apart. I especially liked Loveday De Noir. She was one of the first to help Maria on her journey and taught her how to be a true heroine.

Earlier this month, I read a book called Aeon Legion: Labyrinth by J.P. Beaubien. I’ve known about this book for a while, thanks to J.P.’s youtube channel: Terrible Writing Advice. Now that I’ve finished the book, I have to say, it was really good.

The story follows a girl named Terra Mason, who is average and an underachiever. She’s just coasting through life without a clear direction. She likes geology, but she doesn’t know how to make that into a career. All Terra wants is to become a true heroine.

The story starts a few months before she graduates from high school. Terra’s in the public library and a group of Nazis invade. These Nazis have time traveled from 1940. Their leader, Hanns, is looking for a history book, so he’ll know how World War II ends.

Terra, with the help of a time traveling cop named Alya Silverwind, stops Hanns from getting a history book. Alya is impressed and decides to invite Terra into the time cop training program. They’re known as the Aeon Legion.

Overall, I liked J.P.’s book. Terra has to work for everything she gets. Other characters even say she’s not a chosen one, but a heroine of choice. She’s not directed by fate and destiny, but her own choices. That’s pretty refreshing. I did get a bit lost when J.P. was describing the singularity technology that makes time travel work, but I put that down to me reading more fantasy than sci-fi books. I’m sure if I was a bigger sci-fi fan, than it would have made more sense.

My final rating for Aeon Legion: Labyrinth is five out of five stars. It was a good book.

I got my kittens, Jenny and Cannoli, about six months ago. Here are some pictures of Jenny and Cannoli from when I first got them and what they look like now.

Last night, my kitten Jenny escaped outside. My mom had opened the front door to let our adult cat Rufus in and Jenny ran outside “as fast as lightning,” as my mom put it. She raised the alarm and we all dropped what we were doing to search. Jenny’s a black cat and impossible to see at night. I was frantically turning on my phone’s flashlight app, when Jenny ran inside. She knows how dangerous it is outside and how safe our house is. We don’t know why she went outside in the first place, but I’m just happy that she found her own her way back inside.

Happy Halloween!

I love Harry Potter. It’s the book series that inspired me to become an author. That being said, the series isn’t without its plot holes. The worst example, in my opinion, are the Department of Mysteries chapters in “Order of the Phoenix.”

Any Harry Potter fan knows what happened. While Harry is taking his History of Magic exam at the end of the school year, he receives a dream message from Voldemort and believes that Sirius is being tortured. Harry, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Ron, and Ginny go to Umbridge’s office and Harry tries to use the Floo network to see if Sirius is still in Grimmauld Place. They are promptly captured by Umbridge. Harry and Hermione led her into the forest and Umbridge is carried off by the centaurs. At sundown, the six heroes ride thestrals to the Ministry of Magic, travel through the Department of Mysteries, and find the Death Eaters. There’s a fight, the Order of the Phoenix arrive, and Sirius is killed. Dumbledore and Voldemort have their duel and Harry is transported back to Hogwarts just as the sun rises.

On the surface, this sounds like a pretty straight-forward, action-packed plot. Normally, I would find this enjoyable and just accept it for what it is. The problem is the timing. In June, the sun goes down in northern Scotland at about 9:15pm and the sun rises at about 4:45am. This means from the time Harry and the others leave on the thestrals to when Harry appears in Dumbledore’s office, we have seven and a half hours in between.

Going back a bit, Harry starts his History of Magic test at 2:00pm. The book doesn’t say for sure, but I think the test lasted about two hours. Harry has the dream vision right before the test ends, so our starting point is 4:00pm. Harry talks to Hermione and Ron and explains the vision, while they try and convince him it was all a dream. Then, Harry has to race upstairs to get the invisibility cloak and enter Umbridge’s office. He talks to Kreacher, who lies and says that Sirius is gone. Umbridge then catches Harry in her office. Hermione convinces her to follow her and Harry into the Forbidden Forest. I can’t see any of this taking too long. It should be about 4:30pm by this point.

Harry, Hermione, and Umbridge enter the forest and wander around for a while. The book says that they walked for a long time, but Umbridge isn’t too patient. So, while it may have seemed like a long time to Harry (who is worried about Sirius, so of course it feels like a long time), it probably wasn’t any more than thirty minutes. Their confrontation with the centaurs couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. We’re now at about 5:15pm.

Luna, Neville, Ron, and Ginny catch up to Harry and Hermione almost immediately after Umbridge is dragged off. They then have a short argument about who’s going to save Sirius and who’s staying behind. During this time, quite a few thestrals show up. Luna helps Hermione, Ginny, and Ron onto their thestrals. This can’t have taken long. It’s now about 5:30pm.

Now, we come to our first problem. By my calculations, it should have only been about an hour and a half since Harry had his dream vision. If that was the case, though, Harry’s team would have left Hogwarts roughly four hours before sundown. The only way for them to leave at 9:15-9:30pm would be for Harry to have his dream vision at about 8:00pm. But that would have been a six hour History of Magic test.

Assuming that Harry leaves at sundown, however, now we have another problem with time. Harry says that he had never moved so fast. That would make sense. The Hogwarts Express leaves at 11:00am and presumably gets to the school at about 7:00pm. That would be an eight hour trip. If we’re at about 9:15pm, we still have seven and a half hours to go.

Harry and the others get to the Ministry and race to the Department of Mysteries. They then spend some time going through the brain room, the Veil of Death room, are stopped by the room where the Unspeakables study love, and finally make it to the Hall of Prophecies. Honestly, they don’t seem to spend much time in any of these rooms, so I’m saying it’s been thirty minutes since they entered the Ministry.

They have their confrontation with the Death Eaters (fifteen minutes), followed by a battle, where they get split up into two groups and reunite in the Veil of Death room (forty-five minutes). That adds another hour.

Only now do the Order of the Phoenix show up. It’s been about a hour and a half since they entered the Ministry. There’s another short battle, where Sirius sadly dies at the end and Harry chases after Bellatrix (fifteen minutes). Dumbledore and Voldemort have their duel. It is impressive, but again, I don’t think it took too long (fifteen minutes). Two hours after Harry arrives at the Ministry, Fudge enters and sees Voldemort. Harry is then sent back to Hogwarts at 4:45am, just in time for sunrise.

If the Department of Mysteries battle really took about two hours, then Harry would have reached the Ministry at 2:45am. That is five and a half hours on his thestral. So, yeah, it does work. Harry still travels faster on a thestral than on the Hogwarts Express. He can still make it back to Hogwarts on time. The problem is: why was Harry so slow?

Harry believes that Sirius is being tortured by Voldemort. He doesn’t find out he’s been tricked until at least half-an-hour after he enters the Ministry. That’s about 3:15am. If the vision happened at 4:00pm the previous day, that’s over eleven hours. Why would Voldemort still be torturing Sirius eleven hours later? Wouldn’t he have gotten bored and simply killed Sirius long before Harry made it to the Hall of Prophecies?

For that matter, what took the Order of the Phoenix so long to get there? They don’t show up until about 4:15am. Dumbledore said Snape warned the Order that Harry was gone and they left immediately. I don’t think it would take Snape too long to search the Forbidden Forest for Harry and Hermione. So, either Snape told the Order and they took their sweet time getting there or, more likely, Snape delayed as long as possible and only told the Order at the last minute.

Any way you look at this, there are problems with the timing. There are just too many things that could have gone wrong. The biggest is that Voldemort could have killed Sirius at any point during that five-and-a-half hour flight. Why didn’t Harry simply ask his thestral to fly him back to the castle or Hogsmede? He could have Flooed directly to the Ministry. If Harry was as worried about Sirius as we know he is, why wouldn’t he go for the fastest option?

I love Harry Potter, despite my criticisms. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have gone through all these calculations. I just wish the author had thought this sequence through a bit more. If she had sent Harry directly to the Ministry through the Floo network, it would have kept the readers’ adrenaline up, ready for an action scene. Instead, the tour through the Department of Mysteries, while interesting, ruined the pacing for me.

Still, you can’t deny J.K. Rowling is an amazing author. People are still talking about Harry Potter, even after all these years. Thanks for all your hard work, J.K. Rowling. I will always love your books.