~ Goblet of Fire is where the series starts to go off, although much of it is enjoyable. Things like the Unforgivable Curses are introduced here, which makes me wonder whether Rowling hadn’t thought them up till this point; this would prove to be the beginning in a series of ideas that she should have introduced earlier than she did. This is not to say that the book wasn’t a fun read, but the problems with this one were more noticeable than any problems with the previous three.

Among a number of other problems I won’t get into, Goblet of Fire also saw the return of Dobby, which I will elaborate on later in this article. The climax, although by no means terrible, did end in somewhat of a deus ex machina that could have been prevented by a brief Mad-Eye Moody lecture on Priori Incantatem. I didn’t think Amos Diggory casting a vaguely similar spell on Harry’s wand at the beginning to show it was possible was enough to excuse this.

Of course, this was the one in which Voldemort returned, and here was where the more-or-less episodic nature of the books changed to a more epic style, something I think worked against the books in the end.