It's very funny. Every chapter has something. From Chapter 48 (about two pages long):
And when Harry had offered that hypothesis, Draco had claimed that he could remember a story - Harry hoped to Cthulhu that this one story was just a fairy tale, it had that ring to it, but there was a story - about Salazar Slytherin sending a brave young viper on a mission to gather information from other snakes.
If any snake a Parselmouth had talked to, could make other snakes self-aware by talking to them, then...
Then...
Harry didn't even know why his mind was going all "then... then..." when he knew perfectly well how the exponential progression would work, it was just the sheer moral horror of it that was blowing his mind.
And what if someone had invented a spell like that to talk to cows?
I thought it was quite good. If you basically like Harry Potter but find it infuriating how often the protagonists problems could have been solved in five minutes if they would have just told the adults... then HPMOR might interest you. Now, it's a didactic book, it's rather long, and you may or may not agree with the author's worldview, so whether you'll really enjoy it I can't say. But it's very well-written and in some ways tells a more "believable" Harry Potter story than the originals.
I feel like basically the only way in which the original Harry Potter story is more believable is that in the original story, almost everyone is impressively thoughtless
Well, in HPMOR, Harry discovers at the end he would have solved a quite major problem very early on if he had bothered to inform Dumbledore of some extremely important facts regarding Professor Quirrel.
Absolutely. It's probably the best book i've ever read.
Describing it as a Harry Potter fanfic is technically accurate but really doesn't do it justice. It's basically a story of what would happen if an extremely smart, educated and technically minded person would do if put into the role of Harry Potter.
Completely agree with other commenter. It's a very interesting read. I don't necessarily agree with every statement but it's a learning experience that is made exceptionally enjoyable by fantastic writing.
Hmm. I disagree with several things in that review, but I think this is su3su2u1’s biggest mistake:
> The author is practically screaming “wouldn’t it be lazy that Harry’s darkside is because he is a horcrux?”
This is completely backwards. Eliezer goes to great lengths to put big clues all over the place that Harry is not a normal 11–year old, with the intent that the reader will _notice_ that something is wrong and try to figure out what it could be. Yes, “Harry is a Horcrux” might feel like an anticlimax, or even a cliche, because that’s how the original books went. But you’re supposed to look even deeper and realize what a horcrux really is. In order to work, a Horcrux has to preserve a copy of the caster’s memories, personality, intentions, etc. What really happened that night in Godric’s Hollow is that Voldemort copied his own memories and personality into the brain of an infant named Harry Potter.
I think it is fair to say that Eliezer is treating this as much like a Fair–Play Mystery as he can, so that it is possible for the user to make correct predictions about the end of the story. Not everyone likes this type of story, but for those who do the game of putting the book down at a certain point so that you can puzzle out the murderer’s identity is a big part of the draw. The “rules” of the Fair–Play Mystery are there to ensure that the author remembers to actually make all the clues available to the reader, that it isn’t always just the butler, etc.
To that end, he has several important scenes that examine the consequences of erasing memories, or adding new ones. The most blatant is when Harry is training with Mr Bester, who has all memory of the training erased after each session. As a result, Mr Bester ends up asking the same questions over and over, and being surprised and troubled by the same revelations each time he reads Harry’s mind. And then of course there is Rita Skeeter, and later Hermione, to hammer the lesson home.
Worst "book" I've ever read, legitimately. I would read almost anything else over that. I've never read the review and I only read 5-6 chapters of the fanfic, but everything in that review rings true. The story was so hollow and lifeless that I couldn't bring myself to read further.
Actually, I agree with lots of the stuff said by the reviewer, but most of them are not such dealbreakers for me as they are for him. At least I read the book as having fun with all the gaps in the wizard world and the personal fantasies of the author are on the back burner.
The reviewer is seemingly an extremely bright and well educated person and also seems to be more familiar with most of the concepts introduced in the books than the original author. The reviewer also an educator and it makes sense that Eliezer's ham-fisted attempts to teach through writing would be annoying to him.
The critique goes deeper. This is where it's most on point:
"So I wonder- is this story ACTUALLY teaching people things? Or is it just a way for people who already know some of the material to feel superior to Hariezer’s many foils?"
Actually that's exactly what rubs me wrong about the entire "rationalist community". A lot of it is convoluted ways for people to congratulate themselves how much smarter than everyone else they are.
Thanks for linking this - I've read HPMOR half a dozen times (because it's entertaining, not because it's a great work of art) and this is a really good and entertaining discussion of it
It starts terrible (I have read extracts of the first chapters to others and they don't fail to get laughs that the author did not intend) but you get used to its and the writer improves making it a very nice read by the end.
Overall, I would recommend to not give up in the first chapters.
