A tale of a real whiz kid

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire By J.K. Rowling Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, 2000 636 pp Rp 288,000 (hardcover)

JAKARTA (JP): Who's Harry Potter? Well, that is a silly question as just about everybody in the world now knows who he is.

He is the kid wizard with the lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead.

He is the orphan who beat He Who Must Not Be Named when only a baby and took away his powers.

He is the best Seeker the Gryffindor has ever had!

Harry Potter has taken the world by storm ever since he made his debut in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (first published in England as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) in 1998.

From our slightly dull Muggle (non-magic) existence to the ever fascinating wizarding world invented by Rowling, Harry Potter has become a household name.

Harry used to live in a cupboard under the stairs in the Dursleys' house on Privet Drive.

The Dursleys -- Harry's aunt Petunia, uncle Vernon and their son Dudley -- were "Muggles" or ordinary people. They were s ordinary, in fact, that they hated to be associated with the Potters, who are quite extraordinary.

You see the Potters are wizards, and the Dursleys hate wizards.

Harry's parents died when he was a baby, killed by Lord Voldemort (who is not supposed to be named). As the lone survivor, Harry became the wonder of the wizarding world.

He was even more famous because Volde (oops, He Who Must Not Be Named) lost his powers after blasting Harry with a curse that should have killed him but only left him with the scar.

Professor Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, considered Harry safer with his Muggle aunt and uncle and left him on their doorstep.

For 10 long years, Harry did not know he was special. It was only that extraordinary things seemed to happen around him, including escaping boa constrictors and exploding glasses.

Harry was threatened with becoming a nobody when he was rescued at the age of 11 by the half-giant Hagrid from the Dursleys. He introduced him to magic and took him to Hogwarts.

Harry became a star overnight!

Along with his friends Ron Weasley and Muggle-born Hermione Granger, Harry went through some wonderful adventures which were the envy of every Muggle man, woman and child.

The Goblet of Fire is the long-awaited fourth book in the Harry Potter series (apart from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone there is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).

Harry is now 14 years old, and starting his fourth year at Hogwarts, learning more advanced lessons of Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, Divination and the hated Potions lesson with Professor Severus Snape.

His summer holidays with the Dursleys had been somewhat bearable thanks to uncle Vernon's fear of Sirius Black, Harry's escaped convict godfather.

In this fourth book, Harry does not dazzle readers with his actions as Seeker in the Quidditch game; instead he takes part in the Triwizard Tournament between three schools of magic; Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.

Quidditch fans will not be disappointed, though, as the trio of Harry, Ron and Hermione enter into the exciting game of the Quidditch World Cup.

Quidditch, of course, is the most popular game in the wizarding world. Played with 14 players on a broomstick, Quidditch has four balls instead of one.

A Quaffle to score, two Bludgers to smash into players so they fall off their brooms and a golden Snitch which the Seeker has to catch to end the game and gain 150 points.

As promised, Goblet's storyline is darker and more sinister than the first three books, with You-Know-Who getting even closer to Harry than in the previous three books.

It also shows Harry as an older and wiser person. He is not as reckless as in Prisoner, when he sneaked out of the school in an invisible cloak to join his friends at Hogsmeade (the world's only village for wizards). Still, he is daring enough to make readers anxiously turn every page as they worry about his safety.

There are a lot more creatures in the story, and an unusual amount of slimy, squishy stuff to boot.

It especially seems that Hagrid's love of dangerous creatures got the better of him, bringing the Blast-Ended Skrewts to the Care of Magical Creatures lesson that he teaches.

Goblet also sees Harry and friends experiencing romance for the first time. All three major characters are in and out of love in this fourth book with some stubbornly avoiding seeing the obvious.

All in all Goblet is a fun book to read, with a fast-paced, easy to follow storyline that will soon have readers begging for the next installment in the saga.

-- Tantri Yuliandini