Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the script book for a play written by Jack Thorne, based on an original new HP story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling, and John Tiffany. The book picks up where the seventh HP book left off, with Harry and his friends in the future, seeing their own children off on the Hogwarts Express. It primarily follows Harry’s youngest son, Albus Severus, who, to his horror, winds up in Slytherin House where he then befriends Scorpius Malfoy, son of the notorious Draco.
For some people, I suspect the story brings up feelings of nostalgia for our long past Hogwarts heroes but I’ve never been a big fan of heavy-handed sentimentality. I’m glad we’re revisiting characters that we loved, but I would have liked to see the story move into new territory. (For the record, I had the same complaints about Star Wars.)
Warning! Spoilers follow!
I also dislike time travel as a plot device because so many people get it wrong, and this book is no exception. The two examples that stood out the most for me:
- Harry yells at Albus and threatens him with the map in timeline 2, but then references it in Act 3 Scene 11, in timeline 1 when the map should not have been “in play”, so to speak.
- The kids undo the tasks in the wrong order. If they had gone back and undone the lake task first, that would have removed timeline 3, and Voldemort with it. Plus, by undoing task 2 first, they are technically undoing it while in timeline 3, which would have residual impacts on timeline 3, and not timeline 1.
You might think this is nit-picking, but it’s the fundamental problem with time-travel plots. Whatever you do in the past, affects and alters the future, creating a new timeline, and what you do next happens within the new timeline, even if you travel to the past again. Time-travel is not interchangeable with magic. Just saying.
Rating: Skip it, unless you are highly nostalgic for the Harry Potter gang. Then at least keep some salt nearby because you’re going to need a grain or two.