As for my sophomoric opinion, I think that her story-telling in general is masterful, and her characters loveable, even if I love to hate them! (Something I value a great deal in a story, as a reader...) I'd say her weakness is not going into enough detail at times about the environments in which the characters find themselves.

I'd love to hear some opinions of the more experienced and talented writers here!
 

I agree with you on the strengths 100%. I think she's got 2 main weakness. The first is the horrible plot hole in the fourt book. (There were minor plot holes in some of the others, but not as bad as #4). The other one is more general, and I don't now how to put it into words. There are some periphery details that seem to be missing from her stories. I understand that there are some things Harry doesn't know about his parents and background, and that these details will be filled in later, but for some reason he doesn't seem curious about them, despite his insatiable curiosity about everything else. I don't even know what they did for a living to get all that gold they left him. This isn't the sort of thing that's going to keep me from reading further if I knew the answer. If I was an orphan, and I found out my parents were the heroes that his parents were, I'd ask all manner of questions to find out about them. As it is, Hermoine seems to know more about him than he does. And Hermoine is the other hole...she's the least developed character in the story, I think, at least in proportion to her importance in the stories. She's one of the main trio, but we don't know antyhing about her past except that she has muggle parents and they're dentists. And her personality, which started out with "brain" has not gone on to evolve much past that label.
 

*SPOILER WARNING*

Unless there's another one I'm missing too I think Christine's referring to the fact that why didn't whoever the guy was who smuggled the portkey into Hogwarts (I forget his name)simply grab hold of Harry whilst holding it to take him to where Voldemort was instead of taking the risk of putting it in the middle of the maze? Rather than do it then in full view of everyone and with a risk Harry might not be first to reach it, he could have just grabbed hold of Harry somewhere quiet and been done with it.

[This message has been edited by Gwalchmai (edited May 06, 2004).]
 

Here's my smart-aleck response: In a recent interview with JKR, she mentioned that some wizards, the Weasleys included, are taught at home before going to Hogwarts. So, being homeschooled, they probably learned all the "everyday" stuff they needed to know at home! (Since subjects can be learned faster when a student gets one-on-one attention, and doesn't have to wait 5 minutes while every member of the class turns to page 48... or whatever.)

Homeschool mother and advocate ,
~L.L.
 

And yes, that was the plot hold to which I referred. but SPOILER WARNING....to

fill in the gaps it was Professor Moody who made the port key that took Harry to Voldemort and not so much that he could have grabbed him (because as Hermoine points out at least a million times, you can't just apparate or disapparate inside Hogwarts), but he could have given Harry a pencil that was really a port key....I mean anything could be a port key. They only thing I can figure (and if it's true she sure didn't spell it out like she usually does) is that Voldemort intended to take him from the maze, kill him, and then deposit him back in the maze so that no one would suspect his return, they would all think Harry died in the course of trying to complete the maze. (Actually, I just thought of that...it never occurred to me before, but it's not a bad thought.)