The Half-Blood Prince

We're a long way from the brightly magical world a wide-eyed Harry had sprung on him — and us — in 'The Philosopher's Stone'. Death Eaters are on the rampage, wizards and muggles alike are dying, werewolves and zombies have joined Voldemort — and if that doesn't convince you that dark times await in the latest 608 pages, then try this: the Weasley twins have become serious businessmen, their joke shop now a supplier of defences against the Dark Arts.

On the back of Harry's inevitable destiny being formally proclaimed in the prophecy at the end of 'The Order of The Phoenix', the battle with Voldemort could only take on grander proportions. And so, in his sixth year at Hogwarts, Harry finds himself shoring up the world that at first offered him sanctuary, but which now depends on him if the Death Eaters aren't to hold sway.

And so — in building up to the crescendo which will play out in the final book (can you imagine the hysteria when that one gets launched?) — Rowling doesn't hold back in her depiction of a world that needs... well, it needs Harry Potter to save it, and that's been on the cards from book one, I suppose.

And while he inevitably will, it's going to take some doing — 'The Half-Blood Prince' ends not with a romantic flourish, but a cold assessment of the path Harry faces if Voldemort and his sinister army are to be overcome.

What really punches you in the stomach, though, is the character Rowling kills off — we've known for a while someone wouldn't make book seven, and you had a pretty good idea who it would be, but that doesn't make the actual event any easier.

Throw in the horcrux — Rowling's most sinister construction yet — and you have one very unsettling year at Hogwarts.

But you also have one marvellously constructed read. There are those who will have charged out to buy 'The Half-Blood Prince' simply because it is the next Harry Potter, and will devour it as such without savouring the scope Rowling gives to Harry's world.

There is nowhere near the same heavy introspection that weighed down parts of 'Order of the Phoenix', and standard features of past books — the unbearable family Harry has grown up with, for instance, and even Quidditch — are played down in favour of more important exploration.

Chief amongst that exploration is Tom Riddle — Lord Voldemort — and his ascendancy from malevolent orphan to Dark Lord. It's helped considerably by use of the Pensieve, another of Rowling's ingenious devices, through which both the extent of Voldemort's evil, and the path to destroying him, become apparent. For a 16-year-old, Harry has more challenges than most…

But Harry is only 16, and lest we forget that, Rowling builds in reminders aplenty, the foremost one being teenage romance: Harry (deep breath) has a new girlfriend, and balances taking on the most evil being in the universe, with the (equally demanding) challenge of young romantic angst.

Harry's chief quality as a character is the ordinariness that offsets his wizarding ability; in watching him grapple with matters of the heart, he becomes still more endearing.

He also grapples with the insufferable Snape, whose true allegiance is finally revealed — or is it? — and Professor Slughorn, a replacement for the unbearable Delores Umbridge (still the most vile smear on Hogwarts' staffing history), who adds yet another dimension to the school's already cosmopolitan make-up.

Rowling relishes the construction of her scoundrels, almost as much as she delights in the exotic magical creations that once more abound. Potions, herbology, care of magical creatures — you know exactly which subjects Rowling would have loved to have taken at school, and her flair for inventive magical nomenclature remains unbowed.

And that sums up the essence of the latest Potter adventure, and indeed the other five books to date: Rowling's seemingly limitless horizons when building the world to which we are so irresistibly drawn. The hype of the book has been ridiculous, but despite that, there's nothing to suggest it has undermined the legacy Rowling has created, and for all its dark and unnerving revelations, it's another addictive read.

And it leaves us one step away from the most terrifying Harry Potter moment of all. Not the last, terrible battle with Lord Voldemort, which will play out in the seventh and final book; but the final page of that next Potter adventure, when we see the last of the wizard we now know so well. It's a terrifying thought.