Nick Jeffery – The Running Grave Review

October 5, 2023 by Leave a Comment

The Running Grave is another mammoth of a book at well over nine hundred pages in the print edition, and with the audio book over 34 hours, this is the longest book of the series. At this rate we have 3,000 pages left in the Strike-Ellacott saga, which is only 400 short of the whole Harry Potter canon.

Despite it’s size the pace of the book clips along at a fair rate of knots, helped by a good deal nervous energy and excitement. The cast of thousands never seemed oppressive, being neatly compartmentalised between the UHC, the agency, the families and clients. I found myself having to resist the urge read too quickly (as I did with The Ink Black Heart to the detriment of my enjoyment of that book). Straight out of the gate this is my favourite of the series by some margin, and after four days reading the print and digital edition, I am now re-reading via the Robert Glenister narrated audiobook.

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Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Nick Jeffery, Substack Post

Evan Willis: Running Grave Review

October 5, 2023 by Leave a Comment

I received my digital copies (Kindle and audiobook) of The Running Grave on Tuesday morning, and started reading through as fast as I could, eager to get to the story. I finished reading late on Thursday. Except perhaps out of a care to avoid recency bias, I would say that it is my favorite Strike book yet. It is brilliantly complex in plotting, its structural and motivic ties to the other books are well constructed and deeply fun to find, and Rowling has surpassed herself in the depth of depiction of her characters. I was also interested in seeing how various theories of mine were stacking up to our large new data-set. I will begin with my favorite new piece of parallel series connection, the degree to which Rowling made sure that there was a parallel to the “Tale of the Three Brothers” as centerpiece of The Running Grave. Back in July, I proposed a theory that the series was structured as a Pythagorean Tetractys (the number 10 represented in triangular form) in parallel with the ten books of the Potter novels, Ickabog, Casual Vacancy, and Christmas Pig. I think the main structure of my theory holds up, but half of the justification for it needed to be rejected. I conclude with a few miscellaneous notes. Spoilers for the entire book follow.

For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free.

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Evan Willis, Substack Post

J. K. Rowling and the Missing Greyhound Tweet

April 25, 2023 by 2 Comments

Saturday was a busy day for me, it was the final for the Wales Rugby championship to be played at our national stadium and I was there for the afternoon alternately watching the games and celebrating with colleagues. I was aware via alerts on my phone that there was some twitter activity between J. K. Rowling and a well known English Lawyer Jolyon Maugham. By the time I got home, tired (and it must be admitted in a fairly advanced state of liquid refreshment), I turned in for an early night.

When I awoke the next morning there was an alert on my phone for a @JK_Rowling tweet. It looked like the start of a story or anecdote, although the tweet was listed as 6/, presumably the sixth tweet of a series. Pressing the alert sent me to the message “Tweets are unavailable” which is usually the sign that the tweet has been deleted. I confirmed this by checking her timeline, and sure enough the tweet wasn’t there, nor were there any signs of the other tweets in the series.

In the past when Rowling deletes a tweet quickly, due to an error, there is some chatter about this on Twitter. In the past we have also seen occasions when entirely fake tweets have been presented as the tweet that was deleted.

In this case there was silence. I checked all of the replies to her @JK_Rowling twitter account for twenty minutes before and after the time the alert was sent and there was nothing. I was expecting to see at least one or two replies to a deleted tweet. I checked the online haunts of fellow Rowling obsessives, and it seems none of them received this alert.

The tweet contained nothing objectional and appeared to be the start of a story : Rowling was preparing to turn in for the night, when the dogs asked to be let out. Her greyhound started making a commotion as if it had found something. The existence of the greyhound helps to date this story, she adopted a greyhound called Sapphire in late 2007, whereas she currently has two west highland terriers called Bronte and Emma.

Was the tweet real? It isn’t impossible for some clever fellow to spoof a twitter alert, but this isn’t easy and I have to question why, if they were to go to so much trouble, they wouldn’t have something a bit more incendiary. I have a screenshot, but this really is trivial to fake, and I do not include it here for that reason.

My guess is that J. K. Rowling was drafting a series of tweets to publish at some later date, when she accidently published one. Realising this as she did it, she quickly deleted it. Once a tweet is deleted, Twitter will stop pushing notifications. Mine was one of the few that was pushed before the delete was registered. If this is true, keep an eye out for a greyhound story shortly!

 

Filed Under: Nick Jeffery, Twitter

Wizard Rock – For Jo by RiddleTM

April 17, 2023 by 1 Comment

I was listening the latest episode of The Three Broomsticks podcast this weekend, where talk turned to Potter inspired music and Wizard Rock. As a latecomer to the fandom I was aware that Wizard Rock existed but otherwise entirely ignorant. One of the first bands mentioned was a duo called RiddleTM. Judging from their website they haven’t been active for more than ten years, but the music is still available on Sound Cloud. 

One of their songs has encapsulated to me how it must have felt to grow up with the Harry Potter stories and the growth of both the fandom and the author. For Jo by RiddleTM is a profoundly moving gratitude in ballad form, and because it moved me to tears, I’m sharing it with you here:

For Jo Lyrics
July 21st 1997 and no one had heard of you.
But one decade later there’s queues at the door
People placing their order and shouting for more.
How far you have come
How far you have come.
Enchanted the world with a story you wrote
Of a boy who was ordinary
And now parents read to children who have long been asleep
‘Cause they want to know more about wizard Harry.
How far you have come
How far you have come.

(Chorus)
So Ms Rowling
Here is a song I wrote for you
‘Cause I’m grateful for all that you’ve taught me
And inspired me to do.
You showed me good triumphs over evil
And you taught the whole world how to read
So thank you Ms JK Rowling
Thank you so much for Harry.

Though all 7 books have been finished and read
The magic is still burning strong.
And we who were there will never forget
The anticipation we felt for so long.
How far you have come
How far you have come.
And we grow up with Harry, the Boy Who Lived,
Who has helped us through all the bad times.
And the theories and mysteries, the questions and clues
Were the talk of the forums and in our hearts too.
How far you have come
How far you have come

(Chorus)

So we’ll raise our pumpkin juice and our butterbeer
And we’ll sing about the great things you’ve done.
And we’ll be happy now Voldemort’s defeated
And we’ll cheer for Harry who won.

(Chorus)

So Ms Rowling
This is the song I wrote for you.
Here’s to you now and to your future
And I just wanted to say thank you.

For Jo Lyrics by RiddleTM

Filed Under: Nick Jeffery, Potter Fandom, Shared Text

Ink Black Horcruxes

April 16, 2023 by 4 Comments

Much work has been done tracing the parallels between The Ink Black Heart and The Half Blood Prince. One of more intriguing ones is the plot point of horcruxes and the search for them. Anomie’s sock puppet Twitter accounts were first identified (I think) by Sandy, here in the comments, just a few weeks after the book was published:

– The sock puppet accounts seem to parallel horcruxes, especially when both are designed to bully and torture perceived enemies

Sandy in the Hogwarts Professor Comments

Is this a viable parallel or a reach to far? Find out what the top parallel-pundits think after the jump!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Louise Freeman