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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling, Read by Jim Dale
Release: February 1, 2000
Publisher: Listening Library
11 hours+
Received: Library
Format: Audiobook CD
Rating:
4.5 Nuts
Description: Harry Potter is lucky to reach the age of thirteen, since he has already survived the murderous attacks of the feared Dark Lord on more than one occasion. But his hopes for a quiet term concentrating on Quidditch are dashed when a maniacal mass-murderer escapes from Azkaban, pursued by the soul-sucking Dementors who guard the prison. It’s assumed that Hogwarts is the safest place for Harry to be. But is it a coincidence that he can feel eyes watching him in the dark, and should he be taking Professor Trelawney’s ghoulish predictions seriously?
Review: The Book: This is where I started truly loving Harry Potter. I’d been hooked pretty easily by book one but book three was when I really started to love and care about these characters more than any other I’d previously read. This is the book that drove me to write fan fiction, long before I discovered that it was a community that actually existed online. This was the book that made my friends and I run around the playground with sticks shouting Latin at each other and hurling ourselves onto the ground. And they only got better from here.
I think one of the reasons I liked this book so much was that it was the first hint that things were about to get a whole lot darker. Book three was the bridge between the somewhat dark first and second books and the extremely dark four through seven. You’ve got someone from the outside with assumed evil intentions breaking into Hogwarts and causing some serious chaos (pun not intended). Though I have to say I never really understood calling Hogwarts a safe place, did you guys read the first two books? But the big thing that really darkened this book up was the stuff of nightmares, the Dementors. Those things still give me the heebee geebees any time they’re mentioned.
This book also introduces two of my favorite characters and gives me some background (and page time) for my numero uno favorite character. The new characters are of course Remus and Sirius. My favorite character is Snape. The funny thing was that I didn’t really love Snape until the second time I read through this book. Somewhere in my second read my feelings turned for love to hate to hate to love to just plain love. Your guess is as good as mine. But I’ve always enjoyed Snape’s story, always thought that he was interesting as a character, even if he was unpleasant. Maybe somewhere that turned into my appreciation and eventually love for him. Remus and Sirius eventually gained me one of my present day best friends, after I recognized a reference to Wolfstar on her notebook on the first day of high school.
The Narration: Have I mentioned that I love Jim Dale yet? With each book these audiobooks get longer. With some narrators who do voices you can sometimes hear them start to get muddled as the narrator gets further and further in. Whether it’s days of reading the same stuff? I don’t know. But it happens. This doesn’t happen with Jim Dale’s Harry Potter, or any of the other character. Each voice is as strong and uniques as when he began book one, only now he has added more characters and voices to what he has to remember. As sassy as ever, I can’t wait til later books when JKR’s sass is out in full force, because I know Dale’s will be too.
Onwards to book 4! A Harry Christmas to you!
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