Harry Potter: He's older; It's worth the length

As we workaday Muggles settle into summer and our summer reading, ``Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'' is beckoning, the fourth installment of J. K. Rowling's fantasy series about boarding-school life for the orphaned Harry at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The lines at bookstores have disappeared, the precious volumes have been lugged home, the hype has trickled off. But the question remains: Is it a worthwhile exercise this summer to stretch out on that backyard lawn chair with a time-eating, rib-crushing, 734-page children's book on one's chest?

The answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes - for children and also for adults.

It is no small feat for Rowling to keep the magic going in this novel. She has set a series of tasks for herself as challenging as the ones Harry undertakes in the perilous Triwizard Tournament: Sustain multiple plotlines. Keep familiar characters believable and interesting, even as they mature into pubescent wizardry. Introduce new and compelling characters. Refer back to the previous installments while laying the groundwork for the next ones. Be funny. Be scary. Allude to contemporary social issues without preaching. Oh yes, and write a book that will appeal to adults as well as children.

A lesser practitioner would have been intimidated into agonizing writer's block. But Rowling rose to the challenge in an engaging novel that is compelling, accessible, and impressively even in quality.

Her prose is strong and often sings, even though she occasionally reveals imperfect pitch. The story drags a bit periodically, generally when the action slows down and Harry and his allies attempt to move the story along by ruminating out loud about villains' motives. ("Harry nodded. Silence fell between them again, Dumbledore extracting thoughts every now and then.")

And it is hard at times to reconcile the writer who came up with the ingenious notion of the "Pensieve" (a stone basin into which one pours excess thoughts on stressful days, and then examines them at one's leisure) with the one who goes for the cheap laugh by titling a reference book "Men Who Love Dragons Too Much."

It is true that the book is heavily derivative, and there are those who will sniff at Rowling's borrowings. Literary references abound - to George Orwell, to Jonathan Swift, to Lewis Carroll, to folkloric themes involving giants - crowding the pages like so many wing-flapping hippogriffs.

But these are minor concerns given how much delight this book will bring to readers.

With any series, it is tempting to ask whether the new book measures up to the previous ones. In the case of Harry Potter, the matter seems irrelevant. Each book in the series brings Harry along through another school year, and by volume four we are solidly invested in the Hogwarts crowd, reading less with an eye to comparison than for updates on our old friends.

The Hogwarts characters are another year older in "The Goblet of Fire," and they've matured without changing their identities. Harry's friend Hermione, always prone to idealism and soft-heartedness, has taken on a cause in her adolescence. (She is opposed to the enslavement of house-elves, and has started organizing to end their oppression.) Their chum Ron Weasley is as loyal as ever, but at 14, he clearly has his issues, and they're starting to trip him up. A lifetime of sibling rivalry and family poverty has exaggerated his jealousies and made him fiercely competitive and insecure.

And our hero Harry is coming into his own, for better or worse. He unfolds as a complex character prone to stubbornness, self-centeredness, and procrastination; you want to scream at him for wasting so much time inviting a girl to the dance, and blowing his chance to snag his first choice. Yet we hail his utter decency, and nearly weep for him at his vulnerable moments, as when he longs for a caring mother figure and yet his tears can't seem to fall. (Pity the poor witch who lands this guy. She'll have her hands full nudging him to emote.)

And Dobby's back. The affectionate if badly dressed house-elf, much missed in volume three, has returned in "The Goblet of Fire," making yet another strange sartorial statement with a tea cozy for a hat. We're also happy to see Moaning Myrtle, still kvetching constantly from her residence in the S-bend in the plumbing. And Nearly Headless Nick, a Hogwarts ghost with a partially severed neck. And the anthropomorphized Sorting Hat, which assigns Hogwarts freshmen to their proper Houses.

These returnees are welcome in part because they give the novel the richness and eccentricities of real life. They are well matched by memorable new characters like the zaftig half-giant Madame Maxime, in denial about her girth (" 'Alf-giant? Moi? - I'ave big bones," she insists). Beware the horrifying horde of Death Eaters, the sycophantic followers of the evil Voldemort.

Rowling has the rare ability to take children's fantasy worlds and their workaday worlds with equal seriousness, and she speaks to both in "Goblet of Fire." The ending gallops along to a nail-biting conclusion, and yes, someone dies, and no, it's not Harry. He will be back soon, we can only hope, to advance to another form at Hogwarts. We do not relish his graduation.