The Advance Review Copy of this book arrived at my house two days ago. I was nervous when I was first approached by the publisher with the chance to read this book before anyone else. Should I tell my friends? (No.) Should I allow the glow of awe that our little website got noticed by Scholastic color my review of this long-awaited sequel to the best-selling book series in history? (Probably not.)  Should I squee?  (Oh yes.)

Of course I devoured it, even though at 980 pages it dwarfs "Deathly Hallows" easily. My kids tiptoed around me and brought extra sodas to me on request. Two days, and I still haven't slept or bathed, but I had to come online to say this: it was totally worth the wait.

"Curse of the Inferi" picks up at the beginning of what would be the next year of school. Hogwarts is still damaged from the last battle, and no one is completely recovered from the events of "Deathly Hallows." Grief and worries about who's going to get custody of poor Teddy Lupin aside, Harry's got problems of his own, and they start with not having graduated last year or even attended class. For someone who wants to be an Auror, he lacks a high school diploma, so it's back to the ruins, and bad recent memories, of Hogwarts castle to finish up his senior year. Ron and Hermione are there, and Ginny and Luna (who were a year behind before this). But as classes resume, strange things are seen around the grounds. Ron swears he's seen Fred hanging around the place. Harry believes Fred is a ghost, but later suspects he's losing his own mind when he sees Professor Dumbledore.

The Inferi were a weak plot device in "Half-Blood Prince," I always thought, never used to their full potential, but kept around as extra heavies for You Know Who. In "Curse of the Inferi," Rowling digs into the real horror of reanimated corpses: seeing the face of someone you love, someone you miss terribly, and have that dead face be the one moaning for your tasty, tasty brains. Harry's got plenty of corpses in his past, and many of the list come back to haunt him in very personal ways. The climax of the book, the castle under siege by the shuffling forms of those fallen – both friend and foe – is chilling as the students lose hope against the continued onslaught. I was caught unprepared by the number of familiar faces who'd survived the battle with Voldemort only to have their brains eaten by Snape and Remus Lupin.

In all, this is a good, chilling read that puts to rest much of the speculation left open even after the epilogue of the last book. Definitely a must-read for any Potter fan, and an enjoyable romp of destruction for everyone else.

Harry Potter and the Curse of the Inferi

By J.K. Rowling

980 pages

street date: 4/1/09