[Evisse the Blue]

Imladris, as I have read the HP books I can inform you there are rules and restrictions concerning magic in Harry's world, nor is it not used 'flippantly', at least not by the positive characters. I would argue this at more length were we not on a LOTR board and not on a HP one.

Has Rowling ever said anything like that for Harry? I somehow doubt it.

Has Homer said anything like this for Illiad? Or, if you think the comparison is too far fetched, has Peter Beagle said anything like this about the Schmendrick and his Unicorn? Before someone takes this the wrong way, I am a Christian Orthodox, and as such very unlikely to take religious issues lightly. But I also am one to draw very clear boundaries between fiction and reality, and therefore no such issues will ever come between me and a good read.

Bringing the discussion back to acceptance of some fantasy works and rejection of others, I think the comments of AS Byatt, (English writer, author of Posession, Babbletower) are relevant to this thread:

(...) fantasy novels by the likes of Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and Ursula K Le Guin contained "a real sense of mystery, powerful forces, dangerous creatures in dark forests".

"Ms Rowling's magic wood has nothing in common with these lost worlds. It is small, and on the school grounds, and dangerous only because she says it is,"

"Ms Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery.

"They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had."

"There is nothing wrong with Harry Potter"

"But it has little to do with the shiver of awe we feel looking through Keats's 'magic casements, opening on the foam/Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.'"

Needless to say, all the Potter fanatics called her a snob. Even if I am somewhat a HP fan, I read and enjoyed the books (and the movies), I have to agree with her constructive criticism of it. The sense of mystery and wonder one gets when reading Lord of the Rings is all lost on HP.