Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: A Review

I finally finished reading all 85 chapters in HPMoR. Although it is a work in progress it is still one of the best books I've ever read. Until now the books I thought most highly about were the books in the Chaos Walking Trilogy written by Patrick Ness. That book was always full of excitement. Every sentence made you more interested. Every sentence made you want to read the next.

HPMoR is better not just because of the excitement in its pages. It does have exciting chapters. There are many chapters where my pulse literally started racing. (Personally I think Chapters 51-61 and Chapters 79-85 were the most exciting.) HPMoR is better because of the amount of knowledge and inspiration it can impart. It has evolved into something more than just a piece of fanfiction. It's when I read stories like this that I realize how much strict copyright laws are stifling creativity. I wonder how many more excellent works of literary art we could have enjoyed if copyright restrictions didn't extend so long after the lives of the authors.

WARNING: THE REST OF THE POST PROBABLY CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. READ ONLY IF YOU'RE OKAY WITH SPOILERS. 

I was particularly inspired by the thoughts expressed in chapter 45. Let me quote what is in my opinion one of the most beautiful thoughts I've ever seen expressed. It is so beautiful that even now as I read it to copy and paste, I feel goosebumps erupting all over my body. The kind that you often experience after  you stumble upon a heavenly piece of music.

Harry thought of the stars, the image that had almost held off the Dementor even without a Patronus. Only this time, Harry added the missing ingredient, he'd never truly seen it but he'd seen the pictures and the video. The Earth, blazing blue and white with reflected sunlight as it hung in space, amid the black void and the brilliant points of light. It belonged there, within that image, because it was what gave everything else its meaning. The Earth was what made the stars significant, made them more than uncontrolled fusion reactions, because it was Earth that would someday colonize the galaxy, and fulfill the promise of the night sky.

Would they still be plagued by Dementors, the children's children's children, the distant descendants of humankind as they strode from star to star? No. Of course not. The Dementors were only little nuisances, paling into nothingness in the light of that promise; not unkillable, not invincible, not even close. You had to put up with little nuisances, if you were one of the lucky and unlucky few to be born on Earth; on Ancient Earth, as it would be remembered someday. That too was part of what it meant to be alive, if you were one of the tiny handful of sentient beings born into the beginning of all things, before intelligent life had come fully into its power. That the much vaster future depended on what you did here, now, in the earliest days of dawn, when there was still so much darkness to be fought, and temporary nuisances like Dementors.

Mum and Dad, Hermione's friendship and Draco's journey, Neville and Seamus and Lavender and Dean, the blue sky and brilliant Sun and all bright things, the Earth, the stars, the promise, everything humanity was and everything it would become...

On the wand, Harry's fingers moved into their starting positions; he was ready, now, to think the right sort of warm and happy thought.

And Harry's eyes stared directly at that which lay beneath the tattered cloak, looked straight at that which had been named Dementor. The void, the emptiness, the hole in the universe, the absence of color and space, the open drain through which warmth poured out of the world.

The fear it exuded stole away all happy thoughts, its closeness drained your power and strength, its kiss would destroy everything that you were.

I know you now, Harry thought as his wand twitched once, twice, thrice and four times, as his fingers slid exactly the right distances, I comprehend your nature, you symbolize Death, through some law of magic you are a shadow that Death casts into the world.

And Death is not something I will ever embrace.

It is only a childish thing, that the human species has not yet outgrown.

And someday...

We'll get over it...

And people won't have to say goodbye any more...

The wand rose up and leveled straight at the Dementor.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

There is also this little tidbit from the next chapter.

"I have a dream," said Harry's voice, "that one day sentient beings will be judged by the patterns of their minds, and not their color or their shape or the stuff they're made of, or who their parents were. Because if we can get along with crystal things someday, how silly would it be not to get along with Muggleborns, who are shaped like us, and think like us, as alike to us as peas in a pod? The crystal things wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. How impossible is it to imagine that the hatred poisoning Slytherin House would be worth taking with us to the stars? Every life is precious, everything that thinks and knows itself and doesn't want to die. Lily Potter's life was precious, and Narcissa Malfoy's life was precious, even though it's too late for them now, it was sad when they died. But there are other lives that are still alive to be fought for. Your life, and my life, and Hermione Granger's life, all the lives of Earth, and all the lives beyond, to be defended and protected, EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

And there was light.

I've had similar thoughts over the years but I could never have expressed it so beautifully and so elegantly. These are, in my opinion the best parts of he book. If you read the book and had to chose a single idea that you could remember forever and forget the rest of the book choose these.


I can't wait for Chapters 86-91 to be released.