Recently I spotted Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in the library and couldn’t resist picking it up. It revisits the characters from the Harry Potter series, with the titular hero and his friends now responsible adults (and his friend, Ron, now at least an adult…). However the story is at least as much about some of their children. Oh, and time travel.

I think it serves as an enjoyable addendum to the Potter canon. It’s particular point of interest is that it comes in the form of a script rather than a prose novel. Written with the stage in mind, it is relatively short; I think it is not a bad thing to have broken the size inflation of the original series. I would be intrigued to see how it was actually staged; I can visualise some of the directions but others seem to involve significant visual FX.

This kind of thing isn’t Shakespeare and I don’t think it would be plausible to be carried off by any theatre group in the land (well, not as written… there are all kinds of wonderfully creative groups out there who could probably reforge it to still be full of magic). Worth reading although I’m not sure whether I’ve got the appetite for a sequel.