Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling

The first book now that I`ve finished before seeing the actual movie, this tome of nearly a 1000 pages is about as big as the first three books combined.

Though a better title might have been Harry Potter and the Depression of Puberty...

With Voldemort back to power, and Harry still suffering from witnessing this event and seeing Cedric Diggory being murdered, his life doesn`t get easier when he and his cousing Dudley get attacked by Dementors in the Muggle world.

Resulting in a hearing, and the Ministery of Magic taking more and more steps to deny Voldemorts return, including placing a tyranical Dolores Umbridge at Hogwarts to evaluate and destabilise Dumbledore, Harry learns of a resistance versus the Dark Lord, The Order of the Phoenix.

Frustrated that he is left out of the machinations of this organisation, and the passive Defence against Dark Arts the school is now required to teach, he forms his own private rebellion with the DA, Dumbledore`s Army, made up of students from the school.  As he tends to get into more and more trouble, and suffers visions in which he is placing himself inside Voldemort, he slowly gets himself into more and more trouble. 

When he sees a vision in which Sirius is tortured by the Dark Lord, he and his friends from the DA rush to the Department of Mysteries, where they learn the Death Eaters are trying to steal an old prophecy, and they fight off, unfortunatly resulting in the death of Sirius, and the confessions of Dumbledore about what was going on all those years...

It is a thick book, with a lot of details I expect won`t be seen in the movie when we get around to enough family time to watch it, but unfortunatly it isn`t the best of the books I`ve read so far.  Though I liked the parts where layer upon layer of Harry`s father James`s feud with professor Snape comes from, it also has parts which I wasn`t to fond about at all, usually the overdetailed puberty tantrums Harry tended to slip into.

But onwards we go, and I`ve started the next volume, the Halfblood Prince, this morning, and yes, I`m a fan in the meantime :-)