Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets      

The second book in the Harry Potter series.

To quote a line from Indiana Jones “why’d it have to be snakes”?

Harry Potter learning he’s a parseltongue, like ‘he who shall not be named’, is a great plot twist   and everyone thinking he’s the heir of Salazar Slytherin is a great addition. 

‘He who shall not be named’ putting his 17-year-old self in the pages of a diary is pretty weird. Imagine if your soul was put in a book for all eternity, pretty weird.  His full name is Lord Voldemort which is what you get when you rearrange the letters of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

This book also introduces Dobby the house elf who doesn’t appear again until the 6th book but I’m not reviewing that for a while.

Here's the plot in a nutshell- Harry is back with the family that hates him and Dobby appears and tells him to not go back to Hogwarts that year because there's a plot to make most bad things happen this year.  

Harry wants to go to Hogwarts so he ignores Dobby’s warning, so Dobby drops a cake on Mrs Mason (one of the visitors at the Dursleys house trying to make a deal with Vernon 

for his drill company Grunnings) and the Mason’s leave the house with shock.  Vernon locks Harry in his room until his good old friend Ron Weasley and his twin brothers save him in a flying Ford Anglia.  When Harry gets to Hogwarts after buying his new stuff for that year that's when the attacks begin-  people found petrified as if they have turned to stone. It’s revealed the thing that petrified everyone was a Basilisk, a giant snake whose main weakness is a rooster's crow.

 The Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge thinks Hagrid petrified the students, so Hagrid is sent off to Azkaban prison.  Spiders are found crawling all over Hogwarts so Harry and Ron follow the spiders and find Shelob from lord of the rings (just kidding)  they find Aragog a giant acromantula that Hagrid owns and eats anyone not Hagrid.  So Harry and Ron escape in the Ford Anglia and Professor McGonnagal tells them that Ginny Weasley (Ron's sister) got kidnapped by the  Basilisk.  Harry, Ron and Gilderoy Lockhart (the defense of the dark arts teacher) go into the chamber of secrets to save Ginny.

Harry finds Tom Marvolo Riddle in the chamber saying he is Lord Voldemort and that he is the true heir of Slytherin.   He then unleashes the basilisk but Harry kills it by stabbing it in the head after Fawkes the phoenix drops the sorting hat and Harry pulls the sword of Gryffindor from the sorting hat.   After Harry stabs the basilisk in the head Harry removes one of the basilisk's teeth   and stabs Tom Riddle’s diary with the tooth destroying Tom Marvolo Riddle and freeing Ginny from his control.  Harry gets poisoned by the basilisk, so Fawke cries and heals Harry from the basilisk poison.   Also Gilderoy Lockhart lost his memories because he tried to cast a spell with Ron’s broken wand which Ron  broke after he  crashed the flying  Ford Anglia  into the whomping willow (a tree that has been on Hogwarts grounds before Harry and Ron were born) 

Gryffindor then wins the house cup which is something I forgot to mention in my last review.     Also, the diary was one of ‘he who shall not be named’s horcruxes which ‘he who shall not be named’ has seven of. So, Harry, Ron and Hermione must destroy all 7 if they want to totally definitely kill ‘he who shall not be named’. 

My final rating of Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets is 10 snake teeth out of 10 swords of Gryffindor.  

Time to Accio, my next review Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban!