Goblet of Fire set several firsts for the Hugo Awards: first fantasy novel, first young adult novel. Potter-mania was in full fling back in 2001, and as always Rowling is a charming storyteller. However, in my opinion she's not much of a setting builder or plotter, and this book is where the series beings to slump under its own weight of accumulated details and questions.

Harry Potter is 14 and heading into his 4th year at the Hogwarts wizarding school, when a flash of pain in his scare reminds him that the dark lord Voldemort is increasing his power. But never mind that, because the Weasleys have invited Harry to the Quidditch World Cup. There's roughly 100 pages of prelude before revealing the real deal, a special young wizard's tournament between the top three wizard's schools in Europe. Harry is entered into the challenge by an unknown party and faces dragons, merpeople, and a maze, before it's revealed that the whole thing was arranged to get Harry out of Hogwarts and in front of Voldemort so that the Dark Lord can regain his power and body. Another Hogwarts student is killed, Harry escapes, and the wizarding world refuses to believe that Voldemort is back. Fin.

The main plot is so contrived that I continually asked why. Everybody cheats in the wizarding challenge, including Harry, who has useful items handed to him by friends immediately before the first two challenges, and then has one of Voldemort's accomplices clear his path to the "reward" at the end of maze. The side plots, with George and Fred Weasley starting a joke shop, Hermoine trying to get a House Elf liberation movement off the ground, and muckraking reporter Rita Skeeter, go in circles. The final scene, with the death of Cedric Diggory and a direct confrontation between Harry and Voldemort is appropriately tense, but comes at the end of the longest book so far, and one with few payoffs.

Harry spends the book confused and miserable, appropriately riding through the first waves of puberty and fights with his friends Ron and Hermoine (who is really the protagonist of the series). There's not much presence to the teachers, more obligatory check-ins with Dumbledore, Snape, and Hagrid that character moments. The foreigners, rather that being part of a bigger magical community, are used to make jokes about French people and Eastern Europeans. And with the gloss wearing off, its increasing clear that Rowling has no idea what magic can and cannot do in her setting, what wizards actually do on a daily basis, or how Harry is learning what he needs to know.

There are some interesting hints about what happened during Voldemort's War before Harry was born, and what it was like to have secret death squads roaming the country, killing people or throwing them in Azkaban. Many people served Voldemort, and some were left free. Anybody could've have been a Wizard Nazi, and Dumbledore was some sort of Nazi hunting badass, a "Mad Jack" Churchill or Aldo Raine who's retired to be a rather daffy educator. Of course, nobody seems to have thought of using the wide variety of spells and potions for disclosing identity, truth, or what happened in the past, to track down Voldemort's servants.

I care about setting, but the Harry Potter series is really about characters, and they're static in this installment. Harry is brave and generous, but we knew that already. The wizarding world refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the threat, and they continue in their ignorance. Hermoine is smart (and blossoming) yet underappreciated. Ron is the sidekick. Meh.