HPHBP was always one of the middle-of-the-road books for me in the series.

You learn so much in this book and the series starts to come to a close. It's definitely getting darker, Harry & everyone else is getting older and relationships are starting to develop. You start to see the beginnings of a relationship form between Hermoine and Ron, and you finally get to see Harry be happy in his relationship with Ginny.

Of course we find out about Horcruxes, about Voldemort's past, and how to kill Voldemort.

Re-reading the book, it bugs me all the more about the "Half Blood Prince" bit however. The book is called the Half Blood Prince, yet we spend all of two seconds on "I am the half blood prince". Yes, naturally, the Potions book and the notes from the half-blood prince helps Harry to no end, but shouldn't the book have been "Harry Potter and the never ending struggle to find out the truth" ? Nah, it doesn't have quite the same ring, but that's my point: I feel like the title was just to sell more books, and Rowling certainly didn't need to do that in this point of the series.

I didn't enjoy the pacing as much in this one, and I find myself not liking Dumbledore a great deal, either. I always at least respected him in previous reads of the series, though I hated the way he treated and used Harry. This time though, I just see the poor treatment of Harry, which in real world terms almost amounts to mental abuse. The poor kid - and I think sometimes we forgot Harry IS just a KID just wants some attention, after all. Yes, there's the whole revenge of his parents thing and he's all noble and everything, but he's still a kid who just wants parental attention. Look how quickly he got attached to Sirius after all.