Prisoner of Azkaban-Ink Black Heart links, Part 2: Howlers, bombs and not falling over on purpose.

As I expected, once we got past the book introduction, there weren't as many clear connections between PoA and TIBH.  Notice, then that I was able to complete the blog series in only two parts, as opposed to the six I needed for PS-LW and the four for CoS-TB. 

The closest character parallel I saw was between Strike and Hermione. Strike  foolishly keeps pushing the limits of his bad knee and hamstring until he collapses and has to get treatment in the hospital for not just the stump itself but the stress-induced muscle spasms in both his leg and face. Hermione, by trying to take every subject Hogwarts offers, drives herself to the breaking point, culminating at the DADA final exam when she falls apart and fails to recognize the boggart, much less defeat it. By book's end, Strike has finally resolved to address the issues and take some steps to improve his health by losing weight and stopping smoking. Hermione decides to turn in the Time-Turner, drop Muggle Studies and Divination and take a normal schedule. 

Prisoner of Azkaban-Ink Black Heart links, Part 1: Interrupted birthdays and well-deserved vacations.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Career of Evil (Books #3 in their respective series) have one very clear over-arching connection: both stories involve a deranged filler out to kill one of our major protagonists. Of course, there are also some contrasts: in PoA, the identity of the "killer" is known (Sirius Black) but the popular belief about him is false (he is not actually a killer, but a wrongly convicted prisoner and he does not want to kill Harry, but rather to save him from the real killer, Peter Pettigrew). No one knows the identity of the man stalking and planning to kill "The Secretary" (Donald Laing) until the book's end, but everyone is 100% about his plans to murder Robin; he, unlike Sirius, is actually responsible for multiple other deaths as well. 

Will Prisoner turn out to also have major connections to The Ink Black Heart, Book 3 on the hypothesized second ring that closes the Cormoran Strike Series?  That remains to be seen.  Here, I am going to examine the "prologues of both books." This means the part literally labelled "Prologue" in TIBH, covering the Ritz and the aftermath of the missed kiss, Strike's New Year's Eve stakeout and taking up with Madeline, and Robin's trip to Zermatt. For Harry Potter, it is the first four, pre-Hogwarts chapters: Harry's birthday, the visit from Aunt Marge, his flight from Privet Drive via the Knight Bus after blowing her up and his subsequent three-week vacation in Diagon Alley. Obviously, I am taking a risk comparing four chapters each to start with, given that PoA has 22 chapters and TIBH 107. But, so far, the strategy of grouping the pre-Hogwarts segment with the pre-main-mystery section has served me pretty well.