This is the best of the series, for multiple reasons. Rowling outdoes herself here and certainly outpaces any expections for this, her fourth in the potter series. She obviously has immunity to whatever funk gets in people's heads after initial success because not only do her books continue in their original vein and sincerity, they seem to improve exponentially in their readibility. The true test for her will be the pending cinema production and if she can continue her craft without letting the ancillary movie efforts cloud her creativity. Secondly, I'm a huge fan of what J.K. is doing for the reading movement on this planet in not only getting kids flipping the pages again, but offering a rather hefty tome (733 pages) as to let young minds not be intimidated by larger works.