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The third book in the Harry Potter series was a bit of a fizzle. It just didn't do much for me.
Essentially, it picks up exactly where the last book left off. Harry and his friends become caught up in a mystery which threatens to kill Harry. You see, it turns out that one of the conspirators in the death of Harry's parents has escaped from the wizard prison of Azkaban, and all evidence points to this man - Sirius Black - coming to Hogwarts to kill Harry. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems, and Harry and his pals find out that Sirius is actually innocent and wants to help protect Harry. Unfortunately, in the end, no one (except Dumbledore) believes Harry, and so Black goes into hiding where he can keep an eye on things.
This book felt very, very formulaic for the first several chapters. It starts in nearly the exact same way as the previous two novels, with only minor variation. This was painful, and I grew frustrated waiting to get to the meat of this book.
And even when the plot did begin to develop, I never really felt any dramatic tension. Although the character of Sirius Black is mysterious, I never got the sense of menace that I think I was meant to feel. Rather, I knew it was only a matter of time before the truth was revealed about his motivations. (I didn't quite see the whole "I was innocent" twist, but I knew that he probably wasn't the heartless beast he was made out to be.) Overall, there just wasn't any sense of danger, and I never believed that Harry and his friends were in any life-threatening scenarios.
Aside from some random introductions - Black, Hogsmeade - this book felt mainly like a bridge between what had already been established and something bigger to come in the later books.
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