SOURCE: “Harry Is Back Again,” in Time, Vol. 156, No. 3, July 17, 2000, p. 70.

In the following review, Sachs comments that the hype surrounding the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was unnecessary, but the book itself is as enchanting as it promised to be.

A few seconds past the wizarding hour of midnight last Saturday, the most annoying and unnecessary marketing campaign in publishing history finally delivered the goods. J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire would have sold millions of copies had its U.S. and British publishers simply dumped them in bookstores, unannounced, and then got out of the way as word of mouth spread among stampeding Pottermaniacs. That is pretty much the way the first three books about the boy wizard so phenomenally caught fire among young readers and then their parents and other adults as well. The trouble with such...