In the past few weeks, a single book has dominated the arts headlines: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The script of the new stage show has been eagerly anticipated by readers worldwide, and the release of what has been designated ‘Book 8’ of the Harry Potter series caused a sensation easily as big – if not bigger – than the ‘final’ book, number 7, when it came out in 2007.

Here is Amazon’s blurb:

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

Waterstone’s description casts a little more light on the story:

A full nineteen years has passed since the climactic finale of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Voldemort is a shadow of the past; Harry Potter himself is now a burdened employee at the Ministry of Magic, the wizarding triumphs of his youth seemingly shelved for the demands of family life. Once again, the vaulting arches of Kings Cross become the gateway to wild adventure as young Albus Severus Potter – Harry’s now second son – boards a waiting Hogwarts Express, prepared to fulfil his own destinies. 

What lies ahead is as much about the past as it is the future; it will be a time of unexpected alliances and the extraordinary lure of potentially changing what has already come to be. Although much-loved comrades will indeed play their part – no Harry Potter tale can possibly be complete without the courage and companionship of Ron and Hermione – this is very much the next extraordinary chapter, a story where the son of the world’s most famous wizard finds both camaraderie and friendship in a most surprising place, the boy Scorpius Malfoy, son of Draco.

I was interested to read this book, not because I am a Hogwarts-banner-waving aficionado, but because I wanted to see how the book stands in terms of legacy.

My Andalucían Nights series is all about legacy: it follows three generations in southern Spain, each individual and unique and yet also irrevocably tied to their family’s legacy. The final book in the series, which I have just released, is called Legacy, and really explores this theme. When do you continue the traditions of the past, and when do you break free? When are you your father and mother’s daughter or son, and when are you your own person? Can you walk away from your heritage, deny the nature and source of the blood that runs in your veins, or are you always destined to be of that which you were created?

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is an interesting exploration of legacies: of how it is when heroes and heroines grow up (far less exciting, romantic and glamorous), and how it is to be the new generation, eager to be your own person but shaped by those who came before. Albus Potter, Harry’s son, feels he can’t live up to his father’s legend; Scorpius Malfoy, Draco’s son, lives under a shadow of darkness cast by his father in his own youth. Both are the heroes now, and yet to be so both must find that balance between carrying on a legacy and creating a new story of their own.

There is a lot of depth to the story, and complexity, reflective of any family saga, and as I read I could well imagine how much Potter fans will enjoy revisiting characters they love and seeing what happened after those final words, ‘The End’, nine years ago. Certainly, plenty of reviewers of the book so far have written of their pleasure in connecting with ‘old friends’; it is a sort of homecoming. I imagine it was so for JK Rowling as well; I know when I wrote each new book my Andalucían Nights series I loved weaving in some characters from the preceding book(s), though of course I was careful that the older characters do not overshadow the new ones, to whom the story belongs.

In my own series, the characters who are revisited have developed as you would except over the intervening years. In Legacy, for example, the couples from the preceding books, Masquerade and Indiscretion, come together at a masked ball, and each is as you would expect having read their own love stories; there are no surprises, because I write happy endings, and so the reader simply enjoys seeing the once young heroes and heroines as older couples: parents and grandparents. In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, however, there is a clear move in a darker, grittier direction; several versions of the original characters are offered (via a time travel plot device), and many reviewers have expressed disappointment with the characterisation – the beloved Harry, Ron and Hermione are absent, replaced by less likeable.

A new Harry Potter book was always going to be contentious and scrutinised closely. But it is impossible not to notice the many criticisms coming through in reviews, not only about the characterisation but about the story (plot holes are being pointed out) and the style (which is not entirely true to JK Rowling’s). Why the emotional response to this book? Because legacy matters a great deal: the legacy of the Harry Potter characters, who are beloved (and real) to so many, and the legacy of the Harry Potter books, which is so precious to so many.

It is to be admired that JK Rowling published this book: to leave the Harry Potter legacy well alone was the easy path, to add to it was risky. But I know, as a writer, that sometimes characters must speak. Indiscretion was initially a standalone romance novel, but the characters continued to speak to me; I knew the story was not finished, and hence I wrote Masquerade and Legacy. My Andalucían Nights series ends with Legacy, and JK Rowling had stated publicly that there will be no further Harry Potter books. When a story is finished, it is finished.

But for Pottermore, JK Rowling’s publishing company, the future remains bright. Never mind the record-breaking sales achieved for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ­already; the Amazon listing for the book includes the following note: ‘This Special Rehearsal Edition will be available to purchase until early 2017, after which a Definitive Edition of the script will go on sale.’ So the truest Potter fans (and there are many) will buy the book all over again in a few months.

Have you read the new Harry Potter book? If so, what are your thoughts? If not, is there a reason you chose not to? I would love to discuss the potential legacy of this publishing sensation with you.