Harry Potter 1-3 (Book Review)

ok, another before I go. i'm very late to the game with Mr. Potter. Saw and enjoyed the three films, but kept putting off reading the books. Well, now I've read the first three in a week. The verdict? Bloody brilliant. Well, at least Azkaban is. The first is solid, entertaining and sets everything up nicely. The second, while an improvement, doesn't seem to really go anywhere with its main story. The third is brilliant. Maybe a little anti-climactic with that scene with all the characters expositioning in the shack together, but it rattles along at a great pace and has great new characters in Sirius Black and Prof. Lupin. Favorite character is I think the same as most people, Hermione. Although all the characters are fairly fully formed by book 3, Harry's a little bland to begin with, and Ron, although entertaining, is too much the comic relief initially. Hermione has the believable shading to her, funny, heartwarming, smart and tough as nails. She'd not be out of place in a James Cameron flick. The books expotentially get bigger with each volume, so it'll be a little while before I get to Half-Blood Prince. I'm stating the blooming obvious here, but Rowling really nailed this. I think it's really tough to start and keep going a franchise and although i don't know if this was a grand plan from the beginning, there's not many people I feel deserve the millions they are worth who do this sort of work. She's one of the few.