Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I can't quite make my mind up, but this may be the best yet. It's certainly grittier than any of the previous entries, with Harry and his friends on ever more unstable foundations (here, the threat is as much from an entity that is nominally within - the ministry of magic - as from outside, and the external menace is increasingly insidious and inextricably linked with Harry's own life and even his mind), and while it doesn't have the same style as Azkaban or the concentrated, concise structure of Goblet (indeed, it's a bit jumpy and one feels that some cuts to the source material have made certain plot developments a bit obvious - the role of Grawp and the centaurs, for example), that grit and enveloping sense of shadowy movements counts for a lot. In other matters, in Luna, an intriguing (if slightly affected) new character is introduced, Helena Bonham Carter also makes her debut (though she doesn't do much apart from snarl) and Gary Oldman is marvellous again.