Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets seven books had been published, Graeme Davis regarded "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" as the weakest of the series, and agreed that the plot structure is much the same as in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". He described Fawkes's appearance to arm Harry and then to heal him as a "deus ex machina": he said that the book does not explain how Fawkes knew where to find Harry; and Fawkes's timing had to be very precise, as arriving earlier would probably have prevented the battle with the basilisk, while arriving later would have been fatal to Harry
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series number of Wiccans and other commenters have argued that the critics' definition of Wicca tends to lump together many and various spiritualist practices that actually have little in common. They have also highlighted the differences between magic within Wicca, which is invocational and derives from the divine powers, and that depicted by the "Harry Potter" books, which is a purely mechanical application of spells without invoking any deities. A Wiccan review of "Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged" pointed out that "communing with the dead and spirit world, sorcery, curses, occult symbology, black magic [and] demon possession"—all cited by the book as