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
Legal disputes over the Harry Potter series the sixth "Harry Potter" book. "The two matters are completely unrelated", said a Bloomsbury spokeswoman, "We decided today that we couldn't risk having arrears with anybody." The dispute had been "going on a while – going on for weeks actually." Asda responded that Bloomsbury owed them £122,000 ($224,000) ("for pulping and for other book trade issues and work we have done for them") and that, as one company spokesman claimed, "It just seems funny that after we expose the potty Potter price hike, Bloomsbury are trying everything they can to stop kids getting hold of "Harry Potter" at a price