There's a lot of adventure, and some mystery. It's amazing how many clues are in the book, and how a lot of the places and creatures seen in this book are important to later plot points. There is a lot going on, and I wish could throw in every little detail, but I can't. Especially since I want to try to practice condensing HP to a few paragraphs...this will be especially important for books 4 through 7. 
 Back to CoS, though, Lockhart is hilarious, and completely useless as a Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher. Another favorite moment in CoS is when Hermione transforms into a cat (on accident, of course) after drinking the Polyjuice Potion. While I like CoS, I think I would place it behind Sorcerer's Stone. A lot of the things and places and people do make another appearance somewhere in the series, and I love the details. I love how things that don't seem important and are insignifcant in this book show up to be more important. One of my favorite things about CoS is that there's still a sense of innocence. There are some very bad, evil things in the wizarding world, but it's far off in the distance...at least to a certail extent. There's no Voldemort, not really, anyway, and things are solved easily. Things are still pretty black and white, with no real shades of grey. 
 Rating: 4 out of 5. While not one of my favorites, it's still really good, and sets up some stuff that'll be revealed in later books. And there's a little bit of everything in the series, as well as this book.