We’ve been tricked!

Harry Potter’s publisher promises a new book, but delivers a London play cloaked in wizardry

THE Boy Who Lived is alive once again — more or less. “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the newest entry in the massively popular fiction series by J.K. Rowling, was released Sunday to some fanfare and a tidal wave of outrage. Fans like me have waited nine years for another book featuring our favorite kid wizard, even if most of us are old enough to grab a butterbeer with him now. However, “Cursed Child” is not a new novel, but the printed edition of the acclaimed show of the same name, now onstage in London’s West End. There is no precedent for a script being published on this scale — it’s already sold 2 million copies — so Potheads are left scratching their skulls and shaking their fists. “Let’s just put the #CursedChild in the same box we have the Casual Vacancy and pretend like it never happened,” said one Twitter user, alluding to Rowling’s post-Potter novel. Can you blame him? This overhyped book costs $30 and takes just four hours to read. Worse yet, the play, which centers on Harry Potter’s teen son Albus, isn’t even written by J.K. Rowling, but by Jack Thorne, a British scribe who’s not well-known in the US. Thorne wrote the script based on an idea crafted by Rowling and the play’s director, John Tiffany. These guys are meaningless to Harry’s hordes of worldwide admirers.

Of course, Rowling’s name misleadingly dwarfs the two men’s names on the cover.

Imagine if the “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” screenplay, written by Steve Kloves, had been dolled up as a gorgeous hardcover and sold as the “seventh Potter story.” In 2007, we would’ve put unforgivable curses on our local Barnes & Nobles. That’s what’s happened now.

Just look at the book jacket. “Based on an original story by J.K. Rowling” and “A new play” are stated in the smallest font size on the cover. That’s because in this case, the truth does not equal big bucks.

Though young-adult publisher Scholastic is hawking a play, not a novel, it’s still ramming its vague marketing aggressively down gullible readers’ throats. “The eighth story. 19 years later,” read advertisements. Following suit, a Washington Post headline claimed, “J.K. Rowling announces eighth Harry Potter book.”

Many pumped-up fans had not been adequately prepared to crack open the beautifully designed vol- ume only to discover a stage play instead of a novel; to see Rowling’s human, witty narration replaced by cold stage directions, such as, “And now we enter a never-world of time change. And this scene is all about magic.” No kidding!

I’ve read many plays, all seven Harry Potter books and now “The Cursed Child.” If you’re looking for the same masterful page-turners you devoured in the aughts, reread the originals instead. This is a solid drama that’s meant to be seen, not read — and the magical discovery we crave from the Potterverse is totally absent from the page.

But the show, which must be viewed in two parts with two tickets, is sold out for a year in London, so Rowling’s publisher is clearly taking advantage of the world’s bottomless enthusiasm for everything Potter.

And many readers are pretty peeved.

“The ‘8th story’ marketing is such bulls - - t bc this is not from the hand of JK,” one angry fan tweeted. “The 8th book we wanted was her words. Not this.”

Others outright mocked it. A friend wrote on Facebook: “Well, at least us Harry Potter fans have our own ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’ now.”

Meanwhile, it’s the No. 1 best seller on Amazon.com, and the stage production has received rapturous praise from British and American critics. A Chicago Tribune review called the two-part play “a remarkable achievement from a woman with exquisite taste in collaborators.” The Guardian said it’s “a thrilling theatrical spectacle.” It’s too bad you gotta see the sold-out show to believe it.

Onstage, the play may be the greatest thing since the Nimbus 2000, but the book release is an epic disappointment.

I’m feeling a tinge of literary-let down déjà vu — Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” was released one year ago, leaving readers enraged and tarnishing the reputation of a literary legend.