Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Jul. 21st, 2007 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fenchurchYay! I can finally talk about it! And one thing I can say without spoiling anyone: I think it's the best book of the series -- well-written and well-paced.
Even though I would have loved to know more about what was up with all the various secondary characters, I think the book benefited from just focusing in on Harry, Ron and Hermione. It didn't have the problems of the previous two books (with chapters and chapters that felt extremely skippable and just dragged the story out way too long). I was describing it to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lage_nom_ai as being like BtVS Season 7 with 90% fewer Potential Slayers.
For the most part, I got everything I wanted out of the story... I don't feel like I was left hanging on anything and, aside from the epilogue, nothing felt rushed or like JKR was running through a To Do list. I loved how so many of the characters ended up being various shades of grey... Dumbledore was a good guy, but not necessarily good in his methods. Snape was a good guy, but not really a good person. Draco discovered there were things even he thought went too far. Narcissa makes a good choice for good reasons but still isn't a good guy (that was wonderful and somewhat unexpected).
I do think that having so many of the secondary characters off-stage lessened some of the impact of their deaths... I should have felt more when we lost Tonks and Lupin, but Tonks in particular was almost invisible in this book, so it felt like she wasn't really there to begin with. And the introduction at the very end of the series of Dumbledore's family and how important they ended up being to the overall storyline while never really having been mentioned before felt a bit awkward. I guess it's possible JKR had them in mind all along, but the whole backstory came across as having been "added in" retroactively... although there was plenty of room to do so, since we knew almost nothing of Dumbledore's family or background before this.
The big question I have is this: Where did Gryffindor's Sword come from at the end? I mean, I know Neville pulled it out of the Sorting Hat (and wasn't Neville cool upon cool in this book?), but how did it get there after Harry left it with the goblin? Did I miss something?
As for the epilogue... yeah, it was a bit too tidy and sweet, but really... at the end of the day, it's a children's book! And what JKR did with the ending effectively caps off the story and the characters to a point where they don't need to be revisited in the future. She's said she won't be writing any more Harry Potter stories, and with that epilogue it's obvious she meant it. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
Even though I would have loved to know more about what was up with all the various secondary characters, I think the book benefited from just focusing in on Harry, Ron and Hermione. It didn't have the problems of the previous two books (with chapters and chapters that felt extremely skippable and just dragged the story out way too long). I was describing it to
lage_nom_ai as being like BtVS Season 7 with 90% fewer Potential Slayers.For the most part, I got everything I wanted out of the story... I don't feel like I was left hanging on anything and, aside from the epilogue, nothing felt rushed or like JKR was running through a To Do list. I loved how so many of the characters ended up being various shades of grey... Dumbledore was a good guy, but not necessarily good in his methods. Snape was a good guy, but not really a good person. Draco discovered there were things even he thought went too far. Narcissa makes a good choice for good reasons but still isn't a good guy (that was wonderful and somewhat unexpected).
I do think that having so many of the secondary characters off-stage lessened some of the impact of their deaths... I should have felt more when we lost Tonks and Lupin, but Tonks in particular was almost invisible in this book, so it felt like she wasn't really there to begin with. And the introduction at the very end of the series of Dumbledore's family and how important they ended up being to the overall storyline while never really having been mentioned before felt a bit awkward. I guess it's possible JKR had them in mind all along, but the whole backstory came across as having been "added in" retroactively... although there was plenty of room to do so, since we knew almost nothing of Dumbledore's family or background before this.
The big question I have is this: Where did Gryffindor's Sword come from at the end? I mean, I know Neville pulled it out of the Sorting Hat (and wasn't Neville cool upon cool in this book?), but how did it get there after Harry left it with the goblin? Did I miss something?
As for the epilogue... yeah, it was a bit too tidy and sweet, but really... at the end of the day, it's a children's book! And what JKR did with the ending effectively caps off the story and the characters to a point where they don't need to be revisited in the future. She's said she won't be writing any more Harry Potter stories, and with that epilogue it's obvious she meant it. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
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Date: 2007-07-22 05:01 am (UTC)My only niggling annoyance wasn't Dumbledore's family, but the sudden appearance of "the Trace." I just re-read OotP and HBP, and in both of them it was clear the only reason the Ministry could detect underage magic in Harry's case was because he lived in a Muggle household - that's why he got a warning when Dobby used the Hover Charm. There's a clear exchange of dialogue in HBP saying that they can't trace underage magic in wizarding households, and expect the parents to handle their children in those cases.
Big sadness for Fred, though.