Sulkyblue's Blog

Bloody decorating and a cold interfered with my plans to spend all day reading, but thanks to waking up at 7am yesterday, 24 hour opening at Tescos and some sod hammering on a door outside early this morning, I've gotten through the book quite quickly anyways.

Non-spoiler review:
I enjoyed most of the book, most of it I found extremely hard to put down and thought it both developed and concluded the story, characters and universe really well. Rowling made some moderately tough choices admirably and had me laughing and sniffling a few times each. On the other hand... there was a stunningly poor choice of sub-plot which was just pointless filler and a whole section in the middle of the book where I just kept shouting "get on with it!" at her. A satisfactory ending, but Rowling hasn't really learnt from mistakes she made with earlier books.


That sub-plot - what on earth was she thinking with the Deathly Hallows?! I was a bit nervous about this book turning into a series of quests hunting for the things beginning with H that had bits of soul or whatever. Instead Rowling decided to throw in *another* 3 objects beginning with H that needed to be hunted for. So Harry's chasing god knows how many items, most of which he doesn't know what they are, many of which have duplicates and may or may not exist. Yeesh. And then she named the book after it? Why?!

The middle section of the book was pretty bloody dull. As flickgc said "The trio goes camping. For, like, six months. wtf?" How tedious. After god knows how many months blundering around they finally decide to go to the place that Harry had announced his plans to visit at the end of the last book. Good grief.

This was the section of the book that I most missed the format of the other books. In all the other stories this slow section in the middle was filled with daily life at Hogwarts and being a teenager and the slow tedium gave me all the more time to miss the 'small' things - quiditch, homework, teachers, ghosts, Hagrid, Neville, Luna, Ginny, Malfoy, house elves, detentions, the twins, Hogsmeade, house points. I missed everything about Hogwarts and I think Rowling made another mistake putting her plot in a situation where she could not use the wonderful world and characters she'd spent so many pages creating.

Deaths - Rowling said there was going to be deaths and there were, but to be honest, they were quite... safe deaths. I have to say the one that surprised me most was Hedwig's, maybe because her's was a pointless death. Rowling almost seemed to back away from most of the other character's that died - Lupin had been shown withdrawing, suffering and wavering over the last couple of books; Dobby, Tonks, Fred, Mad-Eye and Snape barely appeared in this book. I was pretty certain Tonks and Lupin would die as soon as they named Harry as their son's godfather.

It's not that emotionally I *wanted* other characters to die, or those deaths to be lingered upon, but it felt a bit too much like Rowling couldn't face hurting more of them. I felt a little cheated by the lack of a summary of what happened in the few days after Voldemorte's death. The epilogue felt cheesey and fanfic like as many people have mentioned, "aw look, they all pair up and name their children after some people". I wanted some sort of funeral, a reference to how the survivors and world of magic survived. It felt too much like "and they all lived happily ever after". Maybe that would have been harsh for a kid's book.

Good luck to them trying to make this film... the best sub plot to edit out is the very one the book is named for and the '19 years later' is going to cause the make-up department some sleep loss.

So did I like the book... that's a pretty hard question. I found it very hard to put down, but found much of it disappointing. When re-reading 5 and 6 I saw signs of Rowling's writing improving, but this book shows that she still has some areas to work on and most importantly, she's often too attached to her characters. I've enjoyed reading the books but now they're done, they're just books. They are 7 books that for some reason have become a phenomena, but now they're done, there are better fantasy series out there that I'd recommend first.