Spoilers: HP7, Buffy 8.5 and Heroes 1.1-2
Deathly Hallows turned out to be pretty good showcase for what Rowling does best. Endings for one thing, the last book suffered from being so clearly penultimate but in this one she’d really saved the best for last. I also thought the pacing was excellent. It started with a bang, dawdled a little waiting for the wedding but the trio’s escape marked the story’s true beginning. Muggle locations have always been more bucolic than realistic but stranding the three heroes on Tottenham Court Road of all places worked brilliantly to bring home the reality of everything and the long period camping out dragged just enough to confirm that impression. More than any of the others in the series this was a book about war and war is about waiting and enduring as much as about dying and fighting. Not that there was a shortage of action between the negative space of the camping sequences, the attack on the Ministry, the near fatal visit to Godric’s Hollow, the discovery of the sword in the Forest of Dean but that negative space was where Voldemort’s power was most apparent and the book needed that given the almost pitiable figure he became at the end.
The near Dickensian talent for caricature was less in evidence, no new Slughorns or Skeeters, the old ones put in reasonable showings but the book on the whole was light on comedy. Against that, another thing Rowling has always done well is to write cinematically. I’ve seen the criticism that the books are merely glorified scripts but if reading fanfic has taught me one thing it’s that while writing emotions is a fairly common talent the ability to convey a complicated piece of action economically and without getting bogged down in the wrong details is relatively rare. Moviemakers are either going to love her or hate her for the sheer number of visual show stopping numbers from the creepy horror of the Nagini emerging from the body of the old woman in the Hollow, to the escape from Gringots by dragon, from the white out purgatory of King’s Cross, the fractured remain of Voldemort’s soul keening in the corner to the climatic battle sequences and Molly Weasley rampant.
For all the returns to form I think my favourite thing of all was something of a new departure, the fairy story of the three hallows and the metacommentary of Ron’s (literal), Hermoine’s (metaphorical) and Dumbledore’s (legendary) interpretations all relating the point about things that are just in your head still being real. I liked it also because in traditional three brother fairy stories the wise brother is the one to show kindness to strangers and outcasts, the quality Lily passed on to Harry and that served him so well in the end.
As for the epilogue it was not good but I think it was right. A baggy Victorian epic requires a back to the beginning and for all its artlessness and heteronormative whatever this was one the 11 year old Harry himself might have chosen.
The Chain
This issue felt a little thin despite the effectiveness of the final page white out. I think it may become richer in retrospect when connections between it and the main story will have had time to play out. The emphasis on the cult of Buffy, the growing insularity of the Slayer movement, Simone and her guns issues. I also missed Jeanty’s art, the quirkiness and the emotional range he can give faces, this guy was competent but a little flat somehow and such a sparse polemical story felt as if it needed more. I liked it best in the last moments and in the initial school section with its parable of the panties (even if the latter puts an inadvertently comic spin on the Jo Chen cover).
Heroes
Am a little too spoiled to fully appreciate the plotting but the way threads are ravelling together is already very satisfying and the less talked about characters Nicky and Matt look interesting
Hiro: is love (and probably much funnier in Japanese)
Claire: is love
Mr Bennet: is love
Mohinder: is very pretty, please do not be spoiling the effect by talking Genetiks. Please.