Very delayed review of Deathly Hallows

[cheryltheperil]

Ok, just have to vent my feelings on the seventh Harry Potter book. Obviously this will involve the use of major spoilers so I'm gonna put it all behind an

I liked the book, though I was a little disappointed with the epilogue - the two obvious pairings get together and have lots of happy fluffy children and you don't get to find out what happened

Comments

[narrativium]

I agree with most of what you say. I would've liked to see Snape demonstrating that he was actually worthy of the title of Hogwarts Headmaster, but I can see why he'd have preferred Harry to learn the truth from his Pensieve rather than living through the experience of explaining it.

I like the epilogue simply because it doesn't end the story with "the threat's over, they all live happily ever after" - the characters go on. There's a lot missing - who's the new Hogwarts Headmaster, did Hermione take Ron's last name, what happened to the Dursleys, did the trio go back and complete their seventh year, what did they go on to do afterwards - but the important thing was that life goes on. Actually, the important scene is Harry's telling his son (whose initials, oddly enough, are ASP) not to worry about going into Slytherin, in direct contrast to Hagrid telling Harry back at the beginning that Slytherin's the House of all the dark wizards - he's grown past it.

I liked that Dumbledore became a lot more ambiguous as the book went on. I also found that this was the book where Harry became a lot more interesting - he wasn't simply the special kid whom every story revolved around, he was questioning his role in it, which I thought was great.

I started re-reading the other books to find out where it was noted that Lily's Patronus was a doe, but I couldn't find it. I did like the "last march of the Marauders", but I didn't like Lupin's off-screen death, especially as it seemed only written in to allow the ghostly march. The classic moment for me would be Hermione calling Ron an arse, but Harry referring to Voldemort as Tom Riddle was also great, but as you say, Voldemort's arrogance over facing Potter himself was a downfall of extreme proportions over the course of the book, as it made all his followers seem incompetent as well.

(One thing about your review, though - no-one got jealous of an 11 year old because Ginny got older through the books too, being 16 or so through Deathly Hallows).

There is an interview with JK somewhere on the net where various questions got answered, and it would've been nice if the answers had somehow made it into the book, but I won't go into them here.

So... yeah, I enjoyed the book, and the series. A friend of mine has a £20 bet going with me over whether JK will announce another book in this universe by the start of 2012... I imagine that whatever new book she's started writing will get a lot of publicity, whether deserving or not, in the next couple of years.

Finally, belated happy birthday. Hope it was a good one.

[cheryltheperil]

Ginny did show jealousy towards an eleven year old - she made some sign of annoyance (can't remember what specifically) when Gabrielle Delacour batted her eyelashes at Harry.

I know that JKR has snnounced she will probably do an encyclopedia of Harry Potter including all the deatails that she wanted to include but couldn't fit in, but apparently nothing else is planned. So I hope you're the one who bet in favour of her releasing another book :-)

Thanks for the birthday wishes, I did indeed have a good day, and I now have loads of juggling stuff from my parents to kill time with. Woohoo!

[narrativium]

Actually, I'm the one who bet otherwise. He reckoned JKR wouldn't be able to leave the universe alone for four and a half years, or that she'd bow to pressure from the Potter fans, whereas I reckoned she'd want to do something else for a while just to show she could do other things. We set 2012 as a limit instead of one of us betting that she'd never return to the universe ever, because never is a long time.

I don't think we specified what kind of book it would be, but I was thinking along the lines of an eighth novel - not the year after the seventh, just another story set somewhen in the Potterverse.