Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows reviews (SPOILERS)

[Pearly Di]

Surprisingly spiritual overtones in this last book I thought. All about owning your own soul and remorse and possbility of redemption.

I thought so too.

I wonder what some of the neo-Christian groups who came out against the Potter series due to implied Devil-worship will have to say, if anything.

I have been relieved to discover that there are quite a lot of conservative Christians who love the HP books. I should think so too!

(And Pearly, I agree with you - Dumbledore is a bit of a git, isn't he?)

Dumbledore is no Gandalf. Ganders makes mistakes but not even he would abandon an orphan for 10 years to the abuse of his uncle and aunt. Git is the word. There are lots of things which don't make that much sense in the Hogwarts universe, but this is the worst, IMO.

I forgive Jo Ro because she is an awesome storyteller and pulls off such amazing plot twists and surprises.

I still think that 'Azkaban' is probably the best story in the whole series, but 'Deathly Hallows' packs such an incredible emotional wallop that I really must consider it my favourite.

I feel sorry for the Malfoy fans. Draco deserved a better character arc than that, really.

And, yes, Remus and Tonks. They got shafted. Sigh. Such a couple of great characters and Jo Ro never really does anything with them.

But, hey. I did love Harry to pieces in this, and that counts for a lot!

And, Snape.

[superwizard]

I feel sorry for the Malfoy fans. Draco deserved a better character arc than that, really.

That reminded me of a few characters who's actions I thought were lacking.

1-Wormtongue. Yes he hesitates for a second I guess but I was really hoping for something a lot more glorious to happen. I was really hoping that he would somehow redeem himself for snitching on Harry's parents. I didn't feel he did.

2-Malfoy. After reading HBP I was really expecting him to do something magnificent to save the day. Instead he sort of hides in the corner and doesn't really do anything.

3-Percy. Another disappointment. After all the fuss that Rowling made about him in previous books I was expecting his return to make a huge impact- to save the day. Him just showing up in the eve of the battle wasn't very impressive.

4-Snape. I was really hoping that he would show his true colors and die defending Harry or something like that. His death was just too bland in my opinion.

5-Petunia. I was expecting her to do something in this book but alas she didn't

And yes I'm still fuming at the deaths of Lupin and Tonks and in a different way Fred (being a twin I can't imagine how bad it must feel for George )

[Pearly Di]

1) Wormtongue. You mean Wormtail.

Well, superwizard, I guess there really are so many characters who can have a magical redemption scene. Kreacher was one. I never thought Wormtail would redeem himself. He got close though.

2) Oh man, the Malfoys. Heck. Yes. What a waste of a magnificent family!

3) Percy - another loose end rather too neatly tied up.

4) Snape. I didn't find his death bland. I found it shocking, and brutal, and yes, I would have loved some final words too, from Snape to Harry. But, for some reason, Jo Ro denies Snape the magical character transformations she bestows on other characters (e.g. Ginny, Kreacher). Oh well. His death was still powerful and packed a punch.

And at least he looked into LilyHarry's eyes. Yes, I am a sap.

5) Petunia, yes. I was expecting that from the last book. Um, nothing.
Dudley was good though.

Jo Row is quite callous in who she decided to kill off. She wasn't prepared to sacrifice any of her three principal teenagers - and killing off Ginny would have been too horrible for Harry.

Ah, well!

[JewelSong]

- and killing off Ginny would have been too horrible for Harry.

But then Harry could have married LUNA! I would have loved that!

We never did find out if Luna ends up with anyone. Neville would have been my guess...

But I can't be the only one out there who wanted to see some Harry/Luna lurve.

(If he wasn't going to ride off into the sunset with Draco, that is. Can't you just imagine it? Harry could have swooped down on his broomstick, Seeker-like and scooped Draco up out of the clutches of his parents. "I ain't quittin' you," muttered Harry as Draco looked both shocked and grateful from underneath his white-blond hair.)

Ahem. Sorry. I lost my head there for a minute...

[elfshadow]

(If he wasn't going to ride off into the sunset with Draco, that is. Can't you just imagine it? Harry could have swooped down on his broomstick, Seeker-like and scooped Draco up out of the clutches of his parents. "I ain't quittin' you," muttered Harry as Draco looked both shocked and grateful from underneath his white-blond hair.)

Oooh. Yummy. Yes, I have to admit that I've been a Harry/Draco fan for quite a while. It would have made a delicious end.

[Crucifer]

1)Wormtail regretted his actions in the end. That is why he died. Guilt got to him.

2)See the thing is, pressure brings out peoples true character. I.e. Malfoy is really a spineless wimp. Under Pressure, we saw that. He's not hero material.

3)Percy really is a nice guy, he was just blinded by the prospect of power. He was disillusioned by Fudge, but under Scrimgeour, the Weasleys were still not promotion material. He couldn't escape the ministry earlier than he did because of the blood traitor thing. He is a good guy really.

4)Snape's death was appropriate. He lived a dangerous life, and unfortunately, he died in a "boring" way, but his death was necessary.

5)Petunia never got over her sisters powers. In Snapes memory, however, she was an extremely important character in driving a wedge between Lily and Snape. He already hated his Muggle Father, I think (evidence in Snapes memories during Occlumency lessons.) and Petunia only 'taught' him that all muggles are the same.

[Pearly Di]

But I can't be the only one out there who wanted to see some Harry/Luna lurve.

No, honey. You are not.

And yes, the Harry/Draco ship. I'm not into it, but I understand the whole light/dark, yin/yang thing going on there!

Unlike Jo Rowling.

[Túrin Turambar]

After the break into the Ministry however the book took a turn in my opinion. I didn't really like this part of the book at all and I really saw no need for the whole Ron storming off at all! The whole gloominess and hopelessness was too much for me personally.

My thoughts exactly – the middle suffers from a lot of unnecessary diversions.

You can see this in the series as it goes on. I suspect that, as JKR has become more popular, her editors are becoming less and less willing to tinker with what she wrote. PoA is excellent precisely because every word, every event and every character really pulls their weight. It’s a shame, because a better-edited DH would have been the one book to rule them all…

[superwizard]

4) Snape. I didn't find his death bland. I found it shocking, and brutal, and yes, I would have loved some final words too, from Snape to Harry. But, for some reason, Jo Ro denies Snape the magical character transformations she bestows on other characters (e.g. Ginny, Kreacher). Oh well. His death was still powerful and packed a punch.

The thing I really wanted to see was for Snape to be seen, even for a moment, as the hero. Imagine right there in the Shack that Harry is accidentally spotted by Voldemort. Snape then rushes and stops Voldemort from capturing Harry and dies from the attempt but his efforts allow Harry to escape. Snape dies defending the son of his worst enemy and his greatest love .

It’s a shame, because a better-edited DH would have been the one book to rule them all…

I don't know I feel that even a better-edited version of DH would still rank lower than PoA. There is something about that book- its location within the series. It has the best of both worlds- the light-heartedness of the first few ones with the powerful emotions of the older books. It ties in with the older books a lot better than 1 and 2 and well it introduced us to Sirius and Lupin and for me and that's huge.

2)See the thing is, pressure brings out peoples true character. I.e. Malfoy is really a spineless wimp. Under Pressure, we saw that. He's not hero material.

Yes but honestly after being Harry's rival for 6 books I was expecting more. a lot more.

[WampusCat]

I found the book entirely satisfying.

I can understand how the Ron-storming-off incident slows the plot, but it deepened the horror of Harry's situation for me. At that point Harry has lost Hedwig. He's lost his trust in Dumbledore. He's lost Hogwarts. He's even lost his wand. And now the one friend who has been at his side in every adventure has stormed off and has no way to return.

Frankly, I expected Hermione to disappear next. And when one of the others said, "I don't know what we'd do without you" to her -- well, that sounded like a death sentence.

I'm glad I was wrong.

Now I do think that Rowling is a little too fond of characters angrily cutting off one another, then having a convenient change of heart.

But I was quite happy with how this plot resolved the story.

As for the epilogue: Its only saving grace, in my opinion, was Harry's remark about Snape (which redeemed it ...barely). There were no surprises, only confirmations of relationships we already knew were developing. I think I would have preferred an epilogue -- an appendix? -- that simply stated what happened to each of the main characters, perhaps in a more detailed way. Then we could have learned, for example, what sort of work Harry and Ginny were doing, not just Neville.

[tinwë]

I loved it too. What a wild ride - from Voldemort attacking the departure from the Dursley’s, to crashing the wedding, V at Godric’s Hollow, the Snatchers hauling them off to Malfoy Manor - there was so much happening here, and I felt it made up for the slowness of some of the earlier books. Yes, there were some slow parts in the middle section (which owed in part to the format of covering an entire school year in each book - you’re bound to hit a slowdown eventually), but overall the book delivered as the pay-off for the setup from the previous six books. Very well done.

As for the deaths, one thing that bothered me was the fact that so much pre-publication media hype went into building up the expectation about “two major characters” dying. To me the major characters were Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore and Voldemort. Dumbldore was already dead, Voldemort didn’t count because he was, for the most part, not an “active” character (similar to the way that Sauron never really appears in LOTR) and besides, Voldemort’s fate was pretty much sealed from the beginning anyway, as was Harry’s. That left Ron And Hermione, but honestly I can’t imagine either of them being killed either. So, no “major” character died, really. As for minor characters, there were certainly more than two - Fred, Tonks, Lupin, Dobby, Snape, even Hedwig counts as a minor character. So, the deaths didn’t live up to the hype, which bugs me because if ever there was a case of a book not needing superfluous hype, this was it.

As for the deaths that did occur, I agree with others here that Fred, Tonks and Lupin felt gratuitous and meaningless. Granted, someone had to die in the battle, and perhaps it would have taken too much time to integrate those deaths into the story in a meaningful way, but still, they left a sour taste in my mouth. The deaths that were integrated into the story though, I thought were done quite well. Namely, Snape. Yes, some sort of resolution between Snape and Harry might have been nice, but the story wouldn’t allow it. Snape couldn’t redeem himself by saving Harry, or even dying for Harry because in the end Snape’s mission was to make it possible for Harry to be killed by Voldemort. So he himself had no choice but to submit to the ignoble and inglorious death Voldemort gave him, never being able to publically acknowledge, or be recognized for, the redemption he had sought so many years earlier and for which he had spent the rest of his life working for Dumbledore.

But that was the saving grace of the Epilogue, as Wampus said, the mention of Snape. Albus Severus Potter. Harry named his own child after the person he had hated more than anyone else, so that everyone would know that Snape was really the hero.

The other death that worked in the story was Dobby. I didn’t really care for the deus ex machina of Dobby showing up in the dungeon at Malfoy’s, but Dobby’s death and burial turned out to be important for the story. That’s the sort of thing that would have been nice for Lupin and Fred and Tonk’s death. Speaking of which, since both Lupin and Tonks died, and Harry was Teddy’s Godfather, shouldn’t Harry have raised Teddy, not his grandmother?

Things that I loved - I loved Luna, yes I would have no problem with a Harry/Luna relationship. And Neville just rocked. “Oh sure, they’ve been blasting me left and right with Cruciatus curses and Imperious curses, but so what. No big deal. All in a days work!” Go Neville. The Ginny storyline never seemed quite resolved to me, just sort of tacked on, but it was nice to finally see Ron and Hermione get together. And it was nice to finally see Ron get some intelligence in his head for a chnage. Oh, and the Molly Weasly / Sigorney Weaver move at the end was awesome!

All in all a very good book and a nice finale to the series.

So, who wants to take bets on a sequel. Never say never, as they say.

[solicitr]

Imagine right there in the Shack that Harry is accidentally spotted by Voldemort. Snape then rushes and stops Voldemort from capturing Harry and dies from the attempt but his efforts allow Harry to escape. Snape dies defending the son of his worst enemy and his greatest love

It wouldn't have worked without redoing the (superb) ending completely- it's essential to the final duel that Voldy *doesn't* know that Snape was a double agent, *doesn't* suspect that Snape wasn't the Master of the Elder Wand. The key to the final duel is that Voldy has already lost before it begins.

[elfshadow]

So, who wants to take bets on a sequel. Never say never, as they say.

The only thing that I really don't want to see would be something like "The Adventures of Albus Severus Potter!!!!11" or anything similar. I would love to see a short (maybe 100 or so pages, or even fewer perhaps) compilation of appendices detailing what each character did in the 19 years before the Epilogue--very similar to Tolkien's Appendices, of course, as others have mentioned. That would really wrap things up for me. But I don't want to see a spinoff series. I don't want JK Rowling to create more stories in the Harry Potter world, I think. But an explanation of how the lives of the major characters in the HP series would be lovely.

[Atreides]

I wouldn't want Rowling to fail outside of Potter and get stuck in this world, but maybe many years from now, if she's found outside success, she might get a new idea or inspiration that would carry her back to the world that made her famous (to say the least). I think that in my late thirty's/early forty's, it might be cool to be looking at a new J.K. Rowling novel in the Harry Potter universe. I emphasize, if she's found satisfactory outside success. We don't need another Star Wars prequel trilogy. She needs to really have a new spark for this world.

That said, I'm eager to see where she goes from here.

[tinwë]

Elsha - that would be a nice thing to have, sort of what Wampus was talking about with the epiloque. Hasn’t Rowling done some “accessory” books for this series? I seem to remember something about Quidditch.

Atreides - actually, that is what I had in mind. I really could see her coming back to this after a sufficient amount of time has passed. At least ten years or more.

One other thing - I do love that J. K. Rowling uses obscure words that hardly anyone ever uses. I love getting my dictionary out to look words up while I’m reading. A few that stuck in my memory during this one (I don’t remember where these were - I’m terrible about making notes or marking pages as I go) - trice - a brief space of time; gorse - a type of shrub; and scarper - to flee/run away.

On a whim I looked up the word Hallow on the Merriam Webster online dictionary and found this:

Hallow

[WampusCat]

I asked my son (who has thus far not opened his copy) what he thinks the title refers to.

"God makes everyone die."

Say what?

"Well, 'deathly' ... that's obvious. And 'hallow' is God. You know: 'Hallowed be thy name.'"

Oh, and I only spotted one typo. There's a word mistakenly capitalized on page 735. (I don't go looking for these things. They jump out and attack me.)

[Alatar]

Elsha - that would be a nice thing to have, sort of what Wampus was talking about with the epiloque. Hasn’t Rowling done some “accessory” books for this series? I seem to remember something about Quidditch.

Atreides - actually, that is what I had in mind. I really could see her coming back to this after a sufficient amount of time has passed. At least ten years or more.

One other thing - I do love that J. K. Rowling uses obscure words that hardly anyone ever uses. I love getting my dictionary out to look words up while I’m reading. A few that stuck in my memory during this one (I don’t remember where these were - I’m terrible about making notes or marking pages as I go) - trice - a brief space of time; gorse - a type of shrub; and scarper - to flee/run away.

JK Rowling released two books for Comic Relief. "Quidditch through the Ages" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". They netted £16million for charity.

She has mentioned possibly releasing an Encyclopaedia of Hogwarts in the same way, made up of her copious notes and backstory.

And, tinwë, none of those words are "obscure" over here. Just standard British English. Nice to see that they're not changing them all for the US though.

[superwizard]

Imagine right there in the Shack that Harry is accidentally spotted by Voldemort. Snape then rushes and stops Voldemort from capturing Harry and dies from the attempt but his efforts allow Harry to escape. Snape dies defending the son of his worst enemy and his greatest love

It wouldn't have worked without redoing the (superb) ending completely- it's essential to the final duel that Voldy *doesn't* know that Snape was a double agent, *doesn't* suspect that Snape wasn't the Master of the Elder Wand. The key to the final duel is that Voldy has already lost before it begins.

Yes of course I completely missed that! My fault Also it occured to me that Snape simply never was the famous hero type. He was the guy in the back-the guy you just don't hear about.

[tinwë]

Question - maybe I’m just dense and completely missed something obvious, but can someone tell me what the baby under the chair in the King’s Cross chapter was supposed to represent?

[Alatar]

Thanks for asking tinwë, I was planning on re-reading it to see if I could figure that out.