Three and a half months after the big release I finally get around to reading the final Harry Potter installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Despite the length of the book, I think I’ll make this a short review, because I just don’t feel up to writing all that much about this kind of fluff.
The synopsis: This time Harry and friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger have gone on the run rather than re-enroll for their last year at Hogwarts. Voldemort and his Death Eaters have infiltrated the government and basically run everything. They have a plan to destroy the Horcruxes that contain pieces of the soul of Voldemort. Can they find them and destroy them before Voldemort finds and destroys them?
Good stuff: The main good thing about the book though is it’s fun. The pacing is better than some of her early books. They always got dull during the parts covering the middle of the school year. With one issue, I really liked the battle for Hogwarts, as well as the scenes of breaking into Gringotts. A nice touch was having the teachers at Hogwarts use spells we haven’t heard of (getting to do practical magic for I think the first time in the series), as if they actually know more than the limited amount that Harry has seen. I liked what Rowling did with Severus Snape too. though it didn’t come as a surprise to me.
Bad stuff: Good god haven’t Ronald Weasley and Harry stopped having stupid fights yet? I’ve seen this part too many times already. Same thing with Harry and his I know better than everyone else
schemes. You’d think they’d have learned by now. I’m very disappointed that magic spells are portrayed as slow-moving dodge-able laser beams. Perhaps Rowling wrote up the workings of magic before, but I didn’t notice it. If she did, I apologize for not ranting on that one already. The explanation for the interactions between the Horcruxes, the Deathly Hallows, Harry, and Voldemort in the ending got too intricate for me to want to follow. So I didn’t and skipped those paragraphs. I understood the wand explanations, but how that played out in the final battle just seemed contrived.
On the whole, a decent read.
Title: Harry Potter and the deathly hallows
Author: J. K. Rowling
Illustrator: Mary GrandPré
Series: Harry Potter ; 7
Imprint / publisher: Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic
Format: Hardcover
Length: 784 p.
Publication date: July 2007
ISBN-10: 0-545-01022-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-545-01022-1
Subject: Wizards — Fiction
Subject: Magic — Fiction
Subject: Coming of age — Fiction
Subject: England — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.R79835 Hak 2007
