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

I wonder what Rowling will do after she’s finished with the Harry Potter series in the next book. Will she retire completely on the millions she’s earned? Will she extend the series? Will she start on new children’s stories? Maybe she’ll start writing adult fiction. I’m no seer, but it will be a shame when this series ends. Some of the books brought out a big eh in me, but most, including the Half-Blood Prince, are really quite good. And anything that gets millions of children to read, and read fantasy no less, is definitely on the good side of the good/evil equation.

There are three magical plots going on in this book. First, Harry Potter begins private lessons with Dumbledore and searches with him for missing pieces of Voldemort’s soul. If successful, they will eventually be able to kill Harry’s nemesis. Second, it appears that Draco Malfoy has graduated from being a schoolboy bully to full time Death Eater, with a plan to do something truly nefarious. And lastly, Harry uses the margin scribblings of someone calling himself the Half-Blood Prince in a used textbook to excel in his classwork, but the Half-Blood Prince might be more than he seems.

On the other side of things, Harry, Hermione, and Ron all feel the rush of their hormones and begin dating schoolmates in earnest. While touching somewhat, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time these days with high school students much younger than the age of the characters in Rowling’s series, and their forays into sexuality are much more gratuitous than anything Harry Potter will ever see. So the descriptions in this books seem more nostalgic and touching than real. They don’t ring false for the age group though. More it’s just a relic of bygone times when making out in the hallway was about the most one would see happen.

The pacing of this book was much more even than previous ones where all the action was saved for the end. It’s still rear-loaded, but the earlier chapters don’t drag.

Beyond that, I don’t have a lot to say about the book. Go pick it up now while it’s cheap at the used bookstores. Once book seven comes out, everyone will want to catch up fast.

Title: Harry Potter and the half-blood prince
Author: J. K. Rowling
Illustrator: Mary GrandPré
Series: Harry Potter ; 6
Imprint / publisher: Scholastic
Format: Hardcover
Length: x, 652 p.
Publication date: July 2005
ISBN-10: 0-439-78454-9
Subject: Wizards — Fiction
Subject: Magic — Fiction
Subject: Schools — Fiction
Subject: England — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.R79835 Halc 2005

I’m staying a couple of years behind everyone else in reading J. K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter series. I remember being at Sara’s wedding a couple of years ago just after this came out, and the kids there were hiding out in one room reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix whenever their parents didn’t want them posing for pictures or behaving child-like for the various grandparents and relatives floating around. At the time I thought, Good god that’s a thick book for children. And indeed it is.

But other than being overly long, I enjoyed it very much. Ms. Rowling’s writing has improved. Harry Potter behaves more and more like a recognizable child with every book (so far). I think he was acting a bit too old in the earlier books but he fits his ostensible age much better now.

This entry in the series has Harry in his 5th year at Hogwarts. The Order of the Phoenix is the group Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, has put together to oppose Voldemort. Rather than look bad, the Ministry of Magic pretends that Voldemort has not returned, and does everything in its power in a P.R. effort to hide the evidence. Including putting in place extra control over Hogwarts, in the person of Professor Umbridge, who delights in punishing Harry Potter even more than Professor Snape. Meanwhile, Voldemort uses a newly discovered connection with Harry Potter to inject his thoughts into Harry’s dreams.

Most of the book is sub-plot concerning Harry vs. Umbridge and the Ministry of Magic. It distracts us, and Harry, from his duel with Voldemort. A little less of that and it would be a 5 star book in my view. A big government ministry, even one in a fictional magical world, spending so much effort with running a school day to day seems kind of odd to me. The animosity was needed, but I think I would have done it with the Ministry being more removed, and perhaps having the Malfoys take a larger role as Harry’s foils.

Also, one other good thing is that Rowling seems to finally be advancing some of the other kids in the book. They are less of caricatures than in the past. Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley in particular stood out for me. Longbottom because he was less of an abject failure and Weasley because she stops being the mooning little sister. In previous books it was primarily Harry Potter doing the saving, with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger taking supporting roles. This time around it was really all the other kids taking and equal or greater role than Harry.

All in all a good effort.

Author: J. K. Rowling
Illustrator: Mary GrandPré
Imprint / publisher: Scholastic
Format: Paperback
Publication date: September 2004 (Jul 2003 in hardback)
Length: xi, 870 p.
ISBN-10: 0-439-35807-8
Subject: Wizards — Fiction
Subject: Magic — Fiction
Subject: Schools — Fiction
Subject: Coming of age — Fiction
Subject: England — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.R79835 Halm 2003