Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
Well I've finished. Feel a bit dazed and confused (not suprising after four hours sleep followed by continuous reading) but some initial thoughts:
First just to note, I'm not a strongly shipper-y person to start with and to be honest romantic relationships are not what make the books for me. Secondly, I'm a very easily pleased person, so if my thoughts seem a bit gushing or whatever well that's because I like to take enjoyment out of things and then exclaim about them. Or something.
That was just a kind of warning in case anyone thought this was going to be coherent and/ or insightful.
1: I LOVED the idea of the Deathly Hallows and the whole execution of that. It was so cool that Harry's cloak (which let's face it, is one of the core elements of the books) has such an illustrious background. And I liked the conflict that arose between Harry having to destroy the Horcruxes vs. Harry wanting to find the Hallows posed. And that Harry made the right choice, yay.
2: In fact, the building of histories throughout this book was just really good in general. It was great hearing more about Dumbledore and his family, discovering the Potter family's ancestry, learning more about Snape (and why he killed Dumbledore!). It made the book feel... I dunno, Rowling's always been pretty damn good at packing in the detail (which personally I love about these books, the little things can be real treasures on re-reading), but yeah I think all this pulling together of history past/present (and less successfully, future :/) was a really fitting way to put the final book in the series together.
3: Speaking of: the epilogue. WHY? To be honest, this was the part of the book I was least happy about. I spose this is where you realise, at its core, this book is intended for children. As a kid, I used to think books that didn't tell you PRECISELY WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END were evil, so I can sort of see why she did, to give younger readers their "closure" (eww) or whatever. But seriously there were a lot of problems in the conclusion. All the names were confusing it was a real overload (especially, if like me, you've been reading non-stop for the best part of 14 hours). I appreciated the full-circle element of it, and some details were cool (Neville! Harry imparting his sorting hat story to Albus!) but seriously. THE PENULTIMATE SENTENCE WAS 'The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen year" and then they very last bloody sentence was "All was well". WHAT? What kind of anti-climactic rubbish last words for the series is that. Um yeah, so you see I'm not overly gushing about this little section of the book. Luckily, I can just finish the book at "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime" in future reads, if I want :)
4: The deaths... I was pretty suprised by who died, to be honest, I REALLY thought Ron was going to be killed off. But Fred! And Lupin and Tonks :( HEDWIG?! It was pretty bad... And omg, how amazing when Molly took down Bellatrix? So cool. So that kind of made up for Fred dying :/ (Er, in a literary sense).
5: Speaking of dying, pretty cool that Harry took himself off to be sacrificed, and then put the protective spell thing-y on all the defenders of Hogwarts :) Does anyone else though start channelling Narnia/Aslan whenever Dumbledore speaks of the 'deep magic' that Voldemort can't understand? Just me? Right then. I didn't really understand the elder wand thing at the end too well (did I mention I'm tired? really really tired?) but I imagine it will become clearer on the next reading and I got the broad sense of what happened.
And.... that's it for now. It's odd, I'm not really sure how to feel about having finished. As I said, rushing to the end felt inevitable in some ways (I'm a fast reader and can be notoriously impatient to finish books) but now its gone and that's a little bit weird.
So, so long Harry Potter, you were good whilst you lasted and I'm sure you'll be delighting generations of kids for a few more years yet.
First just to note, I'm not a strongly shipper-y person to start with and to be honest romantic relationships are not what make the books for me. Secondly, I'm a very easily pleased person, so if my thoughts seem a bit gushing or whatever well that's because I like to take enjoyment out of things and then exclaim about them. Or something.
That was just a kind of warning in case anyone thought this was going to be coherent and/ or insightful.
1: I LOVED the idea of the Deathly Hallows and the whole execution of that. It was so cool that Harry's cloak (which let's face it, is one of the core elements of the books) has such an illustrious background. And I liked the conflict that arose between Harry having to destroy the Horcruxes vs. Harry wanting to find the Hallows posed. And that Harry made the right choice, yay.
2: In fact, the building of histories throughout this book was just really good in general. It was great hearing more about Dumbledore and his family, discovering the Potter family's ancestry, learning more about Snape (and why he killed Dumbledore!). It made the book feel... I dunno, Rowling's always been pretty damn good at packing in the detail (which personally I love about these books, the little things can be real treasures on re-reading), but yeah I think all this pulling together of history past/present (and less successfully, future :/) was a really fitting way to put the final book in the series together.
3: Speaking of: the epilogue. WHY? To be honest, this was the part of the book I was least happy about. I spose this is where you realise, at its core, this book is intended for children. As a kid, I used to think books that didn't tell you PRECISELY WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END were evil, so I can sort of see why she did, to give younger readers their "closure" (eww) or whatever. But seriously there were a lot of problems in the conclusion. All the names were confusing it was a real overload (especially, if like me, you've been reading non-stop for the best part of 14 hours). I appreciated the full-circle element of it, and some details were cool (Neville! Harry imparting his sorting hat story to Albus!) but seriously. THE PENULTIMATE SENTENCE WAS 'The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen year" and then they very last bloody sentence was "All was well". WHAT? What kind of anti-climactic rubbish last words for the series is that. Um yeah, so you see I'm not overly gushing about this little section of the book. Luckily, I can just finish the book at "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime" in future reads, if I want :)
4: The deaths... I was pretty suprised by who died, to be honest, I REALLY thought Ron was going to be killed off. But Fred! And Lupin and Tonks :( HEDWIG?! It was pretty bad... And omg, how amazing when Molly took down Bellatrix? So cool. So that kind of made up for Fred dying :/ (Er, in a literary sense).
5: Speaking of dying, pretty cool that Harry took himself off to be sacrificed, and then put the protective spell thing-y on all the defenders of Hogwarts :) Does anyone else though start channelling Narnia/Aslan whenever Dumbledore speaks of the 'deep magic' that Voldemort can't understand? Just me? Right then. I didn't really understand the elder wand thing at the end too well (did I mention I'm tired? really really tired?) but I imagine it will become clearer on the next reading and I got the broad sense of what happened.
And.... that's it for now. It's odd, I'm not really sure how to feel about having finished. As I said, rushing to the end felt inevitable in some ways (I'm a fast reader and can be notoriously impatient to finish books) but now its gone and that's a little bit weird.
So, so long Harry Potter, you were good whilst you lasted and I'm sure you'll be delighting generations of kids for a few more years yet.