Pottery

[grendel317]

[Edit: Sorry if the title and "spoiler" reference weren't clear enough. To make it more explicit, this is a post about the Harry Potter book, and there are some spoilers in it.]
I'm just going to bullet point these out. Don't be fooled by the comparative lengths of these lists - I had a good time reading this book (and the series as a whole), and I don't want to give the impression that I didn't. Things That Worked For Me

• The Gradual Change In Tone - I really like the way the series starts as a light, fluffy kid's book and gradually turns in to a grittier, nuanced story aimed at a more mature audience. It's not a device I've seen before, and JKR does a pretty good job of pulling it off.
• Moral Ambiguity - This goes hand-in-hand with the first point, but the blurring of good, bad, and clueless characters is refreshing, especially when these categories were so clear-cut in the beginning.
• ...Especially Draco and Dumbledore - Not "good", not "evil", just sort of weak willed and opportunistic - Draco's character is a great portrayal of a very realistic personality. Likewise, I'm especially impressed by Dumbledore's change from an all-knowing, cartoonishly benevolent leader to a skilled administrator who's made some mistakes and a whole lot of compromises, and more or less just fumbles along as best he can like everybody else. (And I say "Dumbledore's change," but really it's a change in the way Harry sees him.)
• Relatively Few Unanswered Questions - It seems like a sincere and largely successful effort is made to tie up all the loose threads. We don't find out if Harry gets to become an Auror, or what the new Ministry or most of the Hogwarts administration look like, but by and large all the big questions are answered.
• Themes Of Questioning Authority - I thought it was great that these books repeatedly hit on themes of questioning authority and thinking for yourself rather than just believing everything you're told, especially since the books are initially aimed at children, and extra-especially since these themes are applied to even the most unambiguously benevolent (at least at first) authority figures in the series. This is the single most admirable aspect of the books, in my opinion, and I wholeheartedly applaud Rowling for it.
• Overall, It Was A Fun Read - I just want to re-emphasize that I really did enjoy the series, taken as a whole. But, that said...

Things That Did Not Work For Me

• Ridiculously Bad Economics - This has been around since book 1, but while I could accept the idea of a poor wizarding family that couldn't afford nice robes and books when I wasn't supposed to take the setting very seriously, it really hurts my suspension of disbelief as the overall tone becomes less silly. I mean, what, are new clothes one of the other four exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration? You can file the Quidditch scoring system and dozens of other minor examples under the same category.
• Girl Needs An Editor, Bad - This book is about 400 pages too long. HPH wandering in the wilderness? 1 chapter, tops. Extended flashbacks? A couple paragraphs each. The entire concept of Deathly Hallows? Never actually mattered - cut it out entirely. The list goes on.
• ...and speaking of The Deathly Hallows - This whole subplot (for which the book is named!) never amounts to anything. Imagine that nobody in the book had ever heard of a Deathly Hallow, and just knew about the three items individually - how much does the overall storyline change? I can't see that it does. I would have preferred for the Hallows to actually play some part in the ending of the book (beyond the part that the Invisibility Cloak has always played), or for them to have been removed entirely.
• Don't Cry, Emo Harry - Harry spends a truly inordinate amount of time moping around and having inexplicably wild mood swings. This goes for everybody, to some extent (I'm looking at you, Remus), but Harry gets the most verbiage devoted to angst and trying to convince everybody not to help him. Again.
• Well, Isn't That Convenient? - There were an awful lot of contrived plot points here. Harry happens to leave his enchanted campsite on the same day that Nigellus tells Snape the general region they're camping, and Ron happens to be in the area on that day, and comes along just in the nick of time? Draco somehow knows that Harry will go looking for the Room of Requirement, or else just happens to run in to him there? Narcissa happens to be the one to check if Harry is alive, and for some reason doesn't announce this fact even after she's gotten the information she wants from him? Mundungus happens to remember that particular locket, which Umbridge happens to have picked up and now wears on her person at all times, instead of it just being in some random wizard's kitchen drawer. Ron somehow fakes enough Parseltongue to open the Chamber of Secrets, and how did they get back out again? At the dramatically optimal time, Harry happens to remember seeing the diadem years before in a room full of hundreds of years worth of random junk? And so on, and so on, and so on.
• How Does Magic Work, Again? - Is the Patronus Charm an elite hardcore spell that only badass Aurors and the amazing Harry Potter can hope to pull off, or is it something a 15 year old can teach a bunch of random school kids in a few weekends? Can Snape reveal the location of 12 Grimmauld Place? Can ownership of the Elder Wand be transferred even if the owner isn't wielding it at the time, or is burying it and never using it again a reasonable way to keep it from being passed on? And so on, and so on, and so on.
• Lupin and Tonks - From the first scene she was introduced, Tonks has been one of my favorite characters. I was perfectly willing (eager, even!) to follow a Remus-and-Tonks subplot, but JKR just doesn't sell it. Everything that happens seems completely random and arbitrary, and their death at the end feels like it was tacked on just to raise the body count. This is the most disappointing storyline in the entire series, for me.
• Extended Snape Flashback - Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we know all this? Snape had a thing for Lily - already established. That's why Snape watched over Potter - already established. James and company were total dicks - already established. Dumbledore wanted Snape to kill him - already established. We didn't know that was because Dumbledore was already dieing, or the thing about Harry needing to die (but not really!), but that's the the only semi-meaningful information in the whole chapter.
• Does The Word "Unforgivable" Mean Anything To You? Harry uses the Cruciatus Curse because somebody got spit on? And McGonagall can't think of a better way to keep a bad guy incapacitated than Imperius? I mean... tie him up, maybe?
• Star Wars - That whole "ghostly advice from your dead mentor" thing was pretty much played out by Return of the Jedi.
• Return of Son of Deus Ex Machina - Ron has appeared out of nowhere to save Harry's butt. Dumbledore has appeared out of nowhere to save Harry's butt. Various members of the Order have appeared out of nowhere to save Harry's butt. Obscure and previously unknown details of wand lore or backstory have appeared out of nowhere to save Harry's butt. Powerful magical items have literally fallen out of the sky to save Harry's butt. I can't help feeling that if anybody actually dies in this series, it's only because JKR didn't feel like making up some shit to save them.
• Every Single Slytherin Except Snape Was Bad - I mean, come on.
• Accio Hagrid - Enough said.
• The Epilogue - I think we could have guessed that Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione were hooking up. How about a little information about the smoking crater that used to be wizarding society? I guess Hogwarts is still going, but if she was going to have an epilogue at all, I really would have liked to know how more of the pieces were put back together