You know what? I didn't really like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows all that much. Sure, the last three hundred pages were awesome. The chapter near the end where Harry goes to the forest is argueably the best chapter in the series. The first half of the book, however? Meh. I loved the overall story of the series, and I've made peace with the ending, but Goblet of Fire is still my favorite.
As you were.
2 comments:
Interesting. I thought it was the best of the bloated set we've seen starting GoF. I had a few quibbles, below the spoiler line
Spoilers
I'd like to have seen the hundred pages of running around accomplishing nothing in the middle shortened to 20 or so. I understand why she did it, but I think it was done to excess.
I think Percy would have made a better choice for killing a Weasley than one of the twins, especially if he'd had a chance to sacrifice himself on screen (saving say Fred) in atonement for the royal pain he'd been in OotP and HBP.
I think that we needed to have a scene with Ginny and Harry after the death of Voldemort but before the epilogue. Yes Ron and Hermione are his best buds and they needed special acknowledgment at the end, but Ginny is Harry's future and that needed another anchor.
And, speaking of the epilogue, the way she did it didn't work for me. I'd have much preferred it were en-scene at Harry and Ginny's wedding with Teddy as ring bearer and much of the same information as in the current version arranged as open possibility rather than settled fact.
SPOILERS
Yeah, I'm with you there on the epilogue, Y. Maybe she did it to cut short any "Will you write any more Harry books?" queries. She could, but if they're set before 19 years after the fall of Voldemort, there's five people we know nothing can happen to, so what's the point? I don't know ... it felt hollow to me.
I felt that Rowling didn't have much planned for the first 8 months of the school year, and it showed. Just a bunch of hiding and "looking" for horcruxes, which ultimately were too easy to find. If I didn't care so much about the ending, I would have been hard pressed to keep reading. And don't get me started on how worthless I thought the whole "Deathly Hallows" business was. Yeah, she needed something because H and V couldn't fight each other with their own swords, but to me it felt mashed in as an afterthought. As in, "Crap, I'm to the last book and I need to figure out how H and V are going to fight each other." There's been nothing to suggest this plotline for the entire series.
I agree with you that the last half of the series has been bloated. And I have to repeat that I loved the overall story; I just feel this book does not do the series justice.
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