Thursday, July 26, 2007



THIRTEEN THOUGHTS ON HARRY POTTER #7




Well, I'm sure most of the world has finished it by now, so we all know what happened and I'm not spoiling anything for anybody by talking about it. So following are my thoughts, likes, dislikes, et cetera, on the final installment of The Boy Who Lived:




1. I'm glad there was a happy ending. I didn't want anything bad to happen to Harry, Ron, Hermione or Ginny. The epilogue, however, was a bit... strange. It was nice to know everyone had their HEA, and I was glad Neville turned into the herbology professor at Hogwarts. But it left me thinking, what happened to the rest of the cast? So, more questions were raised--for me--by the epilogue than satisfied.


2. Speaking of Neville--Woo-hoo for that boy! Starting an underground movement at Hogwarts, attacking dementors with all sorts of crazy plants, pulling the sword of Gryffindor from the sorting hat (never mind that the goblins took it back; it worked for him just like it did for Harry which totally rocked), slaying Nagini... he stepped up to the plate and kicked ass! Go Neville, go Neville, go!!


3. JK Rowling seemed, pre-release, to put heavy emphasis on "major" characters dying. Let's see, who is a major character from this list? Hedwig the owl, Lupin, Tonks, Fred Weasley, Moody, Voldemort and Snape. The last two, okay. They were reasonably major in the grand scheme of things, but they weren't MAJOR like Harry, Ron & Hermoine. And the last minute reprieve goes to Malfoy. I kind of saw that one coming, and I was glad Harry rescued him from death even though he was a shithead.


4. Severus Snape. My faith was totally justified. I KNEW he wasn't all bad. Weird thing though, leaking out all that penseive stuff. And sorry, but the Harry Potter in books 1-6 would not have jammed his head in a penseive to find out Snape loved his mother right during the heat of the fricking battle when everyone he loves is fighting for their lives downstairs.


5. Did anyone else besides me feel that the book could have been shorter? Seriously, there were times while reading, like when the trio was wandering, staying in a new place every night for MONTHS that I felt she could have hacked off a few pages or chapters and still gotten the point across just fine. In addition the pacing of this book was off for me. The middle was sagging then I felt she tried to stuff way too much too quickly into the battle scenes. Ah well, I'm not the poor multimillionaire author, am I? What the hell do I know?


6. Harry being a Horcrux. Totally didn't see that coming. Wasn't that awesome??


7. The whole "secrets of Albus Dumbledore" thing. Again, that could have been shortened, summarized, something. I got bored with it.


8. Ron and Hermione finally getting to kiss. And, of course, having that moment at the worst possible time. I was laughing out loud when Harry's like, "Uh, could you two save that for later?"


9. How could Voldemort have NOT KNOWN about the hallows? Come on, he knew every other thing!

10. I found Dudley's sudden change of heart hard to believe. A little more should have been made of that, perhaps in book 6, than was. And dig it--Aunt Petunia wanted to be a witch! Puts a whole new spin on her sour character, doesn't it?

11. When Hagrid got carried away by the spiders I almost cried. I thought he was seriously a goner. Glad he got out of that mess!

12. Dobby died. (sniff!) But Kreacher redeemed himself admirably.

13. I liked how the protective charm Harry's mother gave him worked when Harry decided to sacrifice himself and rebounded on everyone he knew and loved. That was way cool.

Okay, that's my thirteen for today. If you've read it, what were your likes/dislikes? Share!!

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1 Comment:

Girl said...

Neville so rocked! All he needed was a friend and look who he became:)

The epilogue was crap. Woo hoo we live happily ever after and have kids. Like you say what about everyone else? What about work? Why is Slytherin still the house people don;t want to be in? So many things left unsaid and it might have been better to just leave it to our imagination.

There were a few other things that bugged me but overall it was pretty good. I do need to remind myself that the series is written for kids and so their needs and wants in a book are different from mine.

I shall miss the gang though.