RSSHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
July 26th, 2007 | View Comments
Author: J. K. Rowling
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Rating: 
Buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Amazon.com
The book was lying on my doorstep when I came home from running errands last Saturday. I heaved the book onto my stack of groceries, garden supplies, mail, and knitting, walked up the stairs to my apartment, and settled down for a read. It seems that in doing this, I failed to shut and lock the front door to the house properly, which will become important in a minute.
Other than taking a break to bake and eat a frozen pizza (no time for cooking when there is Harry Potter to be read) and to have the following phone conversation with my mom,
Me: Hello?
Mom: What are you doing?
Me: Reading Harry Potter…
Mom: *heavy sigh* Everyone is reading Harry Potter!
I read straight through until finishing around 4am. And then I fell asleep. Shortly after this some Bible thumper decided it was entirely appropriate to take advantage of the unlocked door and waltz into the house to proselytize, only to get thrown out by my landlady.
Note to Bible thumpers everywhere: I don’t care how many innocent souls you think are being corrupted by the Satanic horror that is Harry Potter. If you want to have even the slightest bit of credibility with me, you need to start by NOT TRESPASSING. Besides, it’s Sunday morning. Shouldn’t you be in church, rather than committing misdemeanors?
Anyways.
I would like to preface this review by saying that I am a big fan, but not a fanatic. I like the series a lot, but don’t think they’re above criticism. If that bugs you, then you might want to stop reading now and go find a dedicated fan site.
To refresh everyone’s memory, I thought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was utter dreck and so my expectations for this book were rather low. However, I was pleasantly surprised.
SPOILERS START AFTER THE JUMP.
I’M NOT KIDDING, SPOILERS START NOW. STOP READING IF YOU CARE.
The deaths are fast and furious, beginning with some poor Hogwarts professor that I didn’t even remember existed, and moving quickly onto two more, including the one that I was least expecting—Hedwig. Poor girl.
And then the plot more or less comes to a grinding halt for a few hundred pages while Bill and Fleur get married and the trio starts aimlessly traipsing around the world. This is one of the places where I think a heavy-handed editor really could have tightened the book up. More on that later.
There is some wonderful dialogue in there, though. I’m going to have to figure out how to work “Merlin’s pants!” and “Merlin’s saggy left…” into my general lexicon. I also laughed out loud when Ron thought Cinderella was a disease.
The plot picks up in the second half of the book, beginning with the near-miss in Godric’s Hollow—the scene of Nagini emerging from the severed neck of Bathilda Bagshot is begging to be put on film—Ron’s return and the capture of the sword and the cup. Dobby Apparating to save the day was a great moment.
From then on, it’s quick work until the final showdown. A whole parade of beloved, less beloved, and who? characters from prior books show up for cameos and in some cases, curtain calls, and we finally learn the truth about Dumbledore.
And Snape. Oh Snape, arguably the best-written and most complex character in the whole series. You done good after all. Taking that trip down Snape’s memory lane was wonderful.
The scene as Harry enters the Forbidden Forest, accompanied by his lost parent figures is the best dramatic scene that Rowling has written in the series. It managed to hit all the right notes for me, so that when that jet of green light finally appeared, I went, “oh damn.”
But just as the old man with the beard must always die, he must also come back to help our hero finish what he started. He does, and the Wizarding world lives happily ever after.
Overall, I thought the book was terrific. The major flaw of books 4, 5, and 6 was still somewhat apparent, but did comparatively little to detract from the overall story.
That flaw would be the lack of editing. It seems to happen to popular series: when sales take off, the editors lay off the red pen and the books start to balloon out of control, partly because of the pressures of cranking out books on such a tight schedule and partly because readers will buy it anyways, even if it’s dreck. Just look at the size of the last four books, each of which came out after Pottermania had taken off, compared to the size of the first three.
I suppose I should be thankful that the Harry Potter problem never reached Wheel of Time proportions. If it had, Book 7 would been expanded into Books 7 through 15 and released over the next twelve years. Book 10 would be nearly 1,000 pages long, only feature Harry and Hermione, and take place over three days inside Mrs. Figg’s tent. Meanwhile, Sirius would have started falling through the veil in Book 5, and we wouldn’t have confirmation of his death until Book 14.
Judicious cutting of certain Harry Potter subplots would have streamlined the storytelling a lot without sacrificing any of the actual story. And a strict editor might have prevented some of these moments that jarred me right out of the moment:
- Hermione, who had earlier described modifying her parents’ memories and sending them to Australia, declares that she’s never performed a Memory Charm before. I couldn’t figure out if we were supposed to think she had lied to Harry and this was foreshadowing her parents being kidnapped later, or if it was just an error. I’m going with error.
- Continual references to food being one of the five exceptions to whatever magical law, which prevents it from being conjured out of nowhere. Except…didn’t Dumbledore do exactly that when he beaned the Dursleys with glasses of mead at the beginning of book 6? There are so many inconsistencies in the magic of the book that I have no idea what magic is easy vs. hard. It seems sort of wrong that a teenager can disable an experienced Death Eater with something called the Bat Bogey Hex.
- Ron and Hermione disappear with Hufflepuff’s cup while Harry tracks down the Grey Lady. They come back and it’s flattened. Uh…I would have liked to see that instead of just hearing about it after the fact, given that the Horcruz seek-and-destroy mission was the whole point of the book…
- How did Neville pull Gryffindor’s sword out of the Sorting Hat if Griphook ran off with it? And if Gryffindor’s sword just sort of…pops out of the hat at opportune moments, then why go through the rigmarole of planting a fake in the Lestrange’s vault and having Harry agonize over what to do if Griphook takes the real sword? Just let him have it, then march into the Headmaster’s office, grab the Sorting Hat, and take it back!
Some people would argue that it’s a children’s book, it’s not supposed to be realistic, so stop overthinking it and enjoy the book. But that’s exactly my point. I’m sitting back and enjoying the book and wham! Hermione can’t remember whether she knows how to do a Memory Charm! It’s distracting, and it’s the job of the author and the editor to eliminate or minimize that sort of thing.
Even so, the Harry Potter series has provided some of the most enjoyable hours of reading I’ve ever had. Right now I only own the last two books, but I definitely plan on buying the first five to complete my collection.
Now I just need to go see the movie.
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Buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Amazon.com
Yvonne posted this on July 26th, 2007 @ 11:24pm in Book Reviews | Permalink to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"
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2. Margot » August 3rd, 2007 at 3:41 am
Now really, all your questions and complaints are answered in one word.
Magic. It’s not really supposed to make sense, you just have to accept and belive, and this is coming from an atheist.
3. Yvonne » August 3rd, 2007 at 10:38 pm
First, I fail to see how more faith in magic fixes any of the problems with pacing and plot bloat or Hermione being unable to remember something she did five chapters ago.
Second, it is clear from the writing in the book and also from interviews with J. K. Rowling that she intended the magical world to have rules and structure and limits. In other words, it is supposed to make sense. The problem is, sometimes it doesn’t.
Think about it. Where does the dramatic tension in the story come from? It comes from Harry and his friends, relatively untrained young wizards, taking on the greatest Dark Wizard of all time and his army. This is classic David/Goliath. However, if thirteen-year-old Ginny can take out a Death Eater with the Bat Bogey Hex, then the plot ceases to be David vs. Goliath and starts being Harry and friends vs. Tom and friends. If the magic was never meant to have any sort of internal logic, then it just becomes a giant deus ex machina and you no longer have an interesting story to tell.
4. Estrella » August 11th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I too was wondering how Neville got the sword … and I found the answer here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20071161/?pg=38#JoRowling_ap
1. Elenita » July 28th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I haven’t read this entry yet, mostly because I haven’t read the book yet, but I just wanted to thank you for putting spoilers after the jump. It’s much appreciated.