Just finished reading ...and the Deathly Hallows. Just as in, about five minutes ago. Wow. No more new Harry Potter books, ever. No more having to avoid every media source or blog that might spring a spoiler on me.
These are really quick impressions, obviously I haven't had time to think it through yet. Will probably reread it more slowly over the next week or so to try and absorb more.
So I enjoyed it a lot. Of course. My only real criticism at this point is that the ending was way too Jesusy for me. At least Harry wasn't permanently dead. That (to quote Georg) would have sucked. I didn't honestly think she was going to end it with Harry really most sincerely dead. For a couple of reasons: first, these are still ostensibly children's books. Second, as far as I can remember the prologues at the beginning of each book are the only time the point of view ever, ever leaves Harry. It would have been too weird to have to shift into someone else's point of view at the end.
Overall the ending was more upbeat than I was expecting. Total victory, none of the major kids died, and redemption for everyone who was capable of being redeemed.
Very happy with the way things played out for Neville & wish more of that had happened where we could see it. For my money he would have been more interesting as the central character. He suffered the same loss Harry did, and he was just as heroic, but he wasn't a golden boy: not rich, handsome, famous and talented at almost everything without even trying. Maybe it's easier for me to empathize with Neville. But then again, as Georg said it isn't called Neville Longbottom and the Deathly Hallows so it's no surprise that Neville's "hero's journey" happens off camera, so to speak.
That long sequence in the middle where Harry, Hermione and (sometimes) Ron are alone together got a little claustrophic. Then again, I was pleased that Rowling managed to inject as much humor as she did into an extremely dark story. Also interested in the level of moral complexity, which I thought was an improvement over the earlier, more straightforward books. For instance Dudley's not so bad, Dumbledore had deep flaws, and Harry is mature enough to acknowledge them, and Sirius' arrogance, without loving either of them less.
I was surprised that in the epilogue, she doesn't say what anyone except Neville does for a living. Or maybe she does and I missed it in my rush to finish? But anyway, after such a fuss was made about it in book 5, what they all wanted to do, I thought we'd find out. Neville is doing exactly what he wanted, and maybe we should assume Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny are too. Or maybe it means that after the events of the last book, family was what really mattered to them, so there wasn't any need to show us their careers.
Leave a comment if you want to chat about the book. You'll get a kooky error message about "an unblessed reference" but don't mind my atheist blog software, your comment will post nonetheless. Georg hasn't finished the book yet and it's driving me crazy not being able to say anything!
I agree with your take on the epilogue. We might could assume that they all, like Neville, ended up doing what they'd thought they would. But I think the message that Rowling's wanting us to take away is that they ended up with friends and family and love in their lives.
Also that Harry doesn't become headmaster of Hogwarts.
i was really rather relieved that she didn't kill off any of the main three in the end. i guess it could be argued that, as a young adult novel, it was important to give her core audience a sense of security in the end. just as it was important that dumbledore really be dead when he died.
I felt strongly that it would be wrong and would, in fact, go against what the novels were about, for Harry to die. So it was only while I was in the grip of the story that I had any fleeting concerns about that. But I was more concerned that Rowling would somehow feel compelled to write away from expectations and kill off Ron and/or Hermoine just because no one expected her to, just to prove she could. Which would have been a sucky reason to do it and I'm glad she didn't
A long time ago -- sometime right after book 6 was released -- I heard somewhere that Rowling had said one of the three main kids was going to die. I was skeptical and tried not to think about it much (especially not while reading book 7), but like clovepod I was very relieved that it turned out not to be true.
There's an article on MSNBC where Rowling talks about the epilogue; basically, she wrote a version which made it a bit clearer what all the characters ended up doing with their lives, but it was too cluttered and clunky, so she stripped it down. But she is going to revisit the world with a wrap-up encyclopedia which will give more of the details, including material about characters who didn't get as much time onstage as she would have liked. It could be naff or it could be brill.
(Short version of the article: Harry is running the Aurors, Ron's still his sidekick, and Hermione is high in the legal system.)
Whoops, forgot the url:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959323/