Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows – postscript
I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows last night. It’s taken me, what?, a week to read. Not too bad given that Erin and I have this impending wedding-thing happening on Friday (10 a.m.). And I work a full-time job, and I am writing the first draft of my Alicia Grey novel (a book that is book one of (at least) five). And I am trying to finish moving my stuff from my apartment to the married apartment.
However, at some point in between waking up and getting to the married apartment yesterday before church I decided it was time to sit down and finish the story which, though in excess of 700 pages, was not taking a long time to read.
As a result, I finished, last night, reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. The book was, at the same time, very good and very hard to read. It was good in the sense that J.K. Rowling is very good at story telling, and very hard because, in order to move the action forward, she uses a lot of expository story telling where she goes in to a lot of details, sometimes on the edge of being boring, to describe what is meant to be happening between periods of action. This is not bad, it is also something, in some cases, I thought could’ve been toned down a lot to do two things: 1) make the book shorter; and 2) move the story along a lot faster.
For example, I didn’t think we needed to spend a LOT of pages working through the trials and troubles that Harry, Hermione, and Ron experience while following Dumbledore’s last quest for Harry (from the previous book). Though, at the same time, as they are searching for the various Horcruxes (again, the accomplishment of the quests is pretty interesting/exciting).
Even with the slowdown of the story for the exposition, which is used to move the story forward, I thought the book was very good. It accomplished what Rowling set out to accomplish. The Harry Potter series is a semi-epic adventure that takes a boy wizard, the boy who lived, and moves him through education and experience until he, effectively, saves the world by destroying the wizarding world, and muggles, worst enemy, Voldemort – Tom Riddle – He Who Shall Not Be Named.
What I can say, because some people may not have read the book, is that all of my theories about where Rowling was going, with the series, turned out to be true. I didn’t know how she would get there, but I did know she would make it to the end and do what I thought she was going to do; save who I thought she would save; and ultimately, Harry would come off as victor with his friends as the ones who helped him, in many ways, accomplish the things that needed to be accomplished.
In doing that, he also made some characters who, until now, had seemed rather… flat, as heroes and (to rip off another movie) more than meets the eye. I never thought that some of these characters would be the way they ended up being, heroic; or, for that matter, that when the end came, you’d see the kinds of battles that took place. However, the story begins with and ends with Hogwarts and I think given Tom Riddles (Voldemorts) obsession with the school that it is appropriate that his fall comes there as well.
Moreover, I spent almost the entire book trying to discover whether or not my principle theory from the previous book (e-mail me to find out what it was) was actually the outcome or not. I thought it was, and was very pleasantly surprised not only that I was 100% correct in theory, but also in how Rowling chose to share with the reader the information. Basically, she makes a potentially evil and bad character in to a sympathetic character who turns from bad guy in to hero very quickly.
I guess rooting for the underdog (not Harry) proved to pan out.
Anyway, because people would complain, a lot, if I gave away a lot of the details of the book I will leave my review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows at this: I liked the book; I thought it was worth reading; I think that if J.K. Rowling had started her series with a book like this, she would NOT be a billionaire today and more than 95% of her readers would never have started the books; and I am glad she left the histories and the people open, that she didn’t describe every little detail of every person’s life… or, for that matter, allow the readers in to what careers, what trials and travails, they go through to get from where they started to where they ended up -- 19 years later.
Read it. Enjoy it. Say, “Good-bye,” and be glad that someone out there created something like Harry Potter and Hogwarts and the wizarding world of England because, in the end, I think we’re better off with it than without.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Bond. James Bond