And In The End...

Well, that’s that. I finished around 2:30 last night, and due to my extreme grogginess, I decided to give it a little time to sink in. Overall, I thought it was a fairly satisfying ending. Rowling was never going to be able to please everyone, and while I did have two big problems with the book, I thought she managed to do the series justice.

First, due to the necessity of following Harry’s storyline, there’s a lot of important action that happens “offscreen”. Because of this, I felt like a lot of the work Rowling had done developing some secondary characters in the past couple of books was wasted. By the time these characters appear in Deathly Hallows, there’s not much left for them to do except make brief cameos in the final battle, and what they do contribute mostly feels rushed and forced. Actually, that‘s the same problem the last couple of movies have had. I guess it was just a matter of trying to fit everything into one book without making it 1200 pages long (not that most readers, me included, would have minded).

Second, the body count is pretty high in this book, and while some of the deaths were surprises, others had been obviously coming since book 4 or 5. The problem is, the more characters died, the less their deaths impacted me as a reader. I understand Rowling’s need to show the severity of the situation, but eventually I lost any sense of shock or surprise when someone else was killed, and by the end, I was simply keeping a mental list of the dead. Also, Rowling knew her readers would be expecting deaths, and she had a bit a fun with fakeouts involving major characters throughout the book (including a big one near the end). Unfortunately, this only ended up adding to the lessened impact when characters actually did die.

On the other hand, Rowling was trying to end an epic series that has a large (and largely young) fan base, so while I may not have agreed with all of her choices, I understand the necessity for many of them. I don’t envy her that task. But most of all, I appreciate the fact that she actually gave us an ending and didn’t go all David Chase on us. I’m not sure I could have handled the final Harry Potter book cutting off in the middle of a sentence.

Potter-y

I moved recently, so pop culture has been very secondary, what with all my books in boxes, movies packed away, and Netflix on hold. Luckily I had the foresight to keep my Harry Potter close at hand. Unless you’re one of those “living under a rock” types, you may have heard something about this week’s double-shot release of the movie of Order of the Phoenix (currently riding the momentum of a rather exceptional box-office weekend) and the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To get ready, I’ve re-read all 6 books and re-watched all 4 DVDs over the past two weeks, and it’s both interesting and somewhat humorous to see the way the books and the actors have developed along the way. I caught a matinee of OotP yesterday, and it’s definitely the darkest movie of the series. I thought it was pretty well done considering how much they had to cut down the book and cram what was left into a little over 2 hours, and it was an excellent way to whet my appetite for book 7 (which I’m assuming is exactly what the Potter Merchandising Empire was hoping for when they set these release dates). Suffice it to say, Pottermania is in full effect at apartamento del Leister, and it will stay that way until sometime in the wee hours of Sunday morning when I finish reading, assuming UPS brings me Deathly Hallows on Saturday as promised by Amazon.

Perhaps you’re saying to yourself, “Wow. Dedicating your Saturday night to the new Harry Potter book. How very pre-teen of you.” And you’d be right. But when it comes down to it, I’d rather give up one Saturday night reading than spend the next week with my fingers in my ears going “Lalalalalala” every time someone mentions Harry Potter. Priorities, people. Priorities. And you wonder why I’m still single.