If you have not read the seventh and final volume in the Harry Potter series, please do not read any further. I will reveal crucial plot points and the ending of this novel. You have been warned!<\/p>\n
Well, I promised it over a week ago but here it is today: my thoughts on the last book in the series.<\/p>\n
Basically, I loved it. My husband read the novel out loud to me and we finished by dinnertime Sunday. This action-packed final volume kept us turning pages late into the night.<\/p>\n
The single best thing about the story \u2014 the humanizing of Dumbledore. Wow. I knew she was working on that in books 5 and 6 but she really drove it home in the last book, even though he was dead. I always felt that one of the series\u2019 themes is that people are neither black nor white. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses, even our iconic heroes. Very well done!<\/p>\n
I loved every action sequence, especially the last battle. I loved the emotional journey we took with Harry throughout the book as he was, once again, torn apart from the wizarding world\u2026.this time more completely than ever before. I never guessed that Voldemort would succeed in capturing the ministry but it was exactly what the book needed to up the stakes. Then, with our hero on the run, we could fully appreciate the wonder as he returned to Hogwarts \u2014 a fugitive, yes, but also the symbol of hope for all those who hated Voldemort.<\/p>\n
I loved Harry\u2019s journey from his aunt and uncle\u2019s house. I was touched by Dudley\u2019s change of heart and hope that he becomes an even better person later in life, though that was outside the scope of this story.<\/p>\n
I cried when Hedwig died, and especially when Harry blew up the side car with Hedwig\u2019s body inside.<\/p>\n
The ministry falling got a gasp from me. It really set the tone of the book.<\/p>\n
The escapade at the ministry was pure Harry Potter \u2014 from saving Mad Eye\u2019s magical eye to saving a corridor full of supposed Mud Bloods. If we didn\u2019t remember, he\u2019s still our hero!<\/p>\n
The camping sequence drove home what a difficult task this was all going to be. Harry lost his home and had to subsist off of what they could scrounge from the forest floor. Some people have claimed that this section was slow but I disagree. It was only slow by comparison to the action-packed chapter surrounding it. The stakes in the camping scenes were just as high as any of the others \u2014 but they were emotional rather than adrenaline-filled life and death. Having always been drawn to characters and character stories (especially in my own writing) I found myself getting into the boredom, the hunger, the desperation, and the loneliness. My heart even leaped when they ran into Ted Tonks and Dean Thomas \u2014 their first link to the bigger world in ages.<\/p>\n
I flew threw Christmas, poor Lovegood\u2019s predicament, and an escape from the Malfoys to the second death that really affected me \u2014 Dobby. The innocent are the ones who often suffer the most. Poor Dobby.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s escape from Gringott\u2019s on the back of a dragon followed immediately by our last visit to Hogwarts. I continued to cheer as familiar face after familiar face came to fight alongside Harry. This wasn\u2019t just his fight anymore \u2014 the entire wizarding world was ready to stand up and say \u201cWe\u2019ve had enough!\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, of course, there is Harry\u2019s march to his death. I have rarely read anything as powerful. Even though I believed, even then, that Rowling had a way out planned for Harry, the scene was no less powerful. Harry believed he was going to his death, and that\u2019s what mattered.<\/p>\n
After Harry\u2019s escape from death, we had a few tense moments as Narcissa chose to help Harry, and then it was one long cheer! Neville \u2014 Pow! Molly \u2014 Splat! And then Harry takes off his cloak and the dance to Voldemort\u2019s death begins.<\/p>\n
The Epilogue is my biggest complaint about the book. I know Rowling has answered a lot of questions in follow-up interviews after the fact, but the book itself is still incomplete without a few additional details. The Epilogue could have been summed up with the words, \u201cAnd they all lived happily ever after.\u201d Well, I sort of suspected that was the case but it really trivializes the impact that the events in such an emotionally powerful book had on the character\u2019s lives long term. In one interview, Rowling suggested that she was trying to be poetic, but I\u2019m afraid that, however good the books are, they are not written by a poet or even a good wordsmith. The writing is just good enough that it doesn\u2019t get in the way of the story, to be perfectly honest. Meanwhile, I wanted a real conclusion.<\/p>\n
My other nitpick about the book is that many of the deaths had little impact on me. The one that I most wanted to feel was Fred\u2019s. I mean, he was the comic relief, Ron\u2019s brother, half of a set of twins that were as good as one character throughout. Yet his death, with earned barely more than a paragraph, never managed to hit that emotional chord.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Lupin and Tonks should have made me feel worse but their death felt like an add-on. We never even saw it firsthand. In fact, in an interview, Rowling says that they were not slated to die in the outline. Well, they don\u2019t feel dead to me now.<\/p>\n
The last thing I want to talk about is Snape, and he is one of the reasons it took me so long to post this review. I needed some time tot think about him and now that I\u2019m down to the end of this post I think I would like to dedicate a separate post to his character.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you have not read the seventh and final volume in the Harry Potter series, please do not read any further. I will reveal crucial plot points and the ending of this novel. You have been warned! Well, I promised it over a week ago but here it is today: my thoughts on the last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,57,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading","category-chitchat","category-fantasy-what-im-reading","category-young-adult-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":434,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}