Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Review
Posted on July 22nd, 2007
This is a tough review to write. Because most have not yet read the last installment, I will try to avoid any major spoilers. Another reason this review is difficult is because there are probably not too many people on the fence trying to decide whether they will read this or not. If you’ve gotten this far into the series, chances are you plan to read it to see what happens regardless of any reviews.
Personally, I was on the fence. Watching that sweet Potter kid turn into first an angry and then a whiny adolescent was beginning to turn my stomach. I’m not saying it is not a realistic portrayal of teenage years, I’m just saying I see it enough in the teenagers I have to deal with in real life and do not need it in my fiction.
The bad news is that the whiny internal dialogue continues in this seventh and final book of the series. The good news is that the whining stops at the end of the book, although I will not say why. I will say that, while overall I enjoyed this book at about the same level of the rest of the series, I did not put this book down wishing the series would be continued.
Plot:
The novel picks up right where the Half-Blood Prince left off, so if it has been awhile since you read that one, you will positively want to go back and read it again. I did not and had to repeatedly think back trying to recall who various minor characters were in the previous novel.
As the novel opens, Harry is at the Dursley’s, running out the clock on the family protection thing. The action begins as Harry leaves the Dursley’s and begins planning to search for the hidden horcruxes that contain the separate parts of Voldemort’s soul. Of course, the wedding of Bill and Fleur which was mentioned at the end of Half-Blood Prince occurs before the search begins. After the wedding, Harry, Hermione, and Ron are off to begin their adventure and they stay for a bit at the Black household before taking it on the lam to the countryside.
The whining inner dialogue reaches a crescendo during chapter after chapter of the interminable camping scenes. Ron, Hermione, and Harry spend months camping, foodless, in the frozen great outdoors thinking of where to search to find the horcruxes. Rowling, in an incredible display of poor judgment, has the trio pluck wild mushrooms and eat them without somehow cautioning readers that wild mushrooms can be poisonous. Kids, they are stunt characters, do not try that at home.
Further, because they Disapparate every time they move on, the trio could have just as easily spent the time in the Bahamas or out behind a Chinese buffet in Podunk. For no particular reason, they chose to remain in the English countryside cold and starving. Ah, you can tell the future of the Muggle and Wizarding worlds is safe in the hands of these three geniuses.
But things finally pick up as they figure out where one of the horcruxes is located and they plan an infiltration, which is actually one of two in the story. The timing of the horcrux search is simply off, with little progress made for long stretches and then a quick final wrap-up later of the remaining ones. It works for the ending, but the early searching is almost intolerable. Why Rowling includes these lengthy dead stretches is beyond me.
Along the way, some new locations are visited including various wizarding homes and the oft-referenced Godric Hollow. All of which turn out to be a complete disappointment. Compare Harry’s first visit to Hogsmeade and the Weasley home to his visits to Godric Hollow, Bill and Fleur’s, and Lovegood’s, and you’ll think all the latter are owned by Muggles.
The final showdown occurs at Hogwarts and the other students come into their own, especially Neville Longbottom. Snape, on the other hand, who is an important character throughout the series, is given short shrift in the final book and feels about as flat as cardboard in the one scene in which he appears.
The final climax is not, as some have stated, epic. It is anything but, and by this point, Voldemort is not really scary or even spooky, just a common thug with a large following. The Death Eaters tend to be more intimidating than Voldemort, who doesn’t really do much of anything the whole story. Instead he stays in the background and takes over institutions such as Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic, and the Daily Prophet through his Death Eater surrogates.
In the finale, as Rowling has intimated, significant characters die although I will not say which ones. The extremely brief epilogue updates the reader on some of the survivors 19 years later in a cursory treatment. It does work in its fashion, but it also leaves lingering questions as to specific details as well as to what happened to the other characters in the story.
The same problems exist in this novel as throughout the series. For example, the whole inconsistent system of magic use remains horribly unexplored. Rowling creates a seemingly internally consistent world but fails to follow through on a consistent system of magic. I will not give any details, because if it hasn’t bothered you so far, I don’t want to ruin your enjoyment now, but you either need to stay consistent (think Tolkien) or glorify in the inconsistencies (think Lewis or Pratchett) because mixing the two does not work.
Similarly, throughout the series, characters have tended to do things inefficiently, such as Dumbledore’s repeated failures to provide needed details and Harry’s failures to go to Dumbledore when he had issues or questions. In the same vein, the Order of the Phoenix needs to recruit a little more from Ravenclaw and less from Gryffindor, because, while they do show up at battles, for a longstanding secret order dedicated to battling evil, not only do they not tend to get much else accomplished, but when they do, their schemes are usually not very well thought out.
Bottom line:
Let’s not fool ourselves, the Potter series is not great literature. It is engaging, light, and generally lively, though. The characters are generally likable, and do show some growth through the series, which is welcome. Rowling also has an ability to work the underdog orphan metaphor in a way that can consistently tug the heartstrings. Her writing will absolutely not cause to you return to a paragraph to marvel at the writing, like I did reading Cryptonomicon, but it gets the job done and is about as easy-reading as you are ever going to come across, which is a virtue in itself.
The last book is on par with the series and while it won’t answer all your questions, if you’ve enjoyed the ride so far, you will be pleased with the final installment. As I said before, I did not have that moment after putting this book down where I wished for more of the same. This book wrapped it up and I’m gladly done and willing to move on with no regrets.
Filed under Fantasy, Rowling, J. K. |