I spent all day Saturday waiting for UPS to deliver my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I know. This is why people don't read blogs -- the danger of embarrassing revelations. Anyway, it was a whole thing -- UPS apparently subcontracted all Harry Potter deliveries to the US Postal Service, but didn't bother to communicate that; then my mail carrier delivered, in lieu of my copy, a cryptic note, which seemed to suggest that . . . something . . . had been returned to the post office, which was closed, because it's Saturday, and it's just a damned children's book, anyway, and then it turned out that my super was holding it for me and . . . mischief managed.
Then I lost another day reading the damned thing, and now I'm trying to decide what I thought of it. I think fans of the series will be completely satisfied with the conclusion: it does the same things the other six books do, and it does them about as well as those do. I think, at the end, all questions are answered satisfactorily. With a few exceptions, every character and magical object that appeared in the other books pops up for at least a cameo.
Those who don't care for the books and those who read them but are critical will not be disappointed, either -- about the same weaknesses as the other books. There's a huge freight of exposition at the end, some of the bullshit metaphysical variety ("and then your soul did X"); some of the bullshit psychological variety ("because my parents hated Muggles . . ."). Some of it, though, to be fair, is handled impressively: there's at least one late-round revelation that's a bit shocking. As with all the rest of the books, there are long middle passages in which nothing much happens while Harry, Ron and Hermione endlessly chew over the plot to date. Apart from those, though, unlike the placeholder sixth volume, there's a lot of action.
Now I'm off to read other reviews and analyses. If I find anything good, I'll post the links. -- Peter
P.S. Here's the only commentary that hasn't annoyed me.
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