SPOILERS WITHIN

[furyofvissarion]

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling. I was pretty underwhelmed, actually: more relieved that it's just over already! There were bits I really liked--like the resurgence of the DA, & oh, Neville! Neville kicking butt! And Luna--her serenity in the face of everything, & the portraits she had in her room, &, yes.

I hated what was done to Tonks, though--let's make her pregnant & shove her out of the way, & then have her come back after she gives birth, seemingly more interested in protecting Lupin than in fighting Voldemort. And then they both die. And Harry bashing Lupin for leaving Tonks while she's pregnant to go fight? What about all that "for the greater good" stuff you were so into, Harry? What, no one else fighting has kids they're leaving @ home?

I liked the way Dumbledore was shown to not be perfect, no one is good & evil unmixed, & people can change, blah blah. Harry was an annoying git through most of the book, & I'm still annoyed that he did the whole Spiderman thing, breaking up w/Ginny @ the end of the last book. I did think that Ron & Hermione's relationship was fairly realistic, for teenagers under an incredible amount of stress.

I liked getting to see what Snape had been going through, playing his dangerous double game, but I found the whole "I did it all for the love of Lily" thing to be maybe a tad bit overdone, even tho' I liked the general idea.

Was glad as Hermione to see Ron giving a shit about the house elves (poor Dobby! And I loved how they all came out fighting @ the end, led by Kreacher--what happened w/that Death Eater that Hermione accidentally gave access to 12 Grimmauld Place, tho'?).

The whole "Harry dies & chats w/Dumbledore, only he's not really dead" thing confused me, arrrgh. Draco's mom faking out Voldy about Harry being dead was cool, tho'. Harry losing the stone that was part of the Deathly Hallows seems like an open door for some kind of sequel/side book, except I assume Rowling won't do that. Expect the stone to be found & fought over in fanfic. Mrs. Weasley kicking butt over Ginny was fun, & the return of Percy was just great--he's such a prat, but a repentant prat, & that was super sweet. Glad to see he got to see Fred again before he bit it (sniff!!).

I loved pretty much all the Battle of Hogwarts--I just have a kink for big scary endgame battle scenes like that. I thought that showcased the sorts of things Rowling is good @: cute/funny/apt details. She's still not a v. good actual writer--I like her ideas, but some of her descriptions are so clunky, as well as some of her dialogue (tho' some of it's quite funny & sharp). And could we fine her every time she uses a damn ellipsis, please? Also, the epilogue sucked. I really hate books that jump so far ahead @ the end, like it's an afterthought. I was interested to see that apparently Ron & Hermione have not felt like they had to name a child in memory of Fred, which seemed a bit cold.

Comments

[wickedwhich.livejournal.com]

the lupin/tonks thread just annoyed the crap out of me, for the reasons you mention but also because those two characters, to me, read as queer. and i can, to some extent, understand jkr sticking them together in that sense for a children's book, but would it really have been so detrimental to just leave a few people un-breederified?? and then dead?? come to think of it, it's a rather horribly poetic fate for the two queers, hahaha. someone needs to write an essay about those two, for real.

i have to say that, as much as harry can be dumb as a post and generally adolescent, i still adore him. he got on my nerves a couple times during the book, and it got a bit tiresome that every. single. step. they took led to disaster, but i was so impressed with him at the end that i didn't mind the painfulness of the journey so much.

i'm reserving judgment on the whole deathly hallows thing itself. it felt a bit tacked-on to me, and weird that as the major plot point, it wasn't foreshadowed or referenced in earlier books (afaik, at least). but it worked well for the battle and that's perhaps the most important thing... i did like how harry used expelliarmus to disarm voldemort, never actively murdered him. it reflected nicely with the beginning when lupin was bothering harry about how he should be using "real" spells, etc.

also, so much of the book was intense character exposition that it was a bit of an information dump at times, and i wished jkr had paced that more strategically. i guess that's hard with the finale of such a huge series, though.

and the epilogue... was just plain bad. that's definitely my biggest nitpick, plot-wise. i didn't need it and furthermore didn't want it. i think epilogues in general point to shoddy writing, because you only need to spell it out if you haven't done your job sowing seeds in the book proper. and this epilogue just needed to beat us over the head with how serene and perfect and one-big-happy-weasley-family heteronormative everyone's future was. blech. i understand that she wrote it primarily for herself way back when, in order to have a future to write towards, but i wish so much that she'd kept it as just that, a personal exercise. personally, i wanted to be able to imagine lots of different futures for the characters, and i thought it was unrealistic in the extreme that the wizarding world just resolved into stepford world after voldemort died. i mean, really, come on. after a series that dark? it kind of undoes a lot of the significant themes jkr had been driving at, even. what about house elf liberation? what about the very interesting tidbit of info on the ministry diving magical beings into wandless and wanded species? what about whether teddy is a werewolf, ferchrissakes?? siiiigh.

[wickedwhich.livejournal.com]

*diving=dividing.

also, that got a bit long. might just post it in my own journal as well. ;P

[furyofvissarion.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about how JKR's dealt w/ or considered all the fanfic in her world, but I wonder if keeping that shittastic epilogue was her way of closing the canon for queerness. :P

I was so glad to see the bits about the Ministry maybe not being all fair w/its treatment of other species! And then stupid-ass Harry has to try & go & hoodwink Griphook anyway.