WARNING SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE NOVEL WILL BE FOUND IN THIS THREAD


Please feel free to use this thread to discuss the last Harry Potter book without fear of spoiling.

Personally, I was incredibly happy with this book, and it may just be my favorite. There's not even anything I can say about it that I need to discuss

I just don't like how it ended all happy. I actually really wanted to see some kind of self-sacrifice thing with Harry and Voldemort. I was just really looking forward to the sad demise of Harry Potter. Actually I think of a lot of people were. If I'm correct I'm not sure if I remember right or not, but in a interview with some of the actors Daniel I mainly remembered said he did not want a happy ending.

I mean the whole series even the first few books have been about death, revenge, fear, and etc. I know some of you may say it was also about courage, and all that. One thing I always loved about these books is it's dark creepiness feeling, not the joy of “and all was well”. Although I did not like Dumbledore's death.

I would have rather had Harry's death alone than the 55 other people that had died throughout the story.

I have so many little gripes, it's going to sound like I didn't enjoy the book. Well, I did. I thought it was very good. I particularly liked that it was mostly Harry, Ron and Hermione doing stuff together - I think their trio one of the best elements of the earlier novels particularly, which gets just a little bit lost in the later ones.

As to the happy ending, I liked that too, perhaps not least because it was the biggest surprise in the whole book. More or less everyone I spoke to was expecting Harry to die, and I wouldn't have been surprised. Rowling is so cruel to her characters, nothing she could have done in this would have shocked me (nothing child-friendly, anyway, which the book had to be) - the only death that would have really bothered me personally would have been Hagrid (and she made us think she'd done it twice - such a tease). Oh, and Neville, I guess. In all honesty, after what's gone before, I was expecting this book to be thoroughly depressing. As it is, the ending was happy in a believable way, which came as a surprise (I said that already, didn't I?) and a relief. And it was almost completely satisfying too - but more on that in a moment.

The minor gripes. They had rather too much luck for me to find it totally convincing; as Ron points out at one stage, there's absolutely no method to their quest. Thank goodness for Snape - about whom I say, I honestly don't remember what I thought two years ago, but I don't think I ever really stopped trusting him. As I said - or implied - earlier in the post, there were no real surprises anywhere in the novel. I was expecting something that would bowl some people over - like, I dunno, Fred's evil! or something. But there was nothing like that; Fred is entirely one of the good guys, and dead now. I cared, but not as much as I probably should have. I do think she overdid the deaths a bit. I'm not saying there shouldn't be deaths, but I do think they should have impact - and by the end, so many secondary and tertiary characters had gone, it was easy to stop caring. I guess I was pretty desensitised after Dumbledore anyway.

Molly's a great lady, but I don't think she deserved something as huge as killing Bellatrix. That one should really have been Neville's. I'm glad he got to do something cool - he totally deserved it - but it will never sit right with me that Molly killed Bellatrix. I mean, why? Where's the poetic justice in that?

Tonks. Ever since Tonks was introduced, I liked her, but I always thought she was a bit pointless. Now I understand. She was only ever an incubator for Harry's godson. I found her death totally unconvincing. Yeah, ok, war going on, ultimate evil, husband (that was quick!) in mortal peril. But she was a new mother. No way would a mother ever leave her baby in those circumstances. I think that whole thing was poorly handled - and all so that it could finish up with a Wuthering Heights-esque ending: it was all screwy, but everything comes right in the younger generation.

So Harry has an orphan godson, and they have the kind of relationship he could have - should have - had with Sirius. Except we don't even get to see it! All we hear of Teddy Tonks is that he's ‘snogging Victoire’. Who? Oh… ok, she'll be Bill and Fleur's. Well, so what? We should actually see how their relationship has developed, that way it would have some impact, there would be some point to it - but they've got so many children now, there wasn't room. If I were Ginny - I never was remotely interested in their relationship, but anyway, if I were her - I would have insisted on calling my second son Fred rather than Albus. I mean, Harry gets a James and a Lily…

Speaking of all those Weasleys, this attitude they have to horrific injury: well, I've only been hideously maimed, never mind… Admirable, but they get there so quickly, I do find it hard to believe.

But they're all such little gripes. So little. I've always said JK's greatest talent is suspence and making us want to read on, and this book does this as well as the others. I shall end on something positive. The Sorting system, which I have never approved of, is pretty much undermined. The characters acknowledge that being in Slytherin doesn't necessarily mean you're evil, which I think will help cut down the Dark Wizard and Witch turnout: I'm sure that at least half of the children who grow up to be evil only go that way because putting them in Slytherin is as good as saying, sorry but you're going to be an evil, evil person. So, yeah, I'm glad that was resolved.

I liked the book, but the 8 month camping trip where nothing much happened save for a lot of dead ends really dragged down the pacing of the book.

As I look back at the book now, I'm enjoying it a little more than the first read-through. I'm not quite sure though if it's because of the book or a internet chat session with J.K. In the session I read, can't remember the site, she goes into a real good depth of the epilogue, which I love..now. I hated the book copy because it gives us a glance at some stuff we want to know, but left me with too many questions. So for those of you out there that want to know a whole lot more about what had happened to all the characters in between those years, more depth into certain situations in the book, I suggest you search it out, actually I just searched it out for all of you to save you some time I'll post the link at the end of the message.

Basically I didn't love the book like the others…unfortunatly, but now that I looked more into things and thought about it I like it now at least. I do agree with the tremendous amount of unimportant deaths, I stated something like that in my post, but you definatly put it into much better words. I wasn't really affected by any of the deaths, for me Sirius(who I wished had lasted longer, I loved his character), Dumbledore, and Snape, were the most impactful for me. Snape died pretty bad, who would want to get eaten by a snake, eww, although I don't like how Harry called him the bravest wizard ever, or one of the most brave can't remember. A lot of people found Dobby's death quite impactful and sad, but I just wasn't affected by it. I also didn't like the kind-of-simplistic way Voldemort died. I mean Harry told him the truth about the wand, and Voldemort still tried it. Then him not fully passing on, but he wasn't a ghost, I just didn't comprehend it. I'm not sure if it was my knowledge on certain things spiritual or book or realistic terms and references, maybe I just don't know enough about that stuff, but I just didn't get it. I personally would have been shocked to see Hermoine die. Maybe in some kind of savior-like thing, like jumping in front of Ron or something to save him, and him regreting he held his feelings for so long about her or something like that. Only Ron or Hermoine's death would have shocked me, no one else's mainly b/c of the impact level, and not Harry's even though I wanted him dead.

Also the thing with Harry's kid's name is Ginny had so much family, and Harry had so little, and also the fact that Ginny had her side for Harry to inherit and Ginny none. So Ginny decided to let Harry name them that for the effect that Harry kind-of had a side of family so to say. This is also something that I would have like explained in the epilogue, but had to wait untill J.K.'s chat session, so here's the link.


http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/7/30/j-k-rowling-web-chat-transcript

I liked DH and rank it with my other favorites of the series (PS, POA, and HBP), though I was still disappointed/annoyed with how poorly the Harry/Ginny romance was executed.