Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Jul. 23rd, 2007 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerFirst, I want to note that we went to Edinborough Park in Edina today and I spotted at least three people with copies of Harry Potter. I love the communal aspect of this book.
Spoilers to follow under the cut.
Overall, I liked the book, even the epilogue, which lots of people have groused about. I particularly loved Snape asking Harry to look at him so that he could see Lily's eyes again as he lay dying; the tour of Snape's memories (info-dump-y though it was) and the discovery that his worst memory was his worst memory NOT because he'd been humiliated by James Potter but because he had, in his rage at James, called his best friend a mudblood; Harry calmly presenting himself to be struck dead, in order to defeat Voldemort forever; and Molly Weasley kicking Bellatrix's psychopathic ass.
As someone else noted on some discussion thread somewhere, I would love to read Neville Longbottom and the Year Without Harry Potter -- clearly the stuff that was happening at Hogwarts was interesting in its own right, and Neville clearly came into his own even before he pulled the Sword of Gryffindor out of the sorting hat and beheaded Nagini while on fire. Whoa. I have liked Neville for a long time (I still think the most heartbreaking scene in the series is the encounter with Neville and his grandmother when they've been visiting his parents at Mungo's) and it was pretty cool to see him take out the final horcrux.
And I loved the line, "Now? Or would you like some time to compose an epitaph?"
Things I found disappointing:
Draco -- and the Slytherins generally. When Pansy Parkinson suggests that they grab Harry and hand him over, it's a wonderful moment to see all the Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs leap to their feet to defend him. But I would have really liked to see the Slytherins split, at that moment, and to have at least a FEW Slytherins side with the good guys. They don't have to be Slytherins we've seen before, even, but it would've been particularly nice to see Draco come over to the good guys. Draco is terrified of Voldemort and desperate to see his family survive, but they were out of favor, and it was clearly just a matter of time before Voldemort fed all three of them to Nagini. I would have loved to see Draco turn up in the Room of Lost Things to help Harry find whatever it was, and then to ask him to protect his family. She could've done this -- she could have still had the crown destroyed with Draco's imbecile friend's cursed fire, because his friends could've shown up uninvited. Draco more or less decided in the last book that he was not, in fact, a killer. I wish that he'd have completed some sort of redemption in this book.
In previous books, the use of the unforgiveable curses was a pretty damn big deal. Harry tried to use Crucio at the end of Half-Blood Prince, and Snape parries it, shouting, "No unforgiveable curses from you, Potter!" He tried to use it on Bellatrix in OotP and it fails; she says, "You have to MEAN it." Harry never uses magic in DH to torture or kill, but he DOES use the Imperio curse. (I think it's Harry, anyway. I suppose it might've been Ron or Hermione -- Ed's got the book, so I can't go look it up right now. It ought to be Harry, in any case, who gets his hands dirty.) And -- he just does it, and it works, and it's no particularly big deal. And it SHOULD be. I wanted to know how it felt. We got a pretty good description of how it felt to be under the curse, in GoF; how does it feel to be the one pulling the strings? And how exactly does it work -- do you get a psychic connection as part of the curse, or do you have to give your orders in a way that sounds casual enough not to tip people off? And how does it feel to know that you're using the dark arts -- is it terrifying, or temptingly exhilerating? Anyway, he uses magic he's seen done but never tried, and it's serious, big-deal, bad-ass, totally forbidden magic, and the magic itself should be a bigger deal than it is.
I found the epilogue fun but wanted to know why no one named their kid after poor Fred. Maybe that's Hugo's middle name. Who was Hugo named after, anyway? And Rose? Also, I wanted to know what Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny were doing with their lives, other than raising kids. Did Harry go spend a decade turning around the fortunes of the Chudley Cannons? Did Hermione go found a wizarding university? Did Ron follow his dad to the Ministry?
Overall, though, I enjoyed the book and found it a satisfying conclusion.
Spoilers to follow under the cut.
Overall, I liked the book, even the epilogue, which lots of people have groused about. I particularly loved Snape asking Harry to look at him so that he could see Lily's eyes again as he lay dying; the tour of Snape's memories (info-dump-y though it was) and the discovery that his worst memory was his worst memory NOT because he'd been humiliated by James Potter but because he had, in his rage at James, called his best friend a mudblood; Harry calmly presenting himself to be struck dead, in order to defeat Voldemort forever; and Molly Weasley kicking Bellatrix's psychopathic ass.
As someone else noted on some discussion thread somewhere, I would love to read Neville Longbottom and the Year Without Harry Potter -- clearly the stuff that was happening at Hogwarts was interesting in its own right, and Neville clearly came into his own even before he pulled the Sword of Gryffindor out of the sorting hat and beheaded Nagini while on fire. Whoa. I have liked Neville for a long time (I still think the most heartbreaking scene in the series is the encounter with Neville and his grandmother when they've been visiting his parents at Mungo's) and it was pretty cool to see him take out the final horcrux.
And I loved the line, "Now? Or would you like some time to compose an epitaph?"
Things I found disappointing:
Draco -- and the Slytherins generally. When Pansy Parkinson suggests that they grab Harry and hand him over, it's a wonderful moment to see all the Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs leap to their feet to defend him. But I would have really liked to see the Slytherins split, at that moment, and to have at least a FEW Slytherins side with the good guys. They don't have to be Slytherins we've seen before, even, but it would've been particularly nice to see Draco come over to the good guys. Draco is terrified of Voldemort and desperate to see his family survive, but they were out of favor, and it was clearly just a matter of time before Voldemort fed all three of them to Nagini. I would have loved to see Draco turn up in the Room of Lost Things to help Harry find whatever it was, and then to ask him to protect his family. She could've done this -- she could have still had the crown destroyed with Draco's imbecile friend's cursed fire, because his friends could've shown up uninvited. Draco more or less decided in the last book that he was not, in fact, a killer. I wish that he'd have completed some sort of redemption in this book.
In previous books, the use of the unforgiveable curses was a pretty damn big deal. Harry tried to use Crucio at the end of Half-Blood Prince, and Snape parries it, shouting, "No unforgiveable curses from you, Potter!" He tried to use it on Bellatrix in OotP and it fails; she says, "You have to MEAN it." Harry never uses magic in DH to torture or kill, but he DOES use the Imperio curse. (I think it's Harry, anyway. I suppose it might've been Ron or Hermione -- Ed's got the book, so I can't go look it up right now. It ought to be Harry, in any case, who gets his hands dirty.) And -- he just does it, and it works, and it's no particularly big deal. And it SHOULD be. I wanted to know how it felt. We got a pretty good description of how it felt to be under the curse, in GoF; how does it feel to be the one pulling the strings? And how exactly does it work -- do you get a psychic connection as part of the curse, or do you have to give your orders in a way that sounds casual enough not to tip people off? And how does it feel to know that you're using the dark arts -- is it terrifying, or temptingly exhilerating? Anyway, he uses magic he's seen done but never tried, and it's serious, big-deal, bad-ass, totally forbidden magic, and the magic itself should be a bigger deal than it is.
I found the epilogue fun but wanted to know why no one named their kid after poor Fred. Maybe that's Hugo's middle name. Who was Hugo named after, anyway? And Rose? Also, I wanted to know what Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny were doing with their lives, other than raising kids. Did Harry go spend a decade turning around the fortunes of the Chudley Cannons? Did Hermione go found a wizarding university? Did Ron follow his dad to the Ministry?
Overall, though, I enjoyed the book and found it a satisfying conclusion.
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Date: 2007-07-24 01:46 pm (UTC)If I'd been writing the epilogue, I think I'd have set it at a wedding or other big party, and thus worked in organically the answers to such questions as What happened to Luna? and What is it that all these people do for a living these days? and How has George coped without Fred all these years, and did he keep the joke-shop going or ...? and Did Hermione become Secretary for House-Elf Relations at the Ministry of Magic? ...
And so on.
I understand why we go back to Platform 9 3/4 for the epilogue, but I'd have liked more information about people other than Harry, Hermione and Ron.
I also felt that the tight Harry!POV limited this book in a way it didn't the earlier ones: I got positively claustrophobic during those months in the tent, and wanted very much to know -- more, to see -- what was going on everywhere else, because you know it's got to have been more exciting. The glimpses we got of Neville and Luna and Ginny, particularly, made me wish we'd spent more of the book with them and less in the tent with the depressing Horcrux. (I felt the book needed more Ginny overall, really -- that is, more Ginny qua Ginny, rather than Ginny-as-sidekick or Ginny-as-girlfriend. I know she's under-age and all, but I couldn't help thinking at several points in the narrative that the Ginny of HBP would have been a lot less ready to stay out of the action.)
I keep criticizing the book more and more every time I start discussing it, but I really did enjoy it, and I'm really glad that Harry didn't actually die. The Snape/Lily relationship I found surprising and touching; I cried when Dobby died, and again when I thought Harry was going to his death, and I totally teared up during the Battle of Hogwarts (I'm a sucker for besieged-and-outgunned-good-guys-rally-to-defend-the-fortress), especially at McGonagall leading her charge of galloping desks and Kreacher at the head of his house-elf army.
But I don't see why Hedwig had to be killed off (I know it wouldn't have been practical to take her all over the UK looking for Horcruxes, but surely she could have stayed at the Burrow with, one assumes, Crookshanks), or Remus and Tonks. And, to be honest, it bothered me that Harry never visibly thought about Hedwig for the whole rest of the book.
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Date: 2009-06-15 02:15 pm (UTC)