This will be the last Potterblog post. I'm taking time off the rest of this week and next week The Naked City will return in this spot.
Yes, I finished the book. It was 4 a.m. Sunday. Our daughter finished it at 6 a.m. Saturday, after getting a midnight copy at a Potter party at Borders near SouthPark. It was a memorable event: Little kids, teens, young adults and gray-haired folks all gathered in one spot for one reason. Some of the costumes were quite creative. One young guy had rigged up a centaur costume.
It was a good cross-section of society, in many ways. You had obvious nerds (having been one in high school, I can say that), obvious "popular" teenagers, and lots of regular folks in between of all ages and shapes. My husband came, too, although he hasn't read any of the books, doesn't like fantasy fiction and hates costume parties. He lasted until about 11 p.m. and said later said it had reminded him of being in a remote, inland country somewhere in South America where you didn't understand the language, the people or the culture.
We stood in line next to Voldemort. And then we got the book and as we waited for a ride home, a friend who had been with us in line called from the nearby Teeter to report that the books were on sale there, too, with no line at all.
But the book? OK, spoilers to follow. If you haven't finished it, stop now.
How would I review the book? As a work of literature, I'd give it maybe 7 on a 10-point scale, with popular but not very well written stuff like "Da Vinci Code" down at about 3. It kept me attentive -- of course -- but the long exposatory passages, where Harry reads Snape's memories and where he has his disembodied lecture from Dumbledore, made me question why Rowling wasn't able to clear all those things up without having to resort to the "egghead explains" technique.
As I noted early in the Potterblog, I was afraid we'd endure one of those cheesy scenes where the dead come back in ghostly, translucent forms to communicate with the living, and I was right to be worried about that.
The very last chapter -- the one that Rowling has said she wrote at the very start of writing the series -- sounded, in tone, much more like Books 1 and 2 than Books 5 and 6. It was, dare I say it, a shade too cute? All those cutesy little kids saying cutesy things. And I knew right off that someone was going to be named Severus. But to name Draco's kid Scorpio was a great touch!
On the other hand, was I right, or what, about Snape and Lily? Ditto Lupin's death, sad to say?
Is it accurate to note that all of Harry's "protectors" ended up dead? His parents, his godfather, his mentor Dumbledore, the respected Auror Mad-Eye Moody (he was Tonks' mentor, so maybe that's why she had to die, too), even Dobby the annoying house elf who kept showing up to help him out of tight spots. Even the majestic owl, Hedwig. So I spent much of the book thinking both Ron AND Hermione would be snuffed. I'm very glad I was wrong.
The doe in the woods was a wonderful touch -- and the revelation about whose Patronus it was and why. I liked the introduction of the goblins -- they were a cultural group (a race? a species?) that we hadn't learned much about. I liked it that we FINALLY learned more about Ravenclaw, and saw the Ravenclaw ghost. I LOVED Molly Weasley's great scene with Bellatrix.
Aberforth was a nicely drawn character. I wish we could have seen more of him earlier in the series, just because he was good company. Ditto Ted Tonks.
Agree? Disagree? Put in your own thoughts below.
Final note: If you want to read more thoughts about Book 7: LeakyLounge.com and HarryPotterspage.com. And try potterforums.com. I couldn't get the page to load, but you may have more luck.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Assessing 'Deathly Hallows'
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
24 comments:
Grown adults writing Harry Potter columns?
I guess you got promoted, Mary. Congrats.
Funny thing is, there is more fact in a Potter novel than in a UNCC transit study.
LOL.
Guess she's taking the rest of the week off to try to figure out how to extricate herself from the deep hole she's dug in defending the UNCC transit study.
well I loved the novel. Also, on a side note, I really like your little Potterblog you've been doing.
There were a few parts toward the end that were a bit confusing. There were 2 parts that I had to read over after I finished the book. The first being the whole scene with Dumbledore. I agree that there must be a better way to present that information than with a apparition of Dumbledore in some sort of limbo between life and death.
The other part was the long dissertation that Harry performed right before killing Voldemort. Both were long-winded and confusing at parts.
I ended up re-reading about the last 100 pages because I had so many questions when I finished.
Things I loved:
1. Learning about Aberforth
2. Getting a whole new perspective on Dumbledore
3. Snape ended up not only being good, but really being a hero in the end. i knew i loved him! (I also predicted his thing with Lily)
4. Mrs. Weasley
5. The reappearance of Percy
6. How it was action packed from the 1st chapter
7. Petunia could have gone to Hogwarts!
8. The Malfoys do have some sort of heart
I also thought it was clever of JK to make Harry die, almost, then come back to life. That sort of satisfies both parties. The ones who want him to die, and the ones who want him to live.
The last chapter did feel strange. I didn't love the "happily ever after" feel of it, it was very similar to the 1st 2 books. I liked being able to see what happened to the characters, however. More than anything I was just confused and had to keep re-reading it because about 7 new characters (all those kids) were introduced in less than 10 pages. I kept forgetting who belonged to whom.
all in all, it was a very satisfying ending to the series.
I think Rowling has left herself ample opportunity to pick up the storyline again, and she's left lots of little details that could use more explaining...which will most likely come out in later books, many through the pensieve...?
Anon at 12:00 - the way to keep the kids straight: if they're named after someone, it's Harry's kid.
I didn't like the epilogue all that much, either. It gave the main characters the closure we needed, but it wrong for the tone of the book. I was also a little weirded out by the dying-and-coming-back twist, especially from an another who has always said that her characters, once dead, stay that way. (And I have it on good authority that those who were hoping Harry died want him to die and stay that way. <-- ps - that's very tongue-in-cheek.) I felt that the deaths of Remus Lupin and Tonks were almost pointless - there was no mourning and it certainly added nothing to the plot.
There was a lot I liked and I lot a didn't. But I'm reserving overall judgement until I reread it, because I know I missed a lot in the power-through I did.
I just finished it a few minutes ago. Has been a difficult week as I almost got sick of reading it so I could just be done. I was not in love with the first half of the book. The passages from The Prophet and Rita's book on Dumbledore seemed like they would never end. However the end of the book, as soon as they got back to Hogwarts just flew by.
I was glad that Snape turned out not to be such a bad guy, and had a feeling from reading HBP that there was more to his story with Lily. Filling out some of the characters was great, and was happy to see the DA continue on when Harry and crew were gone. Neville was awesome wasn't he? The fight scenes had so many close calls, nail biting.
I didn't mind the epilogue, I know a lot of people did. For all the sorrow in his life, was just glad to see things wind up nicely for him. I know it was kind of cheesy, and was not in the tone of the rest of the book, but glad she gave the kid a break for once.
And for those who say its kid's stuff, sod off. She is a brilliant writer, and for those of us who enjoy a wee bit of fiction now and then, is gold. Not everything needs to be set in reality, especially with how awful our reality is right now. I will never be ashamed to be and adult who spent my hours reading these books and watching the movies. Cannot wait for the next two movies.
BTW- I still haven't seen OotP. I didn't realize I would get the book on Saturday (thanks Amazon!) so spent the last several days finishing HPB and the new one. I figured these kids would be chatting it up at the movies and wanted to censor any talk. I am glad that I was still able to read the news the last few days without there being spoilers, and what would they say anyway "Harry Potter Lives!"? Thanks for this blog, Mary, has been fun. Now back to real life...
Since no one ever seems to stay dead in this series what's the big deal about dying anyway?
The Potter series certainly attracted quite a following. Years ago I heard some mother talking about how these were the first books her child would take time to read. "It is Ms. Rowling’s achievement in this series that she manages to make Harry both a familiar adolescent — coping with the banal frustrations of school and dating — and an epic hero, kin to everyone from the young King Arthur to Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker. This same magpie talent has enabled her to create a narrative that effortlessly mixes up allusions to Homer, Milton, Shakespeare and Kafka, with silly kid jokes about vomit-flavored candies, a narrative that fuses a plethora of genres (from the boarding-school novel to the detective story to the epic quest) into a story that could be Exhibit A in a Joseph Campbell survey of mythic archetypes.
In doing so, J. K. Rowling has created a world as fully detailed as L. Frank Baum’s Oz or J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, a world so minutely imagined in terms of its history and rituals and rules that it qualifies as an alternate universe, which may be one reason the “Potter” books have spawned such a passionate following and such fervent exegesis. With this volume, the reader realizes that small incidents and asides in earlier installments (hidden among a huge number of red herrings) create a breadcrumb trail of clues to the plot, that Ms. Rowling has fitted together the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of this long undertaking with Dickensian ingenuity and ardor. Objects and spells from earlier books — like the invisibility cloak, Polyjuice Potion, Dumbledore’s Pensieve and Sirius’s flying motorcycle — play important roles in this volume, and characters encountered before, like the house-elf Dobby and Mr. Ollivander the wandmaker, resurface, too.
The world of Harry Potter is a place where the mundane and the marvelous, the ordinary and the surreal coexist. It’s a place where cars can fly and owls can deliver the mail, a place where paintings talk and a mirror reflects people’s innermost desires. It’s also a place utterly recognizable to readers, a place where death and the catastrophes of daily life are inevitable, and people’s lives are defined by love and loss and hope — the same way they are in our own mortal world."
From the NYTimes review. Previously eliminated by a too quick removal, as NO story lines are revealed herein.
"Nobody ever seems to stay dead?" Have you ever even read the books?
Sirius is dead; Dumbledore is dead; Harry's parents are dead; Cedric is dead. And they stay that way.
Keep your ignorance to yourself.
I cannot believe with everything going on now in the "Naked City" you are writing about a kids fantasy...come to think of it, most of what passes for leadership in this city is based on fantasy and a belief in majic...You need to bid a fond farewell Geekville and return to the Naked City.
Dear rebecca,
The title of the blog should not be The Naked City, but the Veiled City, a city of Smoke and Mirrors.
The misleading information, lies and deceit, the excuses for taxes and transfer payments to the rich, make for good reading.
As you infer, magic is at work here. It would be a miracle if all the city/county/cms programs etc worked only half as well as the propaganda machine tells us. None the less the answer is always, according to the Observer and others, more and higher taxes.
Let us pray.
Mary must have also played Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager. It's one thing to write a review about a book, it's quite another to show this level of obsession.
There are several blogs on this "news" website devoted to nothing but sports, which are no more substantive than a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Why the bias against imaginative activity?
It's not a bias against anything in particular other than transparent opportunism in evading discussion of a situation that is (A) in flux, (B)appears to be trending badly, and (C) about which Mary was insultingly pedandtic while simultaneously being on what certainly appears to be the wrong side.
Unquestionably we are about to be treated to an bemused but somewhat dismissive amused reaction to all of the posts that have taken Mary to task for playing at pop culture fantasies rather than dealing with the important and breaking events squarely on her beat. No doubt everyone who sees the obvious is simply blinded by their own preferences regarding transit. Certainly her interest in Potter caused this little hiatus to be planned weeks -maybe even months in advance. And unfortunately those who would have expected her, after accusing those who thought the UNCC "study" might be in any way connected to the Chamber of Commerce to have been "smoking something, to have taken a break from blogging about fantasy to deal with her own words, . . .well, they just don't understand the newspaper business.
OH, she wanted to respond. Believe her, she wanted to. She ached to set everyone straight and point out that all the noise was just noise, and that the study was sound, well sourced, utilized solid methods, and was in every regard above reproach. But the news biz: ah, it just doesn't work that way.
Uh huh.
Still speechless after the UNCC debacle?
I guess no comment on the Jay Morrison thing. He must have been really on to something if the big, bad Observer pulled out all the stops to smear ONE GUY with a bad haircut and a pot belly.
If that is all it takes to threaten light rail, then it must really be on shaky ground.
Yoo hoo! Mary! We're waiting!
UNCC is a "debacle", but you're willing to defend an elected official who used the court system to defraud unsuspecting companies SEVENTEEN TIMES, racking up money that was most likely used to fund a mercenary campaign to force a special-interest position onto November's ballot.
Interesting perspective you've got there. Even WBT won't stick their neck out for the Lizard King.
How did Neville end up with the sword of Gryffyndor?
Harry lost it in Gringotts; the goblin took it. Neville appears later with it?
Did I miss something?
I suppose Nearly Headless Nick and all those other ghosts who float around Hogwarts stayed dead? And Harry's parents have come back quite a few times to help him, most notably in Goblet of Fire, not to mention Dumbledore's ghost in the last book. So my point stands, you ignoramus.
Mary,
Congratulations and good luck!
Could you please verify what you meant in your statement
"Second, although I do appreciate the devoted (if sometimes mean-spirited) commenters and readers of The Naked City, honesty compels me to reveal that Potterblog was far more popular, measured in page views. (Blog readership -- high or low -- doesn't affect my pay, by the way. And no, I don't measure the value of what I do by page views, otherwise I'd be opining about Brad Pitt and the NFL.)"
I don't understand Potterblog being more popular when the responses for Potter had a hard time reaching double digits except for a couple but the discussions were all NOT about Potter.
If it were just page views, you can scratch off a bunch because I checked each one daily (I can't remember how many responses from day to day-except the ones with ONE comment)to see if people added comments other than the Plotter stuff.
ALOHA
Thad
Nearly Headless Nick and the other ghosts are wizards who died but didn't want to leave the world they knew. As Nick himself explained at the end of Phoenix, that makes them imprints, in the living world but not of it. No coming back there, just refusal to completely leave in the first place.
As for Lily and James, there is no "most notably in Goblet of Fire." Goblet is the only other time in which imprints of them have appeared. Everything else we learn about them is through flashback or narrated memory.
Finally, Dumbledore's ghost did not come back to Harry so much as meet him halfway to help him decide if he was coming or going.
Sorry, but your points are not well supported.
Neville got the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat because he was a true Gryffindor in need of it, the same way Harry got it at the end of Chamber of Secrets.
Post a Comment