Monday, December 03, 2007

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J. K. Rowling)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This review will be in inverse proportion to the size of this last installment in the gallant life of Harry Potter.

Overall Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was a disappointing read, lacking the page-turning narrative of the earlier novels. There was an enormous wealth of material in the 607 pages of the hardback edition, which I borrowed from a colleague several (>2) months ago, but struggled to get past page 10. There were too many locations, too much moving around the country with too little action in each scene. When they come to film it, a screenwriter is going to enjoy collapsing the plot structure down to a much simpler set of steps to get the main characters back to Hogwarts for the final scene(s).

About fifty pages from the end, it seemed like it was nearly over. But like the last Bond film, it wasn’t quite there yet. Just one more scene, and then another. And the Nineteen Years Later section seemed unnecessary – a sop to diehard fans who wanted certainty of their characters future, rather than leaving that to the fan fiction to sort out.

But to end on a positive note, I enjoyed appreciated the final resolution between Potter and Voldemort (or Riddle as we were reminded near the end). Seemed fitting.

There’s satisfaction in getting to the end – but a bit like complete L Ron Hubbard’s Invasion Earth dekalogy all those years ago, the elastic in the bungee cord that’s meant to draw the reader to the final page had got a bit weak, and it was loyalty and a sense of completion rather than sheer joy that got be to the end.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

no alan it was not so bad
every part was thrilling to me
(when snape reveals his innocense and love to lilly,telling to voldemort that he is posessing the elder wand,)

Anonymous said...

comparing to all other except philosophers stone it was very good(superb)

ruthEbabes said...

I agree with you about the whole converting to movie aspect and how they'll really need to work on cutting out lots of the moving around, and i wonder will they remove the wedding and have Luna's dad appear somewhere else wearing the symbol that sparks the whole Hallows thing.

But I loved the book! I couldn't put it down, but did get rather frustrated that I was half way through and they'd only got 2 of the 7 horcruxes and that there'd only been 3 deaths out of the 11 (i think) so it was a little slow in places but definitely a fantastic read! loved all the twists in it, that some have told me they saw coming but i didn't so it made the book very enjoyable.