And here we are at number 19 of the year, the greatly anticipated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So here we are at the end of the Harry Potter epic, and I cannot say I was surprised by anything really, but I also cannot say I was disappointed by anything either. It was grand, and answered everything, had lots of action and plenty of people died. Which, is something I always find needs to happen at the end of something big and epic. That was one of my main complaints at the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; not enough people died. So yeah, it was a nice ending, Voldemort is defeated without question this time, Harry gets to live happily ever after, which I admit, I discovered that was important to me, we discovered Snape truly was on the side of the angels, Dumbledore chose his death, one of a pair of my two favourite characters didn't survive, and of course, Ron and Hermonie end up together.
Its funny, at the end, there is an epilogue that takes place many years later and gives us the "And Harry lived happily ever after part", but as usual, I"m left wondering what everyone else has been doing. The new baby who was orphaned, what happens to him? How does one character go on when pretty much his other half is gone? Stuff like that. It reminds me of how I felt at the end of the Fionavar Tapestry, when I really, really NEEDED to know what happened to some characters. And i know though, that without the epilogue, I probably wouldn't have needed to know so badly, I would've just accepted that everyone lived happily, as best they could.
It was a good ending. Not a great ending, but a good ending to an enjoyable series of books overall.
2 comments:
I was glad that a lot of folks died (and Molly's slaying of Bellatrix was the best in the series) but so often Rowling really drops the ball for me at making the deaths exciting or interesting to read in the slightest (Sirius, Fred and Voldemort's deaths being the grandest of these on the boringness scale; and Tonks & Lupin were a bit doomed the minute they made Harry godfather). Fred's death was the biggest bummer of all, even though it had been spoiled for me previously, and I agree it would've been nice to know about George's "happy ever after"--I think Rowling did an interview somewhere where she spoils the epilogues for all the survivors, lets us in on the full names of the children, lets us know she originally planned to kkill Arthur, etc.
Oh I HATED at how off hand (and off panel) Sirius' death was. It went by so fast that I had to reread it a few times to make sure he was dead. Was that to put us in the same mindset as Harry (did that REALLY just happen?) I dunno, but yeah, overall I found it really annoying.
And I wanted to see Fred's death. As I said, I wanted to know how George was going to fare without his beloved twin.
I did read the interview with Rowling about what the survivors are doing, and I still found it unsatisfying. I'm not entirely sure why, maybe it also just felt haphazard to me; a very lazy 'conclusion' overall.
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