RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What did You think??

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/14/2007 4:58:23 PM

missfrillypants

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i think this was a pretty good book, and i'm a HUGE harry potter fan, but i had some problems with it.
i think mostly it's because this is a children's book, and i'm an adult reading it and most of the people i know reading the books are adults, so i forget that, but...

i think many things in this installment were too simplistic. i would have liked to have seen more detail on the deathly hallows, for example, or some warning about them or something, they kind of seemed to come out of left field to me, and i understand what they were meant to be in the course of the story, but...

i loved some of the things, like the radio program and the dealings with the magical creatures coming back into play. i loved hagrid, who totally stayed hagrid the whole time, and i rather liked that ron had his moment of doubt, because it seemed fitting to me.

the predictability of some things really bothered me though, and the epilouge felt kind of insipid... everyone who lives lives happily ever after and honestly, how many people marry their highschool sweethearts? i really would have liked to see a better treatment of the slytherins... despite harry's insistance that albus severus is named after one of the bravest men he knew, i wish draco had stepped up a little bit more in the room of requirement... he seemed too determined to stay on a side we know he felt coerced to join at that point (remember his little hissy fit on top of the tower? "you don't know what it's like! he'll kill my family" {not an exact quote. not meant to be one/}) and even though we know that there were people in slytherin house who weren't death eaters, not one of them decides to stay or is even given the oppurtunity after slughorn chickens out, even though we know slytherins disreguard rules and may have disagreed with thier head of house. and the whole ending until that sentence in the epilouge gives us a very narrow view of slytherins...

and snape... i really really would have liked to see snape as having a more complex motivation than a charlie brown complex. even if it made him evil, even if it muddied the point jk was trying to make about love being the strongest force in the world, it turns a very complex character into a very flat one in my opinion.

my favorite things in the seventh book were "not my daughter you bitch!"
"saintly." which is just perfectly fred and george
and the conversations with mr. ollivander, which explained so much and were so awesome i kind of want to be a wandmaker now. and yes, i loved how they explained neville's early problems... he wasn't the master of his wand!

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/14/2007 9:24:21 PM

DomKen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: missfrillypants
my favorite things in the seventh book were "not my daughter you bitch!"
"saintly." which is just perfectly fred and george
and the conversations with mr. ollivander, which explained so much and were so awesome i kind of want to be a wandmaker now. and yes, i loved how they explained neville's early problems... he wasn't the master of his wand!

I think it was easy to dismiss Molly as a simple housewife but her brothers Gideon and Fabian Prewett died like heroes in the first war taking on five death eaters and all of her children are quite talented. Also she had just lost Fred and losing Ginny would have just been too much for her.

Yes, Neville was using his father's wand before he broke it in the department of mysteries. That wand had a master who Neville surely never defeated so it didn't work well for him. Likely enough with his own wand he would be a much better wizard.

BTW for those who cannot get enough HP see here:
http://www.bloomsbury.com/harrypotter/content.asp?sec=3&sec2=1
for some great info. I find the idea of Ginny being the star professional quidditch player just perfect.

< Message edited by DomKen -- 8/14/2007 9:53:17 PM >

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/14/2007 11:03:50 PM

piercings

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He's a 17 year old kid. He's seen more death, torture, pain, etc than most people see in their whole life. If he came out of that PERFECTLY sane and normal, without ANY issues, then the story wouldn't be very realistic, would it?

I'm not wishing he was damaged just for the sake of it, it just makes sense for him to be slightly unstable.

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/14/2007 11:32:10 PM

cabernet

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***SPOILER ALERT***SPOILER ALERT***SPOILER ALERT***

I loved all the books so much. But as much as I was looking forward to reading the last book and finding out the ending, I was heartbroken that it's over and there is nothing left to look forward to.

One of the biggest questions that I had before the book was how Voldemort would die. I knew he would, but I wasn't sure how Rowling would handle it. I could not imagine Harry pointing his wand at him and saying "Avada Kedavra" and having the jet of green light hit Voldemort in the chest. And yet I knew it had to be Harry to finish him off. So I was pleased about the way that she did that. Voldemort, in his vain stupidity, killed himself.

I also always knew that Neville would come into his own in this book. I was very pleased with that. I saw that another person wrote that they were disappointed with Hermione in this book, and I really wasn't at all. She has always been more brains than action, and so I thought the book was true to that. I was really surprised that she didn't end up being a teacher at Hogwarts, that has always been what I thought her future would be.

I have kind of figured that Snape was in love with Lily and that he never forgave Voldemort for killing her and that is why he changed sides. I think he always hated Harry because he wished that she had had his child instead of James Potter's. Even though he had protected him all those years, he still didn't like Harry and treated him terribly.

I too wish that there had been more written in the epilogue about what happened to all the characters. But then maybe Rowling was leaving that up to our own imaginations.

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/15/2007 4:36:38 AM

DomKen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: cabernet
I too wish that there had been more written in the epilogue about what happened to all the characters. But then maybe Rowling was leaving that up to our own imaginations.

See the link I posted above for JKR providing more details on their adult lives.

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/15/2007 5:36:21 PM

Durus

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Perfectly sane and normal? Is there any such thing? One can have issues and not be an emotional mute that you described. Everyone has issues and no doubt he has his share but the relief of it being finished certainly would lead to some closure.

I think what she meant by that is that Harry and Ginny were happy to leave fame behind and find happiness in each other and the joys of raising a family.

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/15/2007 7:36:25 PM

Marc2b

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Overall I loved the book. It is a well done ending to the series. Of course, I do have a few nitpicks.

First, I didn’t care for the way Hedwig was killed off so early. It felt to me as if Rowling had no more use for the character, didn’t know what to do with her, and so just bumped her off to get her out of the way.

Neville did indeed come into his own, he performed admirably and showed himself to be a true Gyrffindor but I think he got ripped off in not getting to put the smack down on Beatrix.

The chapter informing us of Snape’s long, secret, love for Lilly is wonderful and gives a fitting resolution to the mysteries and motivations behind a fascinating character but piercings is correct in that it’s placement in the narrative interrupts the momentum.

The Percy/Weasly family reconciliation scene seemed a little hastily done, as if Rowling realized that she forgot to deal with this storyline and just plopped it in.

I would have like to known more about what became of the Dursleys.

And lastly, I still find it a little hard to believe that a seventeen year old boy and a seventeen year old girl could be alone in a tent in the woods and not get it on.

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/16/2007 1:28:09 PM

litleone8620

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Fast Reply

As a Harry Potter fan, I was quite disappointed with most of it; especially the beginning. I was hoping Rowling would just jump right into the task Harry had. But instead, they just hung around, and waited until the last minute to make their plans, which went out the window anyway at Fluer and Bill's wedding.

And even after they started their trip, it seemed to drag on. The aimless wandering really dragged the book down. Granted, the three of them didn't know what the heck they were doing, or where they would start their search for the horcruxes. But it still made it kind of slow for me.

And yes, the ending was cliche, but I liked it in that, if Harry hadn't ended up with Ginny, and if Ron and Hermione hadn't ended up together, the fans would have been disappointed.

I wouldn't say it felt like Rowling had lost interest in the story, but the overall tone was a bit different from the rest of them. I think it has to do with the fact that all the wandering about the country was a filler for the more important stuff. Like she used it to move the story along, but not really giving us any real information.

What I liked about the book:

Neville. He had always been one of my favorite characters, even when he was portrayed as he was. The same with Luna. Even though she wasn't really in DH, she came through at the end.

I liked the back story about Dumbledore, even if it put him in a negative light. It showed him as human, making a human's mistakes.

The story line was good, if you get past the wandering about-type fillers.

And, even though it is quite cliche, I did like the 'love conquers all' theme. Gave me kind of a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Overall, I'd give it a 7 out of 10

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RE: For those that have finished Harry Potter...What di... - 8/16/2007 3:32:18 PM

Vampyrefledgling

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Let me preface this by saying that I am a huge Harry Potter fan, read all the books and have seen all the movies.

As to the final book, I disliked it. I felt her focus was all over the place and I agree with the statement that many of the characters became two dimensional.

I felt she couldn't decide whether or not to write about Horcruxes or the Deathly Hallows, so she wrote about both and didn't do either idea justice. In 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,' the Horcruxes were clever and definitely engaged the reader, but in the final book, they came about too easily, you were almost reduced to counting how many had come up and several times I wondered how on earth Harry and the gang figured out just what were Horcruxes! It didn't make a lot of sense. She skipped a lot of explanation that would have taken place in earlier books. The idea of the Deathly Hallows was also a creative one, but because of her split focus, it wasn't fully realized and therefore also done half-way and didn't quite make sense, especially in terms of the situation concerning Voldemort as a whole.

Also, the deaths of Lupin and Tonx were completely glossed over without any kind of explanation. Given the role those two characters played, most notably Lupin, it seemed she (Rowling) had no other way to deal with that relationship, that she was tired of including them in the story so she killed them off quickly. I wanted an explanation! But there was no explanation, nothing. That was a ridiculous thing to do.

There were no twists and turns; no surprises that I had come to expect from the series (with the exception of the Half-Blood Prince). I had come to expect shocking events and surprises that I couldn't see coming but this had none of that. It was predictable and the ending was too pat. Everything wrapped up neatly in a nice little box with a pretty bow and I have to say I was quite disappointed.

But it did leave a lot of space for the writers of the screenplay to be creative and I hope they take great advantage!

~Fledgling

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