Well I made it – all the way to the end without anyone revealing the ending to me. Who would have guessed Hagrid… heh, maybe not ;)

I was in a really big Harry Potter high before this book and now it has died down a bit … maybe because of the book in itself!

It was a good book, there is no denying it. Overall, though, while reading it, I felt a bit dissatisfied, I am not sure why. Of course, what I always liked best about these books is Hogwarts, classes, and the many lovable characters – while this book feels more like a “regular” adventure fantasy, with often only the Trio. Certainly a re-reading will change my mind and I will come to like it better.

Often, weirdly, the book felt like fanfiction. I don’t want to spoil anyone so I won’t get into details, but some stuff was very, very fanficcy (and don’t get me started on that epilogue!). I guess it’s normal because some devoted fans were bound to get the answers right.

I thought some characters’ development was really great (Dumbledore mostly, and to a certain extent the Malfoys) and made these characters less “all good or all bad”. But some characters were clearly underused (Ginny and Lupin, two of my favorites). Anyway. It’s not the best book, but I sure had a great time reading it and how good it feels to finally KNOW!!!

Collected the book this morning (21/7/07) at 8 o’clock. Was in a hurry to get it because it just so happened I was flying off to Thailand for a weekend trip the same day HP7 came out. Read lots of it on the plane, in the airport while waiting for the highly inefficient immigration to clear, a bit at a bookshop (the bookshop’s copy) and finally finished the rest at the hotel tonight.

I was a bit annoyed with HP6 when it came out because it seemed that Harry was left with a lot to do – destroying all the remaining horcruxes. It seemed like enough for at least 5 more books given the trouble Dumbledore had locating just one. This book did turn out to be a lot of rushing around for Harry, Ron and Hermione, which made it seem a bit disjointed. It also pulled in a new plot element, the Deathly Hallows, which make their owner the master of death, which seemed to make things all the more complicated. But they were fairly efficient about their work and made quite a bit of progress.

It was said that two major characters would die in this book and really a lot more important characters do, though perhaps they aren’t starring characters. It was very sad in bits, though J.K. Rowling’s characteristic humour shines out from time to time throughout. Her message that love and loyalty conquer the deepest magic gets emphasised once more in Harry’s last outing.

I won’t give too many spoilers away here, but I will note that many of the predictions Harry Potter fans made in run-up books etc were quite accurate. J.K. Rowling dropped quite a lot of clues in the previous books – though I, having merely skimmed through the books to know what happened rather than dissecting every page, would have had a very hard time putting them together to find out how it would have ended. The plotting was pretty clever, but I felt there were still a few unanswered questions at the end. Some of them could perhaps be answered with a closer reading, but at least one of them goes completely unaddressed, I feel sure.

Overall a worthy and satisfying conclusion to the Harry Potter series. At last, we know what happened! Phew, no more waiting years for the next book anymore.