Reviewing the Review-Proof: Deathly Hallows (SPOILERS)
Reviewing the Review-Proof: Deathly Hallows (SPOILERS)
Aug 03I realize I am about to commit nerd hara-kiri as my geekly brothers and sisters worship at the Altar of Rowling, but I must do it:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is good, but not great. And it’s because Jo Rowling has desperately needed a strong editor for YEARS.
I hate to be the Negative Noonan (and I fully realize no one will care WHAT I think of this book, as well they shouldn’t) but I think it’s a frustrating conclusion in some ways.
The middle section is just so flabby. I read for pages and pages waiting for Harry, Ron and Hermione to DO something. They hop around England, they bicker, they make an idiotic decision or ten, they fall into every trap Voldemort sets for them…and then, all of a sudden, BOOM, they’re off and they know what’s going on, thanks to little to no work or investigation on their part.
One of the many, many things that made the early books great was how they were actively involved in some kind of mystery for the entire school year, and were actively working to solve it. The thruline of those first four books is clear and consuming.
By book five, there’s not so much an ongoing mystery as there is a series of things that happen, while time ticks away. Rowling attempts in a half-hearted manner to bring that device back with the Half-Blood Prince, but it doesn’t quite work.
I liked the central issue of “Who was Albus Dumbledore REALLY?” in Deathly Hallows, but I would also have appreciated it if they had some kind of plan from the start to get the Horcruxes, and had big challenges in following the plan, rather than hopping around England for months basically having the same conversations over and over, while THE MOST EVIL WIZARD EVER KILLS PEOPLE ALL THE TIME.
Seriously–I’m all for suspending disbelief but what’s the body count on how many people just kicked it while these three were having drama fits and trying to figure out what it is they were trying to figure out?
So that’s one spot right there where a strong, forceful editor would have helped–Rowling needed to know that her plotting in this book was flaccid.
Then there’s just the sheer CUTTING of the damn thing. Book four was an exponential explosion of pages, compared to the first three books, and every book since then has followed suit. Even though I love the world she has created and all the little details therein, that doesn’t mean I care about SPEW, or the Lovegood family, or any of the other side trips and diversions that clutter the later books.
However, the last 200-300 pages were masterful, and while she herself cites the “Harry going into the woods to die” scene as her favorite, I’ll nominate the whole King’s Cross chapter, which I thought was just phenomenal–it’s this great pause before the final cresendo, and I loved Dumbledore’s final moments in the series.
I also loved how, in spite of all the big structural variations in this last book, the finale basically came down to one more round of Dumbledore explains it all, then Harry tells Ron and Hermione, who crap themselves in shock and awe.
AND I loved the ruthlessness of it all–I was lying there in bed the day it came out just starting to read, and when I hit about page 30 or 50 or so and suddenly every bad-ass Death Eater in existence shows up to kill Harry and his friends, I jolted straight upright and was totally hooked.
So I loved it, when it wasn’t annoying the shit out of me. There’s your cover blurb for the paperback edition, Jo!
