Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Last night I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, the final book in the Harry Potter series. I'll try to avoid any spoilers in this post but if you haven't read the book and intend to, you might want to come back later in case I let anything slip that you didn't want to know.

Since this book serves as a third act for the entire series and I've written before about the difficulty of writing third acts, I was a little wary when I started it. On the other hand, I had just finished re-reading the 6th book so I was also raring to find out what happened next and to have some of the mysteries that have built up over the series resolved. And Rowling didn't disappoint. She pulls off one of the better books of the series as well as a great third act for the series as a whole.

Deathly Hallows not only wraps up most of the outstanding questions from the previous book, it also explains a number of things from earlier books that seemed odd at the time but most readers probably just brushed off as mistakes or oversights. This is not to say that the book is just a huge lump of exposition filling in all the holes that have opened over a seven book series. All the explanations actually come in the context of a story that stands on its own with the other books and even introduces a lot of new background on old characters and the wizarding world.

I got into Harry Potter back in 2000 when my girlfriend brought back the first three books from a trip to London and we have been big fans ever since. I'm a little sad to know that I won't be able to look forward to the next Harry Potter book coming out but I will definitely take a look at whatever J.K. Rowling comes out with next.

Amazon Link: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

1 comment:

Sarah said...

I found that there were quite a few things that she didn't clear up, and there are a few questions I want to ask: what does everyone do for a living? Why do Hogwarts professors never get married? That kind of thing. She did answer a bunch of questions at mugglenet.com if you're interested. I was a bit sad too, though. At least there are two more movies to look forward to, sort of...