Spoiler Free Since 1993
Jul 24th, 2007 by Alex
Having finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows early this morning — well after midnight, and on a school night too — I feel obligated to make some spoiler-free commentary. I purchased the book at BJ’s on Saturday morning, off one of the two enormous pallets that they had lying around the warehouse. No fuss. No bother. Piece of cake and I got my grocery shopping done too.
No sneak attacks. I’m not a dick. There will be nothing of the plot in what follows, I promise. For a really excellent review — with spoilers (so don’t you dare click unless you have no intention of reading the book or you already have, you’ve been warned) — check out Snay’s commentary of the book. He puts a lot into words that I couldn’t ever put my finger on and does it with more flair too.
The beginning of HPDH confused me. I hadn’t read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in two years. My memory was rusty and there wasn’t a quick summary of what had been happening as there had been in previous books. The reader is left to jump right in.
A friend of mine found the book to be slow-going until the last quarter. I would agree that parts of it seemed laboriously long. As much as I’ve enjoyed the series of books I found myself speed reading. It isn’t that I didn’t want to read to enjoy it, but after several thousands pages of J.K. Rowling’s words on the page I just wanted to know what was going to happen without it being told to me by someone else. I suspect I will give it another read in a few weeks or so once the initial hype dies down and I can read at a more reasonable pace. I’ll probably better comprehend it then and enjoy it more.
The ending took me by surprise. The end result didn’t, but it wasn’t nearly as simple as I had anticipated. It was quite the complex fabric of storytelling. So complex in some places where I doubt some would be able to follow it. I had some troubles here, but I think I understood the majority of it.
I didn’t cry, but there are several places where you might.
Enjoy it. I did.
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I reread all the books beforehand so I’d be up to date. I remember reading Half Blood Prince and being “Luna Lovegood? WHO?”
There are 2 other kids’ book series that I recommend for adults who have read Harry Potter. Both are better written (all that fucking stuttering, god, there ARE other ways to indicate emotion, lady) and briskly plotted. One is even funny.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan
The Alex Ryder series by Anthony Horowitz
Oh, also, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, which by all rights should be shelved as adult - it’s pretty deep.
There’s a lot to be said for the best juvenile literature - it’s well-crafted, densely imagined, and moves right along, and if it’s sometimes a little predictable, that doesn’t take away from the fun of reading it.
Librarian: I think the stuttering is a British thing. Novelists and script-writers alike prefer to type cast themselves that way. I don’t get it. I’ve actually read Pullman’s stuff. I really loved the daemon concept. Any description of their appearance aside, I always imagine Beastie — the mascot for the FreeBSD operating system — as tagging along when I think of those books. I’m always on the lookup for a good read; I’ll have to check out Riordan and Horowitz.
Ok then if you’ve read His Dark Materials (which I am increasingly helping adult readers find, I think the word’s getting out), try Ken Oppel’s two airship books, Airborn and Skybreaker; also Eoin Colfer’s Supernaturalists - his Artemis Fowl books are cute but more kid-like, so you might pass on them.
Also, in the adult arena - The Book of Lost things by John Connolly and anything you can find by Liz Jensen. Cory Doctorow. Christopher Moore (obvs). Gregory Maguire.