Harry Potter reflections...

I can't admit to being a die-hard Harry Potter fan. And it's not because I'm embarrassed or something, it's just because well, it's true. I can't say I started reading the books in the series when they first were released, or even that I knew anything about Harry Potter until the day I happened to walk into a bookstore on the day the fourth book was released. It was the summer of 2000, and I was heading on a week long vacation in Lake Tahoe. Obviously overwhelmed by the shiny gold lettering and gigantic displays, I picked up the first four books on a whim, thinking I needed something to read while I was relaxing in the wilderness.

I finished off all four books during that week, completely taken in by the world J.K. Rowling had created, and the stories she had crafted within it. It was then that I became a fan, apparently joining millions of other people, worldwide. Not only were these stories fun to read, but they invoked something else in me; something much more intangible. I found them inspiring in many ways, and not just because as a kid I had desperately hoped that some sort of magic existed in the world... No, it was more that I respected them as artistic and creative achievements, and the feeling they gave me -- I felt compelled to achieve the same thing, to entertain and inspire people by creating something of my own. It's kind of interesting to reflect on that now, as my job requires me to be a part of creating worlds that I only hope are as fascinating as the world found in the Harry Potter novels.

Fast-forward 2 more books and 7 years into the future, and there I was, standing in a line in a crowded Barnes & Noble, wearing a numbered wristband, and counting down the minutes until midnight. The counting was partly because I was anxiously awaiting the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but also partly due to the environment that I was surprised to find myself in... Surrounding me in the haphazardly-formed line were freakish people, strange enough to be characters in a Harry Potter novel themselves, all of whom had absolutely no concept of personal space. From the mother that had elbowed her way in front of me with the bushy white hair, loud mouth, and squirrel-like daughter with equally messy hair, to the drugged out couple behind me who both lacked any kind of consideration for anyone and seemed completely confounded by the wristband numbering system, or the woman in Birkenstocks to my right that honestly resembled a sunburned hobbit... I was glad I had waited until 11:45 to show up. Even then, after waiting for a couple of minutes in that line, I found myself wondering what I was doing there. I wasn't a die-hard fan, was I?

I pondered this as I waited, wedged between the freaks and the Self-Help section, reminding myself that this would be worth the trouble -- I'd be one of the first to get my hands on the final book in the series. Just as I was beginning to question my sanity, I found myself in the front of the line, quickly paid for my book, and headed home in the cool night air.

No Spoilerz for ME!
One of my biggest motivations to get the book early and read it as fast as possible was the threat of spoilers. As with anything popular, there are always griefers out there that love to ruin the experience for everyone else. Two years ago, many midnight lines for the 6th book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were hit by party-crashers screaming (and in some cases, wearing) spoilers about the book's ending. And while I'm not in a target area for things like this to happen (this is Oakland, 25th most dangerous city in the US; Harry Potter spoilers are probably on the list after things like smoking crack, acquiring guns, and committing violent crimes...), I can't say I wasn't still a little worried that someone would burst in at any moment, ready to ruin my fun. Actually, since it's Oakland, maybe I should have been more worried about someone bursting in after smoking crack and acquiring guns, with intent to commit violent crimes inside the Barnes and Noble...

Thinking back, I feel extremely lucky to have read the entire 6th novel without someone ruining the ending before I got there, since I really did take my time (alright, I took a whole week to read it). Aside from unexpected reveals of the ending at release parties, spoilers were also cleverly inserted into conspicuous places all over the internet, and well, I happen to use the internet. And somehow I managed to escape seeing these. But even more amazingly, I was coincidentally absent from work the day the design director at my place of employment decided to run through the office, yelling "Snape kills Dumbledore on page 606!!" His excuse? "Oh, I thought everyone knew already..." Nice.

And so, with the 7th book finished and now sitting on the shelf with the other books in the series, I can say I have successfully dodged any spoiler attacks (although it appears, none were aimed at me this time around). I spent all of my Saturday reading this final installment, and I definitely have a few things to say about it.

Introduction
Before I begin, I just thought I'd mention something important: SPOILERS!!! If you are planning on reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and don't want any secrets revealed ahead of time, it's best you stop reading here. Continue at your own risk; you've been warned.

General Synopsis
In the 7th book, we find Harry, Hermione, and Ron at the beginning of a quest (given to them by the late Albus Dumbledore) to search for Voldemort's horcruxes (containers into which Voldemort has sealed a part of his soul) and destroy them. The book follows them along on their journey to find these horcruxes while on the run, in a world where the Death Eaters have taken control and Harry is considered enemy number one. After many mishaps and a few successes along the way, Harry goes up against Voldemort in a final showdown... or two.

I admit, as I finished off the 6th book two years ago, I thought this was a great framework for the final book. In my head, I saw Harry, Hermione and Ron, searching in fantastic and new places in the world, learning new and stronger magic, finding crazy artifacts, on an Indiana Jones style treasure hunt for the horcruxes of Voldemort. Unfortunately... That's not really how it works out. I'll be honest and get right to the point. This book isn't the best of the series. And whether or not it's fair of me, I think I was hoping it would be. This was to be the final adventure, ending with the epic showdown between good and evil, right?

Plot and Pacing
One of my main complaints with the plot is that the book starts out too slow, and that there isn't a good sense of building towards anything. It's obvious Harry is eventually going to go up against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named eventually, but the book stays at the same low level of intensity throughout almost the entire story. Even when things were happening that should be exciting, they are often not as cool as they could have been, mostly because I wasn't able to identify any sense of a unifed theme, or building series of events that was obviously linked by some common element. It honestly seems like Rowling created 5 or 6 situations, and then strung them together to create the story. Most of these situations can be summarized like this:

Harry: Let's go to this place.
Ron and Hermione: Okay.
Harry: We're here. Let's look around.
Ron and Hermione: Okay.
Harry: OMG Death Eaters have found us!!!
Ron and Hermione: Oh noes!!
Harry: Don't worry, something completely unexplainable will happen and we will escape.
Ron and Hermione: Hooray!

I think this points to another one of the major issues with the plot: without a distinct story point or theme (such as the Tri-Wizard Tournament, or the Chamber of Secrets), Rowling is struggling to link all of these events together. Don't get me wrong, Rowling had a great theme (searching for horcruxes), she just chose not to use it. Judging from the title, the book is supposed to be about the Deathly Hallows... However, we don't even learn about what this means until the book is half over, and even then, this theme takes a backseat most of the time, coming back into focus now and then, but never staying at the forefront.

As I was reading, I kept wondering when it was going to get good... and I kept thinking this until I hit about the last 100 pages, when I finally found what I had been looking for! And this was such a shock (and a delight, at that point), that I wondered why the rest of the plot wasn't set up to support this ending. Why doesn't the intensity build throughout the book to the point of the final battle?

Writing Style
Rowling seems to have changed her style somewhat from the other books; one might say it's more mature (the books have grown increasingly complex as the series has gone on), but I'm not sure that's the right word for it. And I hate to say it, but I honestly didn't enjoy it as much. During extremely exciting events, she sometimes slips into a very cerebral, almost stream-of-consciousness type writing. And while it might be effective at showing the emotional distress and absolute confusion that Harry is experiencing, it also made these events very difficult to understand. I found myself having to read entire sections twice in order to figure out what exactly had happened.

Also, Rowling's trademark detail and descriptions are noticably absent in portions of the book. I found myself suprised at the lack of detail in several passages, and the way certain details were simply just glossed over. For instance, a visit to the orphanage (or the location where the orphanage used to be) of Tom Riddle turns into a one paragraph affair... Huh? But isn't this all about their search? Things like that are hard for me as a reader, to make sense of.

General Impression
During the story, many well-known and beloved characters die at the hands of Death Eaters. Yet I found myself unhappy with it most of the time. And this is not because I was sentimentally wishing the character was still around, it's just that I felt that no importance or build-up was created for these deaths. In Deathly Hallows, more than once, something crazy happens, and when the smoke clears, a well-known character is dead, and that's that. I have nothing against killing important characters in a story, but I do think that it should be done for a reason, and that there should be some sort of drama surrounding it, so that it feels justified and honorable.

The only one death I thought was done well was the death of Dobby. As a character, he has been shown repeatedly to have an extreme loyalty to Harry and his friends. It only made sense that he would throw himself in harm's way in order to save Harry. But in comparison, Mad Eye Moody? Oh yeah, he fell off the broom back there. Sorry. It happens within the first few chapters of the book, and to me, it felt like a meaningless thing to do.

Another thing that bothers me is the dumb luck that seems to follow Harry and pals wherever they go. Whenever they end up in a situation in which it looks like there is no way out, some completely unexplainable thing happens to save them. In some cases, these things are eventually explained, but in others, not at all.
~~Oh, there just happens to be a blind dragon here that doesn't notice if you climb on its back and fly away to safety. Hmmm, that's lucky.
~~Dobby? What are you doing here? Oh, you're here to save us? Cool!
~~Oh, there's actually an 8th secret passage into Hogwarts, and it involves a portrait that for some reason, behaves in a different way than all other portraits that we've ever seen in the past 6 books? Well, alright...
The king of all lame moments like this is when Ron inexplicably has learned to speak in parseltongue in order to make sense of the fact that Rowling needed Ron and Hermione to open the Chamber of Secrets without Harry around. Just like that, in two sentences, Ron gains the ability speak in snake language (a supposed rare skill that we are told in prior books isn't learned, it's inherited) the day is saved and I'm supposed to just buy into that? Sorry, that's going a little too far.

Much of my disappointment stems from two very specific things. The first is the obvious change of environment. Instead of taking place at Hogwarts, this book follows the trio as they are on the run, hiding from the Death Eaters. Part of what the series is to me is very tied to Hogwarts, and in this book, there is definitely something missing without it. The other point is something that I couldn't put my finger on at first. But eventually I came to realize that this book was lacking exactly what made the Harry Potter books enjoyable and inspiring for me: the FUN. Deathly Hallows is dark and serious, which one could argue, it definitely should be. But most of what I love about this series are the truly magical moments of discovery. They are the things that make you think, "Wow, that would be awesome if I could do that/have that/something like that existed." Danger is present in each of the preceding books, but this element of fun is always there, and I know it's what I latched onto.

There are also some moments that I felt Rowling didn't fully see to their potential. The most prominent of these is when Harry finally uses one of the Deathly Hallows to summon people that have died to his side. Right on! Harry, marching to his death with his undead army behind him? That's cool! But wait... you're gonna just drop it, and make them disappear 5 minutes later without even helping or saying goodbye, or... anything?

And Voldemort... He's not even in the final battle until the very end, he just hangs around while his minions do the dirty work. And even after that... He just... dies? Just like that? He's giving his villain monologue, and then, one spell, and that's it? His spell reflected back on him? Again? Oh, okay... I guess that's just not the way I saw Voldemort going.

As well, I was put off by the very last battle, in which everyone Harry was prepared to die for was then protected from harm, due to his sacrifice. I have always found the idea of this protection a little wonky (I get even less willing to buy into it when Rowling starts putting weird time limits on it, like the protection all of a sudden runs out when Harry turns 17), but I was willing to believe it when it only involved Harry and his mother. But now, apparently Harry can protect everyone at Hogwarts? Well, now, that's a little much. So what I am to believe then, is that in all the years of Voldemort's reign of terror, not one person attempted to defend another and protect that person from one of Voldemort's spells? I'd dare to suggest that sounds ridiculous -- Voldemort has killed a lot of people, were none of them valiant? And then why is it the case, if this sort of protection only works until the person is 17, why is absolutely everyone safe from the Death Eaters at the end of the story? I dislike plot holes and random justification -- I want things to make sense and not just simply exist for the point of tying up some of the author's loose ends... and this just doesn't work for me. Boo.

I also think Rowling went a step too far with the supposed "heaven" sequence with Dumbledore and the strange injured creature. That to me completely went against everything that I knew these books to be and seemed really out of place.

Lastly, the epilogue was horrible. That's really all there is to it. I would have rather it had been cut from the final draft. That's nice that they all lived happily ever after and had bunches of children and named them all after prominent characters in the book so that I can't tell what they hell is going on. James wha? Albus who? I just found it incredibly cheesy for the book to end with an epilogue like this. I would have rather know more about the aftermath of the battle and dealing with those that were lost than find out that Harry married Ginny and Hermione and Ron ended up together (big surprise there) and even Draco is now a parent of a child that is off to Hogwarts. All I could think when I read this is, "Meh. She said no more books about Harry, but she didn't say a thing about Harry's kids."

What's Cool?
Despite all the flaws I've mentioned, there are some cool moments in this book:
~~Ron, Harry, and Hermione entering into the Ministry of Magic, disguised with Polyjuice potion
~~Harry and Hermione exploring Godric's Hollow
~~Dobby saving Harry's life, and the description of Harry physically digging the grave, rather than using magic
~~The group breaking into Gringott's and escaping in a blaze of glory (literally) on a dragon's back
~~The battle at Hogwarts -- good and evil in a final showdown. Hogwarts gets demolished! As Hogwarts has always stood as such a monument throughout the series, this had quite an impact on me.
~~The race to get the diadem and the fight between Harry, Ron, and Hermione against Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle
~~Harry raising the spirits of all his dead loved ones
~~Finding out Snape is actually on the side of good!! (So I hung onto my belief that Snape would turn out to be good, and I was waiting for the moment where Rowling would come through and reveal it, and the way it happened was pretty awesome. Yay! Maybe it's just that I am partial to Alan Rickman, who I think plays Snape brilliantly in the HP movies, but Snape has always been one of my favorite characters, so to find out he has played such a major part in the story is very satisfying.)

What's NOT Cool?
~~Snape is killed in the end, in a very unsatisfying way
~~We never hear any more about the characters that Ron, Hermione, and Harry disguised themselves as, in the Ministry of Magic, although at the time, they appear to be an important part of the story
~~The conflict between Harry and Draco is never resolved
~~Breaking into Gringott's and destroying the place... Were there absolutely no consequences from the goblins?!

Conclusion
I am less impressed with this book than I want to be, but all in all, I enjoyed it (especially the last 100 pages, which is where the real fun starts). When it comes down to it, I wanted to read something epic, with moments that compared to the end of the labyrinth in Goblet of Fire, or the showdown within the Ministry of Magic in Order of the Phoenix. Events that are shocking, explained in acute detail, and situations that are absolutely gripping. In this book, eventually there is some payoff like this, and there are some cool moments, but in the end, I don't think it came together as well as it could have.

This book was much like Pirates of the Caribbean 3 was for me -- if the writers of that movie screenplay could have just decided on one story, and communicated that one story and one theme really well, it would have been a much better movie. For Rowling, she already had the perfect theme -- the horcruxes. Trying to force the story of the Deathly Hallows in on top of it, as well as explain everything else she had going on, I think it was just too much for one book.

So, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban will remain my favorite, as it contains some of the most creative and fun ideas Rowling came up with in the entire lifespan of the series. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is certainly worth a read, but it just didn't live up to the expectations I had for it.