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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Wow, i can't believe I forgot to talk about Wormtail/Sirius. Wormtail's role was disappointing... Because he was absent from Ootp, it gave many fans the hope he was doing some sort of secret mission to help the dark lord... and he was serving tea at his house.

As for Sirius, I thought they'd be exploring the ministry of mysteries much more... there's still that 'locked door' with the strange power and the VEIL. The fucking VEIL. Ugh, I'd like so much to learn more about the veil.
 
I liked the pacing of the book, even if it was a bit slow around the middle parts. It felt like a war movie -- the trio was always on the run or in hiding, and trouble would come without warning. It was much different than the previous six books because the events in the first six were centered around the school.

Most of the problems I had with the book have already been said. The epilogue was a bit vague but that's how Rowling chose to write it: "as if you're looking at the characters through a haze". If she had tried to write about how every character turned out, it would probably get a little boring (Luna is the editor of The Quibbler now, George runs the joke shop by himself, etc. etc. etc.).

And as Doomsday said, there are a lot of unanswered questions still; but with such a complex storyline it would be hard to explain absolutely everything while keeping the books interesting. I've heard that Rowling will publish an Potter encyclopedia sometime in the future, however.

Snape was great in this book. The chapter where everything about him was revealed was one of my favorites.

but yeah, i loved the book. i binge-read it the first day i got it so i probably missed some stuff, but i plan on rereading it soon dadsfdsfdsasdf
 
Aeroblacktyl said:
2. Me perosnally didn't get enough closure with the epilogue. There are so many questions as to ask about what happened.
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Rowling answered a lot of those sort of questions very recently and it basically provides the closure that the book did not.

Also, someone suggested that Voldemort should have made more horcruxes. Did someone not say that he had stretched his soul to the limit?

By the way, it was just as overhyped and mediocre as all the others were.
 
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been by far the best book in the series. Almost everything that had no explanation in the previous books was here. The main thing the book revolves on, the Death Hallows was handled very beautifully. No one could have imagined that they would be magical objects. The same is true with there being eight Horcruxes. Many had speculated correctly that Harry was a Horcrux but him being instead of Nagini/Ravelclaw/Hupplepuff's objects. This was a nice surprise.

Fighting sequences were awesome especially the fight during escort by the Order in the beginning of the book. However the final fight between Harry and Voldemort was a let-down. I expected something jawdropping, loads of spells being cast by both, but it turned out to be only one spell. Ah well, can't expect everything.

I agree with everything said before about the middle-part of the book. Not only was it long, but it was somewhat uninteresting too. Some things did defy logic comparing to her standards. For example, getting through Gringott by Imperius-ing the goblin. This scene needed more complexity. Deaths weren't given much space either. Wormtail / LupinTonks / Fred's deaths show that. Epilogue also missed some explanations regarding what happened to other important characters like Neville, Luna, George and Weasley family etc.

All in all I was satisfied with the book very much and enjoyed reading every page of it :)
 
I didn't quite follow how Harry didn't die... again... and how he "spoke" with Dumbledore after his "death." I also didn't understand how Voldemort died if the stone wasn't destroyed, since that was a horcrux, right?
 
That was already destroyed by Dumbledore prior to the 6th book, which is why his hand was all shriveled and black. I don't know how the stone kept its powers, though.
 
Also, since Harry didn't take the Deathstick from Draco (who apparently was the real owner of the wand, which I didn't understand how he was the owner since he didn't do anything in Dumbledore's death), how the fuck was he the owner?
 
Overall I was very satisfied with the book; the chapters where they were camping outside were a bit unnecessary and drawn out but it wasn't such that it was boring. Dumbledore's backstory was excellent, one of the best things in the book, showing even he was human. The way that Snape had commited to looking after Harry was a good twist imo, Neville finally standing up and doing something was very pleasant to read too. The Hermione-Ron romance was well done, because it was good that JKR didn't make it obvious until the epilogue and turn it into a 'will they, won't they' sort of thing and it was another good twist but it just seems realy weird.

I really enjoyed all the fight scenes, with the exception of Gringotts, on which I called bullshit on several occassions. It seemed there was *no* fucking way they could have gotten out of the vault alive, up to their arms in hot metal objects. The whole break-in to Gringotts should have been elaborated on though, given how hard it is to break into. And I don't know, they used the Polyjuice potion a lot which after a while made it feel as if JKR used it as a crutch to lean on in order to solve certain problems.

Fred's death pissed me off (how can you just kill off the comic relief like that?), as did the unceremonious manner of Lupin and Tonks's.

Is there a difference between the adult and children's versions? Because I noticed JKR used 'bastard' and 'bitch' a few times, as well as things like 'Merlin's saggy -'. How are bits like that worded in the children's version?

GOF is still my favourite, but TDH comes a very close second I think.
 
kholdstaire said:
Also, since Harry didn't take the Deathstick from Draco (who apparently was the real owner of the wand, which I didn't understand how he was the owner since he didn't do anything in Dumbledore's death), how the fuck was he the owner?
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No, Draco disarmed Dumbledore, and thus became its master, but Dumbledore was buried with the wand, so Draco never actually used it.
 
Is there a difference between the adult and children's versions? Because I noticed JKR used 'bastard' and 'bitch' a few times, as well as things like 'Merlin's saggy -'. How are bits like that worded in the children's version?
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I think my cover was the children's version but bitch, effing and such were there. kholdstaire, if you scrolled up just a few posts you'd have seen me explaining the Elder Wand thing.
 
i don't understand how harry just didn't die after voldemort killed him or why it was significant that harry allowed his own death to happen (besides the protecting people from voldemort magic thing). also, i don't like how voldemort killed the horcrux part of harry without actually killing harry. it doesn't really make any sense. and the book kept on mentioning how voldemort made a mistake when he was reborn with harry's blood but i don't get why it was so bad. also, there was some sort of creature that was mentioned in the harry/dumbledore death limbo scene that i don't get.

it seemed like if jk rowling was going to name the book harry potter and the deathly hallows, they would have been introduced before like...three or four hundred pages into the book. instead, we had to read about harry camping out and doing nothing.

i agree that ron's parseltongue was weird, the deaths were all anticlimatic (particularly voldemort's), and harry shouldn't get the elder want just because he took draco's other wand. i mean, the good guys have been trying to kill voldemort for 7 whole books and he died in a two sentence duel.

did anyone else thing it was funny that ginny didn't know what to get harry for his birthday so she made out with him? i thought that was hilarious.

anyway, i did like the book for the most part, though the end confused me a bit. the epilogue wasn't terrible, but it seemed pretty half-assed. i like how jk rowling finally differentiated the twins (by destroying one's ear and killing the other). also, everyone says that lupin and tonks' deaths were pointless but i kind of like how there were actually some casualties on the good guys' side for once, because there's no way they could all feasibly survive such a crazy battle. and the parallel between harry and teddy is cool. it seems kind if sad that harry forgot all about hedwig after about 2 minutes though. oh well.
 
i'm only going to say it once but the best line in the whole book came durring the wedding on page 150 by Krum.

"Vot," he said, draining his goblet and getting to his feet again, "is the point of being an international Quidditich player if all the good-looking girls are taken?"

And i was actully happy that characters died un explained. It just went along with how hectic every thing was in the final moments of the book. And also i'm sure that even if they were explained harry potter fans would say how it was too stale or they gave this guy so much time when he was not plot important.
 
ZinkOxide said:
I had a few issues with it.
1. Yeah, the part where they just kind of hang around in the middle is horribly long and rather dull. Not much going on, in regards to the info/words ratio.

God, that bothered me. Especially the lack of action going on during that time specifically - Harry and anyone associated with him (including Mr. Weasley, who was actually still working at the Death Eater controlled Ministry of Magic even though his family had known ties to a certain Mr. Potter) should have been the targets of a massive manhunt.

3. Why mess around with Dumbledore's past? Is there any real reason to not have a character that is actually good and not haunted by some terrible mistake they made? It's rather politically correct, in that you aren't allowed to have a pure good person or something.

Dumbledore was one of the least-touched upon characters in the book. Basically, all we knew about him was that he saw "woolen socks" in the Mirror of Erised, which we now know to be a lie.

6. Voldemort acted poorly, from a tactical point of view. First of all, he knows for sure all but 1 of his Horcruxes are gone. Does he retreat, biuld up again, make more? No, he decides to personally fight, putting himself at maximum risk for little to no explanation. Not only that, but he does not sufficiently abuse his strength: he only uses his "really loud voice" power twice, he wastes an opportunity to inflict more structural damage on Hogwarts, he decides to attack the enemy stronghold when they are at maximum power and morale, ugh... not a very good commander.

Voldemort's strengths lie not in strategy, but in recruitment and public relations. It's kind of strange to say this, but his real power came from his wide base of followers. Also - yes, he was foolish. But that stems from pride. He thought he was invincible.

He did not want to inflict that much structural damage upon Hogwarts because he planned on winning the castle for himself. He had good memories there, most of his childhood at least.

9. Plenty of unexplained stuff. How did Umbridge get Moody's eye? etc

She's a damn Death Eater. She must have been there during the attack.
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From Tuesday Morning Quarterback:

"Spoiler Warning! Harry's Fine at the End of "Harry Potter and the Global Marketing Campaign of Doom": "And you knew this? You knew all along?" Actual statement by Harry Potter to Dumbledore on page 710 of the final book. Near the end of each Potter installment, Dumbledore reveals to our hero information that, had it been conveyed earlier, would have rendered much of the book's action unnecessary. Near the end of each volume, I've wanted to yell at Dumbledore, WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL HIM BEFORE! But then there would have been no books. Here are my leftover Harry Potter questions:

• How did the sword of Godric Gryffindor get into the Sorting Hat? When last we saw the sword, subject of much intrigue, it had been seized by a goblin who hated wizards and carried off far from Hogwarts. Suddenly, in the final confrontation with Voldemort, the mystical sword is conveniently at hand. Huh? There's not even a hint of explanation.

• Why didn't the good wizards and witches buy guns? In the final confrontation, the centaurs kill some Death Eaters using bow-and-arrow, so projectile weapons work against dark-side magic. The seventh book happens in the English countryside in the year 1998. In that year handguns were hard to acquire in England but rifles and shotguns were readily available in shops. The situation is a battle to the death, why didn't the good guys get guns?

• If Harry is true master of the Elder Wand, how is Tom Riddle able to use this implement to "kill" our hero? The wand wouldn't harm its own master, and indeed mere hours later, after Harry has come back to life, the Elder Wand refuses to harm Harry, killing Riddle instead.

• What the heck is happening in the scene where Harry is "dead"? Dumbledore gives some garbled gibberish about Voldemort having Harry's blood in his veins, but there isn't so much as a morsel of explanation of how this allows Harry to survive a fatal blow, enter a zone between life and death, and choose which direction he goes. Sci-fi and fantasy are plagued by heroes coming back from death. Harry dies, then he and Dumbledore converse in some kind of purgatory, then Harry is totally fine again: No explanation. The decisive plot twist in the final Potter book made no more sense than a "Battlestar Galactica" episode.

To me, the amazing thing about the Potter oeuvre is that J.K. Rowling managed to write more than 4,000 pages without ever really explaining Tom Riddle. For instance, if Voldemort is both super-intelligent and obsessed with attaining immortality, why does he go out of his way to make powerful enemies? That's some feat of flatfoot writing to ship seven books and never explicate one of the central characters. But Rowling did give us endless lines like this, from page 740 of what we hope is the final volume: "… Harry said, as he saw Voldemort's nostrils flare." Horses can flare their nostrils. Only in really bad writing do the nostrils of villains flare."

Personally, I liked it a lot. I started reading it at about 1 A.M. and was done about 9 A.M.
 
To try and answer questions about the Elder Wand, it was meant by Dumbledore to never be won by willingly giving up his life to Snape, so its power would like be gone. But Draco sorta foils that plan by disarming Dumbledore. Now why would the wand change its ownership twice because of its former master simply being disarmed? It's the most powerful wand in the world, if its master can be disarmed then it wants a more powerful master who won't be victim to a weak spell like that.

All the deaths were finely portrayed I think, its hard to just stop the story for someone's death, it woulda ruined the whole plot to do so I think. Although I would have liked to read about the scene where Lupin and Tonks die, it would have been nice to see them fall together.

Ron said like two words in Parseltongue, and everyone thinks that's stupid. If I heard someone speak two French words, I'm sure I could pick them up not too hard.

Gringotts I guess was a little farfetched but remember everything was kinda in disarray after the Death Eaters took over, and I'm sure the goblins weren't quite as tight on security trying to protect the goods of someone oppressing them.

Dumbledore and the after-death scene I enjoyed, and I don't understand what people have against that. He basically delayed his departure to "heaven" or wherever he was going because he knew he'd have to sit down and talk to Harry. The cringing barely human thing was Voldemort, because I believe both of them passed out, but 1/9 of a soul doesn't remember after-life things too well I suppose.

Snape was amazing, yea most of us knew he was on the good side but this last book brought a lot of light to his life. I don't think Dumbledore in book 6 would have begged to live, if you remember that part where he was pleading pitifully with Snape. That was the big clue to me.

Stop whining about the epilogue, it was there to let everyone know that things turned out alright while not overshadowing the story that was just read.

The end Voldemort scene was fine, I don't think he was overly stupid. He fought cuz he had at least one horcrux still, so why not fight? He also believed he held the most powerful and unbeatable wand. Sure he was overproud though, and that lead to his downfall. He should have made a horcrux out of like a coin and threw it in the lake, who would have ever found it? Always obvious in his methods.

It's hard for me to rank these books but this was one of my favorites because it was not orthodox to the rest of the books and it gave light to a lot of characters, ones we knew about and ones we didn't.

Albus Severus Potter is a sweet name, yea it is
 
Mekkah said:
Lupin was killed because Rowling wanted to, once again, kill a father figure to Harry. She originally intended to kill Arthur Weasley but decided later that would be cruel so she took Tonks and Lupin instead.
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Mr Weasley was actually suppose to die in book 5
 
Hi stop telling Voldemort to make more horcrux. He already stretched his soul to limit by splitting it up into 7 different bodies. ;\
 
kholdstaire said:
I didn't quite follow how Harry didn't die... again... and how he "spoke" with Dumbledore after his "death." I also didn't understand how Voldemort died if the stone wasn't destroyed, since that was a horcrux, right?
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Wrong, the RING was the Horcrux, the stone was not the horcrux. The stone just happened to be set in the ring. It is getting a bit picky, but still pretty effective.
 
DoomMullet said:
I just want to know where Sirius went.
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I'm glad somebody else thinks he isn't dead. I was beginning to feel like a sap. Because, if my memory serves me well (like it almost never does), didn't Luna say something about hearing voices around the archway? If all said archway did was kill a person, why build it instead of just using Avada Kevada or however it's spelled?

Yea, Albus Serverus Potter is a bad name.

I was one of the people that was sure that Dumbledore's death was a plot. But I thought they had used a double or something. Meh, close enough.

Personally, I loved the fact that Dumbledore was revealed to be less-then-perfect. By casting doubt upon him, the reader's other certanties become a bit shakey simply because he has been such a paragon of virtue throughout the story. For a while I wasn't sure WHAT was going to happen. In doing this Rowling managed to give the reader a taste of the turbulence that all of England was supposedly going through. THAT'S clever.
On the other hand, there was an aweful lot of space in which it felt like nothing was really happening, and the tension started to get to me, although that might just have been that I didn't know how it was going to end.

The Epilogue to me seems to be more of an attempt to create grounds to forge new stories with new characters, should J.K. decide to write more within the canon. Still, it was definitely lacking polish.

Killing off Lupin and Tonks (and the lack of care that went into giving them proper death scenes) was a bit heavy-handed. I believe the intent was to further increase the tension and try to make the reader more aware of the severity Harry's emotional state, but if this was the case it wasn't really very effective. Killing Dobby and Headwig was more for the latter reason, and was more effective. Killing off Fred seemed kind of pointless, though. If anything it took much of the emotional clout out of Lupin and Tonks dying.

And who else here thought that it was going to be Neville that had to kill off Voldy when they found out Harry had to 'die'?
 
I believe the primary purpose of the Epilogue was to stop bad n00bfics from going "And Voldemort actually split his soul into another Horcrux and came back!" There's also the Ron + Hermione and Harry + Ginny marriages, which put an end to strange Harry + Cho and Hermione + Krum deals and so forth.

Personally I thought it was a good endnote, although it doesn't address every character (Cho, mostly). [Note to CrabNebula: Neville is a Herbology Professor. Remember they talked about Professor Longbottom?]

As far as the "death" scene, I thought it was well done. I almost think the Snape memory chapter made it just a little too obvious, but I suppose there wasn't really a better way to do it.

Regarding Voldemort, he can best be described as "semi-human" even after his resurrected HP4 form. The movie version is a pretty accurate depiction. He's taller, has extremely long fingers, and a certain snakelike quality. I did find it interesting that his baby form in the post-death scene was essentially the same as Wormtail's little ugly baby form. Makes sense when you consider he's pretty much only a fraction of a soul.
 
Basically all I've have to say are as follows.

1) The Chapters were Harry Ron and Hermione are in the tent like drag on forever. Even though they were a drag I kept on reading, but I guess it really shows what Harry had to do.

2) The epilouge was fine, but I wanted to know more. I mean we barely got any info at all.

3) Neville is a Spartan.

kholdstaire said:
Also, since Harry didn't take the Deathstick from Draco (who apparently was the real owner of the wand, which I didn't understand how he was the owner since he didn't do anything in Dumbledore's death), how the fuck was he the owner?
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I think that Draco was the owner due to the fact he "beat" Hogwarts, but since Hogwarts isn't really a Wizard, Dumbeldore would take that position, and since Dumbeldore died before anyone else took the wand Draco was proclaimed the winner.

I also LOVED the ending when Harry and Voldemort were just speaking with eachother. I think it was meant to be alot more dramatic and not epic. I mean Harry calling Voldemort Tom and reaveling that Snape was not twisted, and was infact helping Dumbeldore. It was freaking dramatic.

Gonna make a darn good movie if you ask me

She's a damn Death Eater. She must have been there during the attack.
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What makes you say she was a Death Eater? The Ministray was taken over by Death Eaters. She was probably the only one who really supported the entire prove that Muggle-Borns stole thier magic, and thus the Death Eaters probably wanted to get rid of it, but she decided that it would be handy and simply kept it.

UnicronEX said:
• What the heck is happening in the scene where Harry is "dead"?
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Harry didn't really "die." When Voldemort kadaverd him, Voldermort destroyed the Horcrux he laid inside Harry all those years ago.

And since Harry embraced death he was given the choice of wether or not he wanted to live or die.
 
Look for Obi's post for my opinions. I talked to him a lot about it before he made that post. I'll say it again anyway: The Epilogue read like a bad fanfic. And the deaths could have used more time. While I do understand war deaths are really like that--confusing and sudden--I wish more time had been spent on them. Fred's death was perfect for him, though! All in all, I liked the book.

But if the movie follows the book down to the word, I don't think I'll like the battle between Voldemort and Harry.

PikaPete said:
I generally thought the book was great, but the one thing that I had a problem with was the fact that if Harry's cloak was invisible to all kinds of magic, as the story suggested, how could Mad-Eye see through it in earlier books? This didn't spoil the story or anything, but I kept expecting there to be a twist where his cloak turned out not to be one of the Deathly Hallows because of it, and I was a little disappointed when this wasn't explained.
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I'll answer this with something I wrote on another site:

Me. said:
I highly doubt the Deathly Hallows were as powerful as Xeno Lovegood described them. Remember that the weapons weren't constructed by Death himself, but probably by the three sons. They are definitely powerful -- no doubt about that -- but they aren't utterly perfect.

Just some theory to throw out there to explain why Moody can penetrate the cloak -- his magic eye is more powerful than the Hallow. And if the wielders of the Elder Wand were truly as powerful as the fairy tale claimed it to be, I think far less of the wand's wielders would have been murdered. Not to mention that Dumbledore beat Grindelwald in combat, and Grindelwald had the Hallow.
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