Harry Potter 7 (aka Potterclypse)

[Bormon]

Bormon, I think what you wrote was hilarious! And I am a big fan of the books! Thankee!

To use an analogy, the HP books are written as PG. Thus deaths are not going to be realisitically gruesome. I once pointed out that in the film version of Return of the King (yeah, different media, I know) that at a certain point Gandalf really should be coated head to toe in Orc gore--but wasn't. And I'm not complaining! (yeeeeechhhhh!) Technically, I thought the deaths worked very well. Each was different. Each had a different (and mounting) emotional impact on Harry. But that of course is JMHO.

Its not that I think the deaths should have been described in more detail. In fact, much like real death...I liked the way she just kinda said they were dead. What I would have liked to see more, was the effects of these deaths on Harry, and the people around him. Even if Harry was forcing himself to "be strong" about these deaths. Some of the people around them should have been beside themselves in grief. (And like I said before, I liked the way she showed Fred's death)

Its just one little critism... well besides poking fun at some of the cliche themes

[Ormond]

Finished the book a couple of weeks ago while on vacation. I've just read this whole thread before posting. And therefore have quite a crick in my neck.

I liked the book a great deal. I think the Harry Potter series will be classic children's literature. It certainly won't be considered on the same level as Tolkien, but I think Hogwarts and Harry Potter will be remembered 100 years from now as much as we remember Oz and Dorothy or Aslan and Narnia today.

My personal quibbles: I was a bit annoyed with how during the Hogwarts battle scenes she seemed to have to mention almost EVERY character from the previous books. Sometimes I thought I was reading the "British actors full employment guarantee of 2009" for when they make the last film. Kenneth Branagh should be really put out that Gilderoy Lockhart was forgotten.

In terms of this book and the whole series, I personally also think grandparents get surprisingly little mention or explanation. We never find out the names of James Potter's parents, or really anything about them at all. The only student in the entire series who seems to have a living grandparent is Neville, and she exists primarily to give him a guardian since his parents are incapacitated. This seems very odd to me; for a story set in the 1990s, most of these kids should have living grandparents who are a part of the wizarding world, and if many of them were killed in Voldemort's first rebellion, that could at least have been mentioned. Well, maybe a lot of that will be in her encyclopedia.

I would have liked to see some at least subtle mention of a gay or lesbian character. At times I thought Rowling was perhaps implying that Slughorn might be gay. And it certainly seems odd that being a teacher at Hogwarts seems to demand that one be single. But I would agree that the criticism that the lack of gay characters is odd because we have a story set in a "British boarding school" falls down on the fact that Hogwarts is co-ed; all of the stereotypes about gay relationships at such schools, whether true or not, do seem to revolve around the fact of the same-gender status of the environment, which just doesn't apply to Hogwarts.

Finally, I just don't get the widespread hatred of the epilogue. In the context of a children's book, I thought it was exactly the sort of information that kids themselves would most want to have about the characters' future lives. As Rowling's interviews said, she actually cut out a great deal of information from her original epilogue, and I think that most kids would rather have the information about the next generation continuing on to Hogwarts than getting discussion of Harry's future career, if there wasn't room for both. And the names of Harry's kids are perfect, I think. The point is not whether or not one likes the names; the point is that Harry naming his kids after his parents, and naming his second child, when it was a boy like the first, after Dumbledore and Snape, fits in perfectly with what we know about Harry's personality. His idolization of his parents and Dumbledore makes it absolutely understandable that he would want to name his kids after them. That "Albus Severus Potter" might sound a bit clunky to a Muggle just isn't the point.