Harry Potter 7 (aka Potterclypse)

[Aerys]

I think that the films have almost tainted her writing almost slightly- that dragon at gringots escaping would just be fantastic on screen and would bring in more money to see the secial effects. The film could be made by Hollywood, seeing it has so much action packed adventure in it.

[Spring Bass]

I guess I'll post my full opinion, now.

Overall, I liked the book, and in contrast to a number of posters, I really liked the ending. Think of it this way; how does Harry defeat Voldemort? By playing to Voldemort's arrogance and the like, so that Voldemort fails to understand the significance of the Elder Wand, and chooses to attack with it anyways. Not to mention that the "Malfoy Save" was something that you could see as in-character for Narcissa; we've seen her make Snape swear an unbreakable vow to save Draco.

I don't see why you would bitch Voldemort out for incompetence. The guy took over the entire Ministry of Magic in a single coup de'tat, and once his followers were in power, they did what the purebloods wanted to do; suppress the muggle-borns (which in of itself was kind of poignant, which you see in the muggle-borns that the new Ministry, after taking away their wands, simply left to starve in Diagon Alley). They also nearly crushed all resistance outside of Hogwarts, to the point where even a major speaker/supporter in the form of Xeno Lovegood was forced into betraying Harry. In any case, the point is that in my opinion, I thought Voldemort was an interesting villain (and I thought his response to hearing that the horcrux had been stolen was a funny scene, although it did leave me wondering why he didn't simply make a run for it at the end, after Nagini was killed. Maybe it was because of the Elder Wand)

Incidently, I'm wondering if in the first half of the book, Rowling was trying to make up for any perceived good luck on Harry's part in the earlier books. He met with failure after failure, falling into several traps that Voldemort had set for him, only to get caught by Greyback and a Snatchers group. The sheer catastrophe of Harry's effort to hunt the Horcruxes is shown prominently in the beginning, including the weakening dedication of Ron and Hermione as they realize he doesn't really know what he's doing.

A couple of things did bother me. While I didn't mind the format of the Snape chapter (it helped explain a lot), I didn't quite like how it so evenly turned Snape into a good person. I thought the point was more that he was a mixed person, so to speak; while he could be nasty and cruel, he also had a redemptive streak and a strong dedication to Dumbledore (the "we sort too soon" comment summed it up). But then, that might be the point; Snape gets misunderstood repeatedly throughout the series (like in PS where Harry thought Snape was trying to curse him, when he was actually trying to protect him).

I had also thought Draco might play a more prominent role in the book, but he generally only appears on the sidelines, barring the incident at Malfoy Manor and in the Room of Requirement. I guess you can't have everything, and Rowling had made a comment about Draco basically being a coward, so meh.

The "Hallows" bit was interesting more in how it related to Dumbledore. We got to see a more human side of Dumbledore, in someone who makes mistakes, who gets resentful and could be neglectful when he was younger, and who learned from those mistakes. I was surprised, in particular, how far she developed the "Grindelwald" connection.

The ending bothered me in a number of ways. The biggest is probably because we don't really know what has happened to Harry other than his marrying Ginny and having the children. What is he doing in life? You'd think that defeating Dumbledore would make him pretty much legendary in the Wizarding Community (and that was partially shown in the stares by people at the train station), but overall Rowling didn't really show much more than a kind of banal aspect of his life (in contrast to Neville, for which we figure out that he's teaching Herbology at Hogwarts).

[Aerys]

Meh, on the whole what a disappointment. I really felt that Rowling was becoming better, but that was worse than OoTP and HBP. The things I liked:

3. Hermione, she was awesome

5. The heroes do commit lots of Unforgiveables, that was refreshing.

What I disliked in particular:

1. Snape's story. After all the buildup, he scarcely had a reason to be in the book and died pointlessly. And although his backstory was pretty much what I imagined, it was delivered in a very ham-fisted and perfunctionary manner. No warmth between him and DD, either. And the Marauder bullying was made extremely light of.

2. The Horcrux hunt itself was deeply unspectacular. The hiding places were dumb and relatively unprotected.

Voldy thought that he was the only one to ever find the Room of the Requirement, although there were mountains of stuff left by other people there and although Draco brought the DEs through it in HBP (sic!) ? .

Voldy was aware that you could circumvent the Cave with a house-elf?!!! WTF? For that matter, why a house elf and not an imperiused Muggle?

Ron was suddenly a Parselmouth and they could still use the basilisk fangs, after all those years?!!!

Meh and double meh.

3. Deathly Hallows came totally from the left side. It is like Rowling became aware that she couldn't write a challenging and interesting enough Horcrux hunt and quickly threw something else in to provide distraction.

4. Voldemort is the lamest villain ever and totally unworthy of his place on the great Dark Wizards list. I mean, he was actually _in power_ during the book and what did he achieve? Nothing. Despite his supposed bloodthirstiness, he let his known opponents, such as the Weasleys run free, didn't take (and execute) any hostages apart from Luna, didn't establish his power over Muggles, etc. We should be so lucky in RL to have such incompetent dictators.

5. Harry doesn't even have to learn anything new to achieve his spectacular victories. Not even the non-verbal spells, which were inexplicably dropped after HBP. No, the good old stuff from his 1-4th year at school (sic!) was enough. And when it wasn't, Harry just suddenly "knew" how to do things, like the Imperius. He sat in the tent for weeks and months arguing with his friends, yet it didn't occur to him to polish his arsenal?

6. After all the words about the unity of Houses, nothing actually happened on that front. The Malfoys weren't quite as bad as they could have been and Draco saved Goyle and was in turn saved by the trio, but that was it. Slytherins still largely remained the villains, Gryffindors the heroes and everybody else their flankies. Ugh. It seems that Sorting is destiny, after all.

I wasnt so much surprised at how they commited unforgivable curses, they had done it before and Lupin had told them to use whatever force necessary, so it didnt come as a shock. And how exactly was Hermoine awsome?

1. I ddnt like it how there was no final confrontation with Snape and Harry but the more I think about it, the more I actually prefer the way she did it. If she had yet another duel, it would be overkill on the whole figthing thing, it would have gone on for ages. The Pensieve was a yet another balst from the past and had another connection to both Dumbledore and Snape.

2. The Horcrux hunt did take time to get going but I think they were all in the correct places. Remember, this is where a deranged man obssesed woth powerful objects and powerful places to keep them. Gaunts house- the home to Slytherins descendants. Hogwarts-thought to be inpentrable. Gringotss- has always shown to be extremely hard to get into. The Cave was where he had his first real taste of proper control over people.

Draco didnt have to say that the other cupboard was in the room of requirement- just that it was in Hogwarts.

The House Elf can go places muggles can not by Elf magic, the muglle would have woken the Inferi and Voldemort wouldnt have been able to test the liquid. Voldemort left Kreacher to die remember.

Ron was never a Parselmouth- he memorised Harry saying "Open" in Parseltongue to the locket and said it to the CoS.

3. I doubt that she would have just flung them in- remember that Harry has had his cloak from 1st year frm dumbeldore, she was obviously working up to it all this time. And the one of the points of the Hallows was to show that Dumbledore wasnt the nicest person in the world, that Harry was a better person.

4.Voldemort loves wizards, he hates muggles and mudbloods. that was why there were muggle deaths and the registration comitee. Voldemort was getting what he wanted by controlling the Ministry. He needednt take a direct role in attacking as he was more concerned with Harry and getting the Elder Wand. He knew o-one bt Harry could stop him which is why he kept on obssessing over the Elder Wand's location.

5. I thought you said you liked it how the forbidden curses were new and exciting? Harry had done crucio before and imperio wasnt too hard for him- he is still a good wizard and quick at picking up things. THe fact that his spells from years 1-5 showed how useful Hogwarts teaching had been to him. Stupefy was a great spell which saved Harrys life many a time.

6. You must be forgetting that all the Malfoys wanted at the end was to see that their son was alive. And Snape basically showed that he was a good slytherin. Not all Slytherins will have immediatly gone over straight away-that would have been cheesy.

One more thing I wish to ask- the "glint of triumph" Dumbledore had in his eye in book 4- was that ever resurface in 7? JK said it would. Or are we just to presume that Dumbledore know knew that Vldemort could be defeated.

[Spring Bass]

While this is indeed true, the substance of the complaint, that the Slytherin/Gryffindor dynamic is the primary one, with a distinctly one-sided perspective of good versus evil, remains true. Sorry, but I just don't feel there was any real attempt to show merit in all the sides. Perhaps if Lily Potter had been anything other than a Griff.

You mean, even after Slughorn, you think that the Slytherin/Gryffindor dynamic has a one-sided perspective of good versus evil? I thought Rowling made it pretty clear that Slytherins tended to possess a set of attributes (their cunning, dedication to making connections, and in the Malfoy's case a kind of clannishness) that, in of themself, weren't evil, but tended to be perceived that way. Hence why Narcissa Malfoy basically saved Harry's life in the tent.

[Cynthesis]

I agree with a lot of the things said so far in this topic, from Dumbledore's backstory to the lameness of certain parts, but one thing that I didn't like was the rather lax way the deaths of characters like Tonks, Lupin, and Fred were handled. I mean, it's perfectly fine that they died but I would rather have more than a paragraph devoted to the deaths of those three characters, who have been rather important in the Harry Potter world.

[Guest OsRavan]

yes there is signigigance to the glint in the eye. namely that voldemort increased his vulnerbiliyty to harry by taking in his mothers curse.

[cadell]

I just finished it and it'll take a while to gather my thoughts, but my first impression says this was the worst of the Harry Potter series. I disliked it for all of the reasons people have mentioned already, although in particular I'd point to:

1. The major story points (other than the Deathly Hallows, which was totally out of left field) were very predictable (i.e. Snape being good, Harry being a Horcrux, Harry being resurrected, etc.)

2. I hated the way Rowling handled her secondary characters in this book. She robbed them of their roles and reduced them to mere cannon fodder. The secondary characters have always been one of my favorite aspects of the series because they always seemed very vibrant and distinct. But in this book they were reduced to the level of props to be killed off-screen.

3. The Deathly Hallows plotline was not foreshadowed at all in the previous books, which contributed mightily to the fact that this book felt very unconnected to the rest of the series. No wonder many people who read the online leak of this book thought it was a fake. I heard a lot of people saying the leak couldn't be real because so much of the meat of the story seemed to come out of nowhere.

4. The book ended very abruptly and the ending was very anti-climactic. By this I mean that things proceeded very perfunctorily from Snape's death to Voldemort's defeat with no real tension or drama. Everything that happened was very workmanlike and obvious.

5. The final battle with Voldemort had to be the most lame, anti-climatic and boring final battle of all time. I mean, for six books we've been hit over the head about how Harry is the best student at dueling and DADA, and in the end he doesn't use any of it. He just gets an uber-powerful wand to do all the work for him (he doesn't even have to do the actual killing of Voldemort, as Voldemort's curse rebounds back onto himself). I also didn't see why everyone present didn't just gang up on Voldemort and finish him off in the end, as there had to be dozens of good wizards in the room and Voldemort was all on his own. Having everyone stand back and watch was just cheesy.

6. I hated how we only got like 3 pages of the book after Voldemort's death before we jumped years and years into the future. I wanted to see what happened in the immediate aftermath of Voldemort's death. At the least we should've gotten an epilogue set a couple of months after Voldemort's defeat. The jump years and years into the future wouldn't have been bad if we would've learned more than the fact that Harry married Ginny and Ron married Hermione. What's Harry done with his life since Voldemort's defeat? How was the wizarding community put back together after institutions like the Ministry of Magic were decimated? We didn't get any answers.

I guess the best way to sum up my feelings about this book is to say that it felt like Rowling approached this book in a very workmanlike fashion. She had a checklist of things she needed to cover and she made it very obvious when she was checking something off the list.

[word]

Check out this article I found...assuming its true its pretty crazy.

[cadell]

I actually prefer the greater distance, it shows more perspective than just the few months of recovery a shorter gap would cover. Not that it reduces the completely expected and borderline syrupy sweetness of it, but whatever. I didn't expect the poignancy of Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan or even Titanic.

And it certainly beats a bunch of dancing Ewoks who don't know what the future holds for them in the way of environmental catastrophe.

I guess I didn't really have a problem with the large jump into the future per se. I just felt that nothing of import was really covered by that epilogue. I mean, who didn't think that Harry and Ginny or Ron and Hermione would get together? I just wanted to know more about what was actually going on in the characters lives and particularly how Harry's life had changed. I mean, he'd basically spent the last 7 or so years of his life opposing Voldemort. How does he transition from doing that into a more normal life? I would've liked at least a couple pages showing how Harry's life had changed and how he was handling it beyond him getting married and having children.

[Regina]

I guess the best way to sum up my feelings about this book is to say that it felt like Rowling approached this book in a very workmanlike fashion. She had a checklist of things she needed to cover and she made it very obvious when she was checking something off the list.

Cadell's post summed up my initial thoughts well.

I wish we'd seen more Snape. More Neville, too. And I wish I'd skipped the epilogue chapter.

[Multaniette]

Is Snape 'good'?

No, he isn't simply 'good'. He is just a very very realistic portrayal of a bitter, twisted man whose reason for living is irrevocably tied with his past. In him, Rowling created her best character.

The Dumbledore backstory is definitely interesting, though a little foreshadowing would certainly have helped.

Harry is not a brilliant wizard. He is not Dumbledore, Grindlewald, Voldemort, Snape or even Bellatrix LeStrange. There's no way he could have survived a straight duel wtih Voldemort. It wouldn't have been much of a competition if Voldemort had been a strategical genius as well as being a brute terror. And the Though his incompetence, often even comical, did bug me in the beginning, I came to accept it by the time Godric Hollow rolled around.

I actually think the trio didn't use enough 'unforgivable' curses. I think the usage was just a direct consequence of growing up, and realizing that real life is neither fair nor particularly honourable. I certainly agree with Maia's complaint about the juvenility of the curses used by the trio, specially Hermione and Ron.

[DemiNymph]

Just finished. I like this book. Lots of things happened. Some parts were good, some parts were lame. I go sleep now.

[Spring Bass]

Yes. Especially since Slughorn is so poorly done a character that I'll be honest, I don't find any substantial depth or merit to him. I suppose at the best, he's not a bad guy, but that's not exactly a redeeming quality. Even if you convinced me there was something *good* about him, it'd still be far from convincing me that had anything to do with him being a Slytherin.

I disagree with you about Slughorn. He arguably embodies what a "good" Slytherin is. On one hand, he is slightly manipulative, cunning, and greedy, but he does genuinely care about his students (and he's particularly proud of Harry), he's not without courage (he does relent, and give the memory to Harry in HBP, and in DH he's duelling Voldemort along with McConagall and Shacklebolt), and he possesses some of the attributes that Dumbledore described Salazar Slytherin prizing in his students, like intelligence and ambition. In other words, he's a rounded character, with realistic motivations and fears, and a good example of what a good Slytherin is.

But right now? I'd say I see him as just the token "Not-quite-all-together-bad Slytherin" which is a far distance from selling me on the idea that the Slytherins had virtue. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing if Dumbledore didn't go on about it so much.

No, not really. I saw that as a mother's reaction, not as a reaction of a Slytherin. As virtue's go, it's not one of Slytherin, but rather of mothers. And given that I've seen it...hmm, in cases where the defense of a child is faulty to say the least, I'm not inclined to weight it highly on its own either.

We don't see a lot of the Slytherins outside of when they are gathered at the Quidditch matches, and beyond Malfoy and friends, who are pricks.

As for Narcissa, my point was that she's not simply painting the Slytherins with a "bad" brush. They have realistic motivations and good character traits, and Narcissa's is that she cares deeply for Draco, and his safety. It'sl another example of a good Slytherin, or at least a Slytherin who is more complex than "bad guy" categorization.

As for "Slytherin Virtues", keep in mind that what Slytherin prizes - cunning, intelligence, and ambition - are not necessarily bad things, and as Rowling has described, students with those attributes help balance out the unified student body. There is the "Pure Blood" thing, but it's not entirely rigid; the house takes half-bloods like Voldemort and Snape, and it would have taken Harry if he hadn't specifically asked not to be put in Slytherin.

[Spring Bass]

I think you are missing my point. I'm not trying to show that Slughorn is good because he represents the goodness of the values of House Slytherin; I'm pointing him out as an example of a good person who is a Slytherin, and to be more specific, a complex person who defies simple characterization into good or evil as a Slytherin. That was your main grievance, wasn't it, that Slytherins are portrayed as simply the bad guys in a simplistic characterization?

[Spring Bass]

In that case, I pity the Slytherins even more. He's at best not a bad guy, because he's not personally ambitious so much as avaricious. IOW, instead of desiring power, he desires comfort.

What's wrong with desiring some creature comforts? Do you begrudge people who purchase big screen tvs?

Is he? How did any of the good things he did (and I'm not convinced that all of them are truly virtuous....does he care about Harry, or does he care about what Harry offered him? He stubbornly hid the memory instead of doing anything about it until forced...) have anything to do with Slytherinness? The only one I'm willing to say was good was coming back to fight Voldemort, and even that didn't have much to do with being a Slytherin. Heck, didn't he flee to Hogsmeade with most of the Slytherins in the first place?? Was that supposed to be some surprise tactic?

It's made pretty clear that he stubbornly hid the memory because he was deeply ashamed of what he did in giving Riddle that information, and believes that he has caused great damage. It's partially selfish, but he genuinely felt bad about what he had done, and it's Harry's appeal that by giving him the memory, he can help put an end to Voldemort, that causes Slughorn to give it up.

Like I said, I think you are missing my point, which is that we have Slytherins who defy simple characterization into good and evil. It has nothing to do with the virtues of being Slytherin; it's just that Slughorn constitutes such a rounded character.

I dunno, you're really not selling me on Slughorn as demonstrating the value of Slytherin or countering the way I feel they're portrayed as the bad guys.

I'm not trying to sell you on the virtues of Slytherin, at least as my main point. My main point is that the way they are portrayed does not fit with what you claim as them being shown simply as "bad guys". Slughorn is not a "bad guy", although he's not a saint. Narcissa can be nasty, but she also spares Harry because she loves her son. Snape is vindictive and nasty to Harry, but he also puts his life on the line to save him and serve Dumbledore. All of these constitute examples of Slytherins which defy the simplistic characterization you claim is being portrayed.

Exactly. The Slytherins get no real time outside of being the bad guys. Even Slughorn didn't show up till very late in the series. (If anything, that late appearance makes his role as the token "good" Slytherin more apparent and less convincing. Though in comparison to the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws they still get a whole lot of time.

But she wasn't being represented as a Slytherin in that role, but rather, Draco's mother. A rather big difference there. Not that I'm convinced that her reacting as she did represented any kind of real virtue on her part. If anything, I feel that sort of thing is selfish and often dangerous.

That doesn't change the fact that she is a Slytherin showing complex character traits. I'm not arguing that they are acting good because they are Slytherins; they are Slytherins showing complex character traits.

As for the "selfish and dangerous" comment, keep in mind that much of Harry's motivation to kill Voldemort is driven by revenge; the fact that Voldemort killed his parents, will kill his friends if they get in the way, and killed Dumbledore.

She didn't turn on Voldemort because she realized he was wrong, she did it because she wanted to protect her child. Not going to win any prizes from me.

That's a rather disturbing lack of sympathy. If you had a son who you deeply cared about and wanted to make sure he lived, wouldn't you do anything to save him? She knew that the only way she would be able to see if he was alive was if she entered as part of a "conquering army", and she did what she needed to to get in; as Harry points out, she no longer cared about what happened to Voldemort.

To put it another way, were you not sympathetic towards Xeno Lovegood when he betrayed Harry and friends? While you might castigate him for not doing what Luna would probably want him to do, you can at least sympathize with his motivation; he wants her to be alright and safe.

I think you're missing the point, which is not that the virtues of Slytherin have no merit, but rather that the Slytherins themselves are still portrayed pretty much as the bad guys even despite the protests that "But no, they're not all bad" . Instead of convincing me to think "Hey, maybe these guys aren't all bad" I get the impression that it's just words being mouthed rather than real demonstration of merit.

And I've tried to point out examples where they defy the dichotomy of "good guys versus bad guys", including Slughorn, Narcissa's choice, Draco's choice to not kill Dumbledore (which was then taken out of his hands), and Snape's choice to serve Dumbledore and protect Harry out of love for Lily Potter.

[lokisnow]

Superb. Completely satisfying, I felt when I finished that I had no more questions, that I barely even wanted to discuss it because everything about it worked completely. My favorite is still half blood prince for being such a wonderful combination of a classic Comedy-of-Manners and a mystery thriller, and because it makes me laugh and cheer the most. Though this book is definitely the most emotionally affecting.

And Rowling is a better writer than Martin. (She can actually finish a book) Asoiaf, for all its excellent qualities, will not be much more remembered than Shannhara or Goodkind, but HP will go down with LOTR, Austen, and Twain as the finest and most memorable and enduring literature of it's particular age.

Calling HP children's literature would be like calling Twain or Austen children's literature. JKR is above showing rape, torture, and sex crudely, she's deals with them in the classic, and much more sophisticated manner. That's not childish, its refreshing.

Dark endings are not inherently more mature or more sophisticated. They subvert our archetypal expectations, but darkness for the sake of darkness is just foolishness in my opinion.

And I loved the epilogue, it told me everything I wanted or needed to know. Harry could be making and selling broomsticks or an Auror and I really wouldn't care, it wouldn't matter, what matters is how he chose to live his life, to get married to have children and to raise them properly, there's no greater achievement anyone could hope for, and that choice and that achievement overshadows everything he did to defeat Voldemort, imo.

[Mich]

Done. Loved it for the most part. comments....

Way too predictable. I really don't like that all of the big events were predicted almost word for word. It made this book almost like reviewing threads we've all posted in here, just a bit more entertaining.

Mad Eye had seen Harry while he was wearing the cloak. In GoF there are countless references of Moody seeing through the cloak. This really bothered me that she is saying *now* nothing can see through it even though she already wrote about someone doing just that.

Rowling has now joined King in worst ending ever. She might as well have just put in her acknowledgements

"ganked idea for ending from Stephen King". At least he put in a little note saying not to read further It really should have ended at the point when Harry gets killed.

The only touching deaths being an owl, a house slave, and Snape. Mad Eye was badly written, Tonks, Lupin, and Fred were horribly downplayed. I shouldn't be mourning them less than the owl

Neville is my hero

On a brighter note, this film should be about 15 minutes long considering most of it had build up that was cut from the OotP film. I can't wait to see how they are going to pull that off.

[CryHavoc]

I thought it was pretty good--well written for the most part, although there were a few clumsy passages. The epilogue was a little annoying, more because I cared more about what the trio goes on to actually do than what ridiculous names they give their children. Whoever asked upthread why Teddy wasn't living with his godfather--I got the impression that Ted did live with them before he came of age, and now that he's nineteen he just comes over for dinner a lot.

The one thing that really bugged me about this book was pretty much the same thing that bugged me about book six. The major magical thingamabobs in the early books got a lot of foreshadowing, either right at the beginning of the book as something innocuous or two books back as a minor plot point; in six and seven they just kind of appeared out of thin air. We got only a tiny bit of foreshadowing about love and souls for book six, and in book seven it's all retroactive foreshadowing, like "I always wondered why your cloak was like that." The ending was very predictable, but at the same time the way they got there just appeared out of nowhere.

I liked it more than I thought I would, though, and on the whole I thought it was done very well.

[Guest Ser Jaime]

And Rowling is a better writer than Martin.

Thanks, I needed a good laugh today.

If Martin came up with an ending like this, I'd fling the entire series into the trash bin. Granted, it's probably not fair to compare the two, since they're aimed at different audiences.

But still, this was one of the most hackneyed endings I've ever read. I guess the kids will like it, though, and that's probably all that matters.

[Guarneri]

Woah, I read the "JKR is a better writer than Martin" and spit iced tea all over my keyboard from laughing. You owe me a new keyboard, sir.

Either way, I am assuming that whole post is either a troll or sarcasm.

If AFFC is worlds above HP in characterization, drama, emotional evocation, prose, plot, intrigue, and that AFFC got tons of shit, can you imagine what would happen if DwD turned out written like Deathly Hollows? Oh man, people would throw a shit storm.