Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

#64
Title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Author: J. K. Rowling
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 2007
Genre: Children's/Young Adult Fantasy
759 pages

Well, that was a pretty darn good 14.5 hours (what with the making food and pausing for reflection and such). I may write more after I've slept longer. Below are photos and then a LiveJournal cut with some spoilers behind it. I'm pleased to say that I was able to avoid hearing or reading any spoilers with this book.

Second in line, baby! Support your independent bookstore!
I went to the university bookstore at 6:15 PM and waited in line until they opened at 7:00. I was second in line behind a colleague's wife and son, scoring tickets #3 and 4 at 7:01 while loudly blasting Alanis Morissette on my iPod so that the book would not be spoiled either by deliberate bad behavior or people discussing the hightly unethical and meanspirited decision of the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, and a handful of other papers to purchase copies sold early in violation of contract (or read illegal copies from BitTorrent). Lest you wonder what the fuss is about and think that a review in NYT could be avoided, it was a front-page news story with immediate spoilers, and was picked up internationally, discussed on radio, etc. This made it pretty hard to function if you don't want to know anything about the book, and I didn't, having had the previous Harry Potter spoiled by a person in line before I had a chance to read it. I took Google off my home page and avoided all media (including the internet other than my university e-mail with spam filters at the max) on Thursday. After snagging our tickets, I left the bookstore, returning with my partner at about 10:30. The bookstore asked everyone there (several hundred people) to pledge to keep the book secret. Any number of children did what the nation's newspaper of record chose not to do.


20 July 2007, 11:59 PM


21 July 2007, 9:00 PM

1. The organization of the series as a chiasmus demands a return to some of the circumstances and themes of Book 1: Who is Harry? Where does he come from? Who will he be now and will he choose good or evil? Less existentially, it ought to show Hermione's use of logic and Ron's of strategy. Some resolution with the Dursleys must be reached.Yes to all.
2. Snape is innocent. I used to think that the mythic structure demanded that Harry sacrifice himself; I now believe that he must be willing to do so, and may even intend to do so, but that Snape is, in fact, the interrex of this tale and, sneeringly and contemptuously, will sacrifice himself in a way that proves his loyalty to Dumbledore and utter contempt for Harry.Yes. Ha.
3. Harry will have an opportunity to kill Draco; as in his Book 3 encounter with Peter Pettigrew, compassion must stay his hand.Yes.

4. I was very disappointed that the film of OOTP, which was released last week, showed Harry handing the prophecy to Lucius Malfoy. Harry is not Frodo. A conclusion in which he proves fallible and Snape has to perform the moral equivalent of biting off his finger to seize the One Ring would be deeply unsatisfying. Since we have already seen Snape commit an analogue of this act by killing Dumbledore when Draco could not, perhaps Rowling has already pre-empted this possibility.
Yes, she avoided this. However, I remain deeply concerned about Harry's use of Unforgivable Curses, since a great deal of time and energy is spent on the theme of doing the right thing rather than letting the ends justify the means. However, I am gratified that Harry met Voldemort's ultimate avada cadavra with expelliarmus (and it's funy since everyone has been so contemptous of his use of that spell when facing Voldemort).
5. One hopes that Dumbledore's efforts on behalf of magical multiculturalism have some bearing on the action in the last book.Yes, though where are Beaux Batons and Durmstrang?
6. Is some aspect of Lily encapsulated in Harry, whether by accident or design? Did Voldemort's killing curse, intended to create a horcrux for himself, instead send a part of Lily's soul into Harry? We know he has his mother's eyes (not on a salver like St. Lucy, of course, but more than metaphorically). What else of Lily's does he have?No as to Lily; yes as to Voldemort. Pretty much my only point of contention with Rowling is that the significance of having his mother's eyes seems mostly to be how much it annoys Snape.
7. Though Dumbledore is dead, he will communicate with Harry through his chocolate frog card.No, though he did communicate with him a couple of different ways after his death.
8. Parenthetically, Tonks and Lupin? Come on. This only works if they're both bisexual, and both seem a lot more on the gay end of the spectrum to me.I stand by this though we'll never know.

I did post on a message board earlier this week: "The last horcrux is Gryffindor's Tarnished Tiara, which, in his haste to ditch Snape's spellbook, Harry failed to identify in the Room of Requirement."True, but called it in the wrong direction--it was Ravenclaw's.


I'm feeling a little shortchanged by the scene with the Dursleys. I'd have liked an epilogue for Dudley, at least.