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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows SPOILER THREAD

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Zeta said:
She pretty much killed off the entire supporting cast and everyone except the main three. Which really blows, since I love the supporting cast and am usually annoyed by the main three.
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I love the supporting cast more than the Trio too, but that's exactly the reason I didn't expect too many people to live. I was just so dang surprised by the fact that
Hagrid and most of the Weasleys get to live. I expected much more carnage on that front.

The series kind of matured with the kids that first started reading it. When the first book came out, Harry and I were the same age. Now that the seventh book is out, Harry is just a year younger than I am. I would've been entirely too disappointed if the books were still as relatively shiny-happy-yay as the first book. Things get complicated when you grow up, as Harry finds out. Besides, as we've known from the beginning, Voldemort isn't just a regular overlord-type villain. It's been established very early on that he's a racist git of the worst kind. It was just a matter of time for it to slap us across the face with the vengeance of a thousand suns.

I honestly don't think Jo has been using Harry Potter primarily as a mouthpiece. Sure, she does criticize some real life issues within the book, but overall, I think what she really wanted all the time was to tell a story. To share Harry and his universe with the world.

The first four books and the last three books feel like they were written by a totally different person. Like someone who went through a massive breakdown ala Cerebus or Mostly Harmless of Douglas Adams or something. I prefer to think that Voldemort exploded at the end of the Triwzard Tournament because of a miscalculation in his spell. At least then the style of the universe actually stays consistent.
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What I'm seeing here is not a complete change in style, but rather a growth in style. Honestly, GoF was released in, what, 2000? It wasn't until 2003 that OotP was released. Jo has plenty of time to develop her style. And it's not like GoF is written anything like PS. Hell, CoS isn't written in the same style in PS. Jo's style was constantly maturing and developing in the last 17 years. It's only natural. Even the most professional of writers experience a development in their writing style over the years, and Jo, who was new to the whole bookwriting business when she came up with Harry Potter, is no different.

Slaughtering the entire supporting cast and adding tons of angst =/= maturity or good writing. It's just the wizarding world has so many cute things like tickling charms and owls delivering mail. And trying to marry such a setting to a story about genocide and everyone you love being killed is like those people who try to crossover Schindler's List and Pokemon.
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It was always a story that involved genocide and such. Jo planned it like that since the beginning. For heaven's sake, PS begins with the reader discovering that Harry Potter, the hero of the book, was just orphaned and survived an attempt on his life at the age of 1. And you know, there's good and bad in everything, and Harry found out about THAT the moment he entered the wizarding world.

And don't even get me started on how bad she is at writing romance into her books.
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That I would've agreed with you completely, but I loved how she handles Ron and Hermione in this book. Still not the best romantic writing in the world, but I loved it.

I don't see why you're so angry. Actually, I do; like everyone else, you are completely invested in the world of Harry Potter, but you have your own vision of how everything should go and you're angry that Jo is doing what she wants with the world of her creation. She's not blameless, I won't ever say that, but people have to remember; this is not your world. It's J. K. Rowling's world, and she has every right to do with it what she wants, and just because you don't see the signs she has planted all over the books doesn't mean they don't exist.
 
You didn't like books 5, 6, and 7 because it meant that the Harry Potter world was coming to a close. Book 5 wasn't jumping the shark, it was beginning the shift towards the end of the series...and you didn't really want the series to end, subconsciously. You wanted Hogwarts to remain pure, and things to remain childish...because the stories were brighter and prettier that way.

Just a bit of psychoanalysis. I liked it a lot.
 
I loved, personally. It was a very fitting end.

I particularly liked how it took the themes book 5 had already developed about oppression and working against the word of law to preserve what the spirit of the law ought to be.
 
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waaaaaaaa!!

i finished the book early this morning. it was..a lot different, much darker than the others, and had a different feel to it. it was so sad. ALL OF MY FAVORITE CHARCTERS DIED!! poor snapey, lupin, tonks, voldy, dobby, etc. it wasn't fair!! snape didn't deserve to die!!!!!! luckily, i named my recently caught Lugia after him, and because of this he has finally lain down to rest in my mind...it was the most soul hitting, amazing book i have EVER READ!
 
Just finished reading it less than an hour ago, and I'm not sure quite how I feel about it. My biggest prediction was dead-on: "Harry will survive. However, this does not mean he won't be hit by a Killing Curse. In fact, said curse will provide the key to his ultimate victory."

Whatever J.K. Rowling's faults as a writer, her greatest strength is her ability to weave a plot. That really shone through in this book.
 
Your second biggest prediction - Neville will be instrumental in the defeat of Voldemort - was also spot on. :p

Even your seventh book title wasn't bad ("Neville Longbottom and Voldemort's big mistake), since Voldemort runs from blunder to blunder from one end of the book to the other.

And one of these big mistakes does involve Neville - namely giving him the Sorting Hat :-D
 
The series kind of matured with the kids that first started reading it. When the first book came out, Harry and I were the same age. Now that the seventh book is out, Harry is just a year younger than I am. I would've been entirely too disappointed if the books were still as relatively shiny-happy-yay as the first book. Things get complicated when you grow up, as Harry finds out.
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That's my problem. It didn't really mature. Harry is still Harry - he's grown angrier, and more powerful. But for the most part, his personality didn't grow. He learned how to internalize and deal with his anger, but he didn't become mature - just older and more cynical. And paranoid. And those things don't equal maturity. His victory against Voldemort was deus ex machina, for crissakes! He doesn't win because of his own abilities, but because of an elaborate scheme Dumbledore's set up for him. Harry could be any character, really. He's had all of his victories handed to him on a platter.

It was always a story that involved genocide and such. Jo planned it like that since the beginning. For heaven's sake, PS begins with the reader discovering that Harry Potter, the hero of the book, was just orphaned and survived an attempt on his life at the age of 1. And you know, there's good and bad in everything, and Harry found out about THAT the moment he entered the wizarding world.
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There comes a point where you stop handling topics maturely and simply saturate yourself in them. A horror film like "I Know What You Did Last Summer" isn't a "mature" work because it has a lot of death in it. Similarly, simply killing off a bunch of characters doesn't make a work more mature. Just more GRIM.

I don't see why you're so angry. Actually, I do; like everyone else, you are completely invested in the world of Harry Potter, but you have your own vision of how everything should go and you're angry that Jo is doing what she wants with the world of her creation. She's not blameless, I won't ever say that, but people have to remember; this is not your world. It's J. K. Rowling's world, and she has every right to do with it what she wants, and just because you don't see the signs she has planted all over the books doesn't mean they don't exist.
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I don't want to write the books or anything. This is a trend in MANY, MANY different forms of media - we're seeing angst, cynicism, and darkness being confused with "maturity". See comic books for example - deaths every 3 months, wholesale, in an attempt to sell the medium as "mature". But these aren't deaths used for a story purpose. It's simply for the value of shock, controversy. They don't add anything to the story. I mean, think about it - aside from Dumbledore and Voldemort, would keeping everyone else alive really have altered the story in any way? I think that's the big question here. When does killing off a fictional character affect the story, really? If you look at the death of one and come up with "not in any way, really", then you've got a death for shock value or tone alone.

You wanted Hogwarts to remain pure, and things to remain childish...because the stories were brighter and prettier that way.

Just a bit of psychoanalysis. I liked it a lot.
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Happiness and not killing off 60% of all the main character's friends does NOT equal childishness. As I posted earlier - Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings and many other heroic stories manage to get by with mature themes, but without a wholesale sidekick slaughter. If you think having angst, self-mutilation, paranoia, and wholesale character death is what's needed to keep a story from being childish, I'd say you're the one who needs to do some growing up.

And just like JK has the right to write her world however she wants, I have the right to express my opinion on what I see as crappy writing.
 
Those few pages where Harry believes he has to let Voldemort kill him, and he's walking to his fate counting the seconds he has left to live... I was fucking inconsolable. Jesus, that was horrible. That upset me more than any of the actual deaths in the entire series.

That said... oh, JKR. Killing off Fred was possibly one of the cruellest deaths that could have occured. Imagine being part of a pair as close as Fred and George, and then your twin dies, and you have to carry on without him. I wonder what happened to George in the end? I wish the epilogue had told us a bit more. Like Harry, Ron and Hermione's jobs, for starters! At least we found out Neville was the Herbology teacher like everyone predicted.

I think it's really cool how the books have been growing up with their audience. I must admit, it seems odd to criticise a series about war for having too many deaths in it. Umm, what else is supposed to happen? XD I think the supporting cast got off amazingly lightly, actually. The fandom's been confidently declaring Hagrid a goner since before book 5 came out, and he made it. Only one Weasley died. In the Final Battle(TM), only four major good characters died, and one of them was Snape, who we didn't know at the time was good. Considering how gigantic the cast was by that point, I'd have expected the death toll to be fairly high.

Anyway, what's everyone's favourite bits? I LOVED Fred and George's exchange when George had his ear lopped off. And Hermione beating Ron up. And JKR torturing the poor ickle Harmoanians again. :D
 
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"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" wins the book.

I wonder who the ~45 who died in the Battle of Hogwarts who weren't mentioned were.
 
Lord of the Rings? It has an entire paragraph that's just a list of the secondary characters who bought it on the field of Pelennor! (ie, Battle at Hogwart). Remember? And as if that wasn't enough, it condemns the main character(s, if you read the appendices) to exile away from their beloved homeland. And the elves, for that matter. The ending of Lord of the Rings is arguably far more somber than the ending of Potter.

As for Star Wars being mature and dark...LoL. Excepting Sith - and do we really need a body count there? Order 66, anyone? - there is no such thing as a dark and mature star wars.

And yes, it's true that Harry is not the one who came up with the plan to defeat Voldie. He shouldn't have, either. Having Harry suddenly proves strong enough to just take Voldemort head-on would have been ridiculous. He had to exploit Voldemort's weakness, and having him becomes cunning enough to find flaws Dumbledore hadn't already planned on would likewise have been completely unbelievable.

For that matter, since you quoted Lord of the Rings and Star Wars as "done better" - care to enlighten me as to how Frodo was any better? Fate marked him by giving him the ring, and allowed him to carry out the plans of those wiser than him, namely Gandalf (and Elrond). And let's not even talk about Luke Skywalker, who does come up with plans - which nearly all backfire and require one of the supporting cast to bail him out. (Right down to Vader doing so in the very end).
 
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Like some have said, I expected the death toll to be much higher. Including the 50 unnamed at Hogwarts, I counted 64 deaths but I'm sure I missed some.

When McGonnagal appeared I spent the rest of the book screaming, 'Not McGonnagal! Not McGonnagal!' because she was just awesome. I was lucky to see her live, but then I was moping when Fred went. He and George were the others who I didn't want dead. My sis wanted Lupin to survive, but by halfway through the book I could tell he was a goner. Didn't expect Tonks to go, though.

The epilogue is where I have a problem. It really looks like it was written by a horrible, 2 year old fan. It was just ridiculously cliched, particularly the childrens names. The story would have done better without it. I expected it to go into a bit of detail on everyone else though, like 'The Weasly family did this. Kingsley became Minister. Luna did blablah.' to let us know what happened to the characters, but instead JK chose to tie off the relationships in a sickenly cliche way.

By the middle of the book I thought the storyline faltered a bit, but it definately picked up at Malfoy Manor and onwards. The trip into the Pensieve during the middle of the fight was painful though, and once again the book fell into line with the others, where, despite being dead, Dumbledore explains to Harry why things happened throughout the course of the book.

Overall the ending was a bit cliche but enjoyable nonetheless. Having only moved from the couch I was reading it on twice, I can say it was a book I didn't want to put down.
 
I was disappointed. I really was. The deaths of Lupin, Tonks and Fred were completely pointless. The epilogue felt like it had been thrown together in 5 minutes. I also felt like the book spent too much time in the Department of Back-Story. Dumbledore's stuff coulda been dealt with in book 6 when he was alive. Same with Snape's.

Minerva was AWESOME, however, and her not dying was the reason I did not throw the book at the wall.
 
It was a brutal, but very good book. If you chop off that freaking epilogue. I refuse to see it as canon. *cries* I've read fanfic better than that epilogue....
 
I'm sorry, but killing off major characters in the battle was a necessity. You simply can't have a battle for the fate of the world without anyone above a tertiary character (ie, Colin Creevey) biting it.

It did not have to be Tonks, Fred and Lupin, but it had to be characters like them - one or more Weasleys, long-time members of the Order of the Phoenix, etc.
 
I cringed a bit at the names of Harry and Ginny's kids, but really, how was it not fitting for the series to end with the old generation bidding the new one goodbye as they board the Hogwarts Express? So much of the series is about the old generation handing on the fight to Harry - how many trinkets does he have from his father, Sirius, Lupin and others? The invisibility cloak, Sirius's mirror, the Marauder's map, etc. So it's fitting for the next generation to be present for the epilogue. They are Harry and co's legacy.

And Hogwarts HAD to be present in the epilogue in some form.

People say it was cliched, but at the end of the series, how could there have been any time for anything unpredictable to happen? And I have to wonder what is so repellant about the trio all being married and having children. Were we supposed to get a final chapter where Ron and Hermione are divorced or something?
 
Truths. Other preferred deaths.

Sinestra/Vector instead of Burbage. All teachers with no important roles, but at least we actually were aware of the first two's existance beforehand.
Tonks also annoyed me, but I can't really think of a suitable replacement. I probably wouldn't of minded as much if there had been more emphasis on the fact that Harry was the last orphan of the first war, while Teddy was the last of the second.
 
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