Muggleblog- At Long Last

Hubby has finally finished reading Deathly Hallows, and I've had time to digest my feelings on the book, so I think it's time to post a blog entry on the subject. There are some spoilers here, so if you haven't finished it, or don't want to know, skip this blog entry.

Let me start by saying that I love the Harry Potter series. I love the universe that J.K. Rowling has created, and all in all, I loved this book. I had big problems with it, but it was mostly a very appropriate ending for a great story.

Now the bad: I had a big problem with the deaths of Lupin and Tonks. I understand the choice to kill off their characters, particularly after they had just found love, and had a child. That is the cruelty of war. It's a paralell to Harry's own character. However, to do it so unceremoniously, was tragic. I felt they deserved better. Hubby and I both also feel that Rowling gave herself a few too many outs. This book suffered from what some of the other had, which is a lack of action (not a lack of story, or richness, or information, but simply a lack of action) in most of the book, leaving 200 pages at the end to pack in all the most important action. For this book, it left many many horcruxes to be destroyed in a short amount of time. In order to do that, things became a little too convenient for our heroes. Wanna destroy a locket, the sword will just show up. We gotta get rid of the diadem, let's create FiendFire. That'll do it. That bothered us both, along with the first 500 pages of camping in different locations while not finding or destroying anything.

Now that I have that out of my system, I loved, LOVED the richness that the characters developed in this book, particularly the characters of Snape and Dumbledore. Until this point, most of the characters in the series had either been good or bad, plain and simply, with the notable exception of Snape.... With him, we could never tell.

Having a shadow of doubt cast on Dumbledore was great for me. It made him fallable. Human. Real. While this is a magical universe, the ties to reality are wonderful. He was still a great man. But having been tried by the bad in his life is probably what made him that way.

As for Snape, the end of his story really choked me up. He was still a nasty piece of work. He never cared for Harry. Not one bit. However, the love he once felt, tied him to the good in the world. He was lonely, and power hungry, and willing to do almost anything to get what he wanted- just like Voldy, but he had the ability to love, even if unrequited. And it was the love for that woman that made him the second biggest hero of the books in my opinion. I heart Severus Snape. And I can't WAIT to see what Alan Rickman does with it in the next two films.

Viva Harry Potter! I can't wait until baby girl is old enough to start reading the books.