Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Not Great Literature But a Fitting End

I had ordered a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon.com, but then decided I couldn’t possibly wait four days after release to read it, so I went out to my local Borders and grabbed a copy. I dug in right away, and then life interfered, and it took forever for me to finish it.

It was hard to finish for two reasons: one, it wasn’t as well written as some of the previous books in the series, and two, it was hard to say goodbye to characters that I’ve come to love throughout Harry’s years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There were places in Deathly Hallows that, to me, from a literary standpoint, appeared to have been written by someone other than J.K. Rowling. It was odd. There were some personality changes in some characters that were grossly inconsistent with the previous development of said characters.

The middle of the book was horribly, horribly slow, and while some loose ends that had been hinted at in previous books were explained, the sequences appeared to be there solely for that purpose, and I felt that based on her previous skill in earlier books, Rowling could have done a better job developing the plot.

The ending, though, is quite spectacular, and brings back all the characters we’ve met along the journey with Harry.The book continues the dark trend that the series has kept to in the latter books, there is much death and destruction, and tough emotions for Harry, Ron, and Hermione to contend with. Still, it is not without humor, and apart from the slow middle section, is quite entertaining. J.K. Rowling answered all the questions in the end, so it is worth slogging through to reach it.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows won’t go down in history as the best-written book of the series, but it did give those of us who’ve come to love Harry a good feeling about how he grew up. He would have been a great man in real life.