Saturday, April 11, 2015

The Deathly Hallows: a brief review

taken from goodreads.com
Well friends, I have finally and officially finished the entire Harry Potter series. The really exciting part is that those books were on my 2015 reading goals list, and finishing them all puts a huge dent in the list; I actually only have two and a half left to go. I know I've said it before and I'm also pretty certain I'll say it many more times, but audiobooks are the way to go. More specifically, audiobooks that you put on your phone so you can put your phone in your pocket and listen to books all day long while you're cleaning the house or washing dishes or feeding your baby or going for a walk (all without headphones, I might add), are life-changing. It has been for me, anyway. It's meant that I can be reading at least two books at once (one on audiobook, one on my Kindle, and one or two non-fiction hard copies for various Bible studies I'm in) and that makes me happy.

Am I stalling? Kind of, yeah. I don't really want to write my real feelings about this book. Not because I absolutely hated it, because I didn't. But I will be completely honest, (because I guess that's the idea of this) I did not love it. I actually didn't love the whole series. I liked the first four quite a bit, was bored to death by the fifth, liked the sixth okay, and barely survived the seventh. Someone very close to me who I love very much and may in fact be a blood relative told me that "every page of this one is gold." I...just...didn't agree. I actually felt like most of the pages didn't need to be there at all. But more on that in a minute.

You all know the basic plot, right? Because most of you have read the book before, and are just waiting to see why on earth I have anything negative to say about it so you can write mean things in the comment section? Okay cool. So I'll skip the plot overview and go right to some good ol' fashioned bullet pointed thoughts. I've broken them up by things I liked and things I didn't like (because there were things that I liked! I'm not dead inside!).

Things I didn't like:
  • First and foremost, I should say that I had an epiphany about half-way through this book when I realized I just don't like this genre. At all. I like isolated books that kind of go in this fantasy/magic genre but they are very few and very isolated. As a general rule, I just don't really enjoy any of this stuff: the magic and the things you can do with the magic and the overarching bad guy and the good versus evil epic and the inevitable battle scenes. It's just not my taste and I'd much rather watch a movie with any/all of that than read a book about it. So before reading the rest of my thoughts, remember that: I honestly just don't find joy and entertainment in the things that make these books go 'round. That's not Rowling's fault.
  • Harry and his friends really do seem to have the Jason Bourne/John McClane/Chuck Norris thing going on, don't they? All the metaphorical bullets fly at them all the time, and they always always get away. Even when they get hit and knocked unconscious. Even when he's pinned under the snake and she's got him by the throat and Voldemort is in the window. Even when he dies, he gets the chance to come back and kill Voldemort anyway. (Yeah, I know he didn't really die. And I also know that the same thing can be said for any protagonist in any action-packed plot. But I'm saying it about these guys.)
  • I didn't really feel like I had a true understanding of who Voldemort is. I mean, I knew really well who he is as a person (all his childhood, his background, the whys and the how-comes), but I didn't have a solid handle on how big of a bad guy he is. This might sound like a non-issue and not worth getting upset about, but it's helpful for me (someone who apparently doesn't love fantasy) to have a sense of grounding when reading about other worlds or lifetimes; is he a local British terror, like a Son of Sam? Or is he a world-wide, well-known enemy like Hitler or bin Laden? That's helpful for me to have a grasp on how powerful and scary he really is...and I never really got that. Sometimes he seemed like he was pretty much THE bad guy of this magical world, but then other times all the schools from other countries came to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament and none of them are as impressed by the Dumbledores and McGonagalls because they have their own versions. Does that mean they also have their own Voldemorts running around wreaking havoc? Or is ours the only one?
  • Harry is just a complete idiot. I saw so many things before he did (pages and sometimes chapters before), and I just clearly revealed how dumb I am when it comes to these books. I just...ugh. Harry is an idiot. Enough said. 
  • This book is so incredibly long. I feel like I spent most of my life listening to it. And most of the time all I thought (and occasionally said out loud with my fist in the air) is that if she could have just eliminated either the horcruxes or the hallows the book would have been so much better. And like 400 pages shorter. Seriously, lady...we're going after horcruxes...no, wait, a certifiably insane man just told us all about hallows for the first time and that sounds good so we'll switch gears completely and go after the hallows...except now that we think about it, Dumbledore did sound pretty serious when he told me to go after the horcruxes above all else...but now Dobby is dead and I'm super sad so I'll decide to go after the hallows...but ten minutes later I have to make a decision about whether to attempt to break into Gringots or not so I'll firmly decide on horcruxes...but maybe the hallows are important...PICK A LANE, WOMAN. I was driving back from visiting my parents yesterday on Interstate 81 listening to this book, beating my head against the steering wheel. And I kind of get the fact that in the end they both ended up being really important, but honestly it was all so chaotic and confusing and would have worked just as well with only one of them. (I'm going to go ahead and guess that this is the moment where all criticism and backlash that you've all been holding in will be released.)
  • Copy and paste the same thing as the above bullet, but instead this time have it be about how one minute we trust/love/worship Dumbledore and the next we're pretty certain he was a horrible person. And then repeat. 
  • Why were curses and curfews and Dementors needed to keep Hogwarts air-tight if Dumbledore's Army members could just apparate from one place to another (like, for example, out of Hogwarts and into Hogsmeade)? Seems like maybe that's all kind of a waste of time and energy. 
  • Hidden among the many, many 5 star reviews of this book on Goodreads.com, there is one solitary 1 star review. I read it and it made me laugh, not because I agreed with everything she said, but because I did agree with some of it and because she pointed out the stupidity of some of the things I actually did like about the book. Like the fact that Snape is redeemed in the end and you realize he's super awesome...except the only reason why is because he was in love with Harry's mother for years and years and years after she died and because he killed Dumbledore out of mercy (and the white doe, and helping him get the sword...yeah, I get it). She also pointed out that after all this time and everything we've seen these characters go through, to have both Tonx's and Lupis' deaths be brief afterthoughts seems a little ridiculous. They deserved more than that. 
Things I did like:
  •  The transformation of Creature, especially the moment during the final battle when he appears in the crowd, yelling about how he's supporting his master who is a friend of the house elves. 
  • The humanization of the Malfoy family. Not Bellatrix, who is a she-demon 'till the end, but Lucius, Narcissa, and Draco. When Draco goes missing at the end, Lucius and Narcissa are no longer cold, hard Deatheaters; they're just parents, plain and simple. Obviously, it was a change that came after being publicly humiliated by Voldemort, but in the end they cared only for the safety of their son. Seeing them broken and terrified for something so genuine was a little touching, really. 
  • The epilogue. There were parts of it that could have bordered on cheesy (every Potter and Weasley child being named after a dead Hogwarts hero, first and middle names) but it could also just as easily be endearing and sweet. I enjoyed it. Truthfully, this is the stuff I liked the most in these books: the befores and the afters. The chapters that took place at the beginning of each book where Harry gets brought to the Weasley's house and Molly is shooing them out of the kitchen and Fred and George are pulling pranks and they all go school shopping in Diagon Alley. I liked the "normal" parts that mirrored what real life looks like: the characters and the dialogue and the relationships and even the teenage dating drama. I might not have liked the plot too much but I did love the characters, and I enjoyed seeing them all get wrapped up nicely in the end. 
So those are my thoughts. I'm sure I had other thoughts (both on the pro and the con side) but I have since forgotten them. And really, this post is long enough as it is. Do I still have friends? Am I still allowed to come to Book Club? I promise not to use the Marauder's Map blanket ;)

Here's where I stand with my 2015 reading goals list:
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