Ever since the end of book 4 I’ve been waiting for things to change dramatically. Instead nothing much happened in books 5 and 6, simply giving us information about the character’s past.
However book 7 definitely delivered on my expectations, making this my favorite book of the series by far. First of all this has the best beginning of a novel, no more of that slow build up or slow catching up with the characters. It starts pretty much with a bang, and continues like that throughout the book.
The search for the horcruxes really brought us some great action scenes, it almost felt like a Mission Impossible story. The ministry, the bank, the capture, etc… Finally lots happening with the 3 main characters at the heart of it.
But it’s not all just action and tension, we also get the usual information about the past, this time about Dumbledore’s past. It was clear that the truth was different from what was published in the Rita Skeeter novel, so the resolution to that thread was expected.
But the main focus of the book is obviously Harry’s journey. I really liked the final revelation about his destiny, though I am not clear on why he didn’t die. But the final duel with Voldemort was very gripping, I couldn’t stop listening to the audio book until I was done.
I thought the explanation of what master of death means was pretty clever (not afraid of death). Severus’ real intentions are finally revealed, and they are pretty much what I suspected. Only I thought that Dumbledore would not be dead.
This is not a perfect book though, I had a few minor problems. Hagrid is a little bit too dumb, which is something that bothered me throughout the books. Dumbledore should not have entrusted him with so many responsibilities. Also it didn’t feel that there were many members of the Order of the Phoenix, which is absurd since they were against an army of Death Eaters. Speaking of which, I thought their infiltration and take over of the Ministry was way too quick. For 2 years they did nothing, and in just a few weeks they’re controlling the whole country. But these are minor problems.
Some bigger problems I found: I still don’t see why Harry couldn’t tell the Order about the Horcruxes, not why Dumbledore didn’t tell Harry everything about his plans. I know this is very typical of fantasy novels, but usually there is a satisfying explanation as to why the hero can’t be told everything. In this case I didn’t find the explanations satisfying.
Also the connection between Harry and Voldemort is too convenient. V should have done something to severe the connection, or suspect that Harry would know about his plans. At the end it was almost as if Harry could go in and out of Voldemort’s mind as he pleased.
Another big problem for me are the Deathly Hallows. In the end they weren’t that important after all, even though they made a big deal about them. Adding the hallows to the horcruxes was a little bit confusing to me.
Such a big battle was obviously going to require many sacrifices, so I am glad that Rowling didn’t back out of that. As much as I was sad about losing some favorite characters, it wouldn’t have been logical not to.
I don’t think the epilogue was necessary, it didn’t add anything to what we knew about the characters and it didn’t answer any dangling questions (I don’t think there were any dangling questions, to Rowling’s credit). It was just a “and they lived happily ever after”.
This final book tied up all loose ends and threads of the series in an excellent way, I really liked it. However the series did not deserve to be that long, and all previous books were not very good. Some parts were excellent, but each book had many problems for me. I still believe Rowling could have written 4-5 excellent books instead of 6 mediocre to ok books, and one great book.