Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Review (Sort Of)

Less than a hundred pages into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, two characters close to Harry are dead, and one is missing an ear, after an exhilarating nighttime chase that seems to jump right off the pages. But just when we think that this book, being the explosive finale that everyone supposed it would be, is crammed with action in every page, you’re in for a big disappointment.

Not that the book itself is disappointing; as a matter of fact, it does answer many of the questions, as well as confirm (and debunk) many theories, raised all throughout the whole Harry Potter saga. Lots of loose ends are tied up, and we finally get to know whether my favorite character, Dumbledore’s killer Severus Snape, is really Voldemort’s loyal servant or Dumbledore’s man through and through. We also get up close and and personal with the family history of the slain Headmaster, and people also begin hooking up. The downer is the way the book transitions from the slam-bang opening ambush to the long-drawn and expository nature of the next 300 pages or so. And at 759 pages, that’s an awful lot of talk.

You would think that most of the background information Harry, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley would ever need in their quest for the remaining Horcruxes, in which Voldemort had hidden parts of his soul in a bid to conquer death, were already laid out in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But no, there’s a lot more information to be churned out. While extremely important to the flow of the story, the long revelatory passages basically slow the whole narrative down. The whole mythology of the Deathly Hallows (three magical objects said to make their possessor the master of Death), the sheer length of quoted articles the characters (and the reader) had to take in made me feel like I was reading books 1 to 6 all over again.

But when the inevitable final showdown (Chapter 31, The Battle of Hogwarts) finally arrives, J.K. Rowling pulls no punches. Battle lines are most definitely drawn, and the sight of the usually prim and proper Professor McGonagall yelling CHAAAARGE!!! is absolutely priceless. The battle scenes would look fantastic in the movie, and a number of familiar faces fall in this darkest and most violent of the Harry Potter books. Rowling promised two deaths of major characters in this book; I counted at least six. Whether Harry, Hermione, Ron and Voldemort is one of them I won’t spoil for you. But if you can’t wait any longer, just continue on to the bottom, where the fatalities, perhaps the thing most people are curious about, will be listed.

Still, The Deathly Hallows is an enjoyable book. Not the best (the third one still does it for me) in the series, but a good one nonetheless. Rowling remains one of the most visual writers in literature, as well as one of the most melodramatic, especially in the scenes where Harry buries a fallen ally (who just saved them all from certain death). This book offers a fitting closure to all those who stuck with the series since it first hit bookshelves in 1997.

P.S.

To those who think that the final spell to be cast in the final battle would be Avada Kedavra (Harry and Voldemort, after all, are supposed to off each other), think again. It’s Expelliarmus!, the disarming spell, that ends the 17-year fight between the two.

The fatalities, at least the ones we give a damn about: (SPOILER ALERT!)

Hedwig (Harry’s Owl)
Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody
Peter “Wormtail” Pettigrew
Dobby (sob!)
Remus “Moony” Lupin and his wife, Nymphadora Tonks (sob!)
Severus Snape (sob!, but expected)
Fred Weasley (sob!)
Colin Creevey (Harry’s biggest fan in Chamber of Secrets)
Bellatrix Lestrange
Voldemort

A lot more died, but who cares about guys like Dick Cresswell or Rufus Scrimgeour anyway?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 11:30 am and is filed under Pop Matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.