Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J. K. Rowling
Youth fantasy. 759 pp.
Levine. 2007.

So, as I've been planning for over five months now, I spent yesterday holed up in my house reading the final tome in the Harry Potter series. Absent and a friend joined me for reading. Tall Drink came over for food and to entertain Puppy (because she was rather miffed that there were an abundance of people in the house who were not paying her any attention at all). I am, apparently, now dead to some people because I did not attend their birthday movies or wedding receptions. But, in all fairness, I had planned this day long before they decided to go to a movie in the middle of the afternoon or, for that matter, even get engaged.

Regardless, yesterday was a most enjoyable day. Absent made lots of yumminess. (And I quite like her pumpkin pasties and butter beer.) The story was generally good. Oh, and MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL . . . Absent was a good girl and did not read the ending before she began the book. This is a significant and major accomplishment. Of course, had she read the third to last chapter, as she normally does, she would have been most distraught, so now she must be grateful for my insistense that she enjoy the book from front to back.

I shan't review the book at this particular point in time, since I know that not everyone has read the book and I think that I will be unable to keep spoilers out of the review. However, I would like to leave some notes on the low points and high points.

The low:

• The epilogue. The stupid, stupid, stupid epilogue.
  
• The smoking wand that was thrown in for resolution at the end. Though technically on the wall . . .
  
• The slooooooow beginning. (But I guess I had forgotten that you always have to wait until a third of the way into the book for it to actually get going.)
  
• The exposition of Dumbledore's history.
  
• The penulitmate chapter reveal.
  
• The hat trick at the end.
  
• The stupidity of Harry.

The high:

• The body count. And I must admit that I'm surprised at the two that actually upset me most.
  
• The history of Dumbledore.
  
• The battle at Hogwarts.
  
• The courage of Neville Longbottom.
  
• The insight of Luna Lovegood.
  
• The truth about Snape.