I won't go too in depth with a full blown criticism. Originally I just wanted to make a short post about adapting it into a movie. I do have a few points to make since re-reading gave me a few surprises. It turns out that the good parts are better than I remembered. Her writing style still hasn't progressed as much as it should have. The ideal reader for each book is Harry's age so the style of the first book is written for 11 year olds. I don't know if she wanted to skew it for younger readers or if she's just never going to be that good of an author but Rowling is certainly not writing for 17 year olds in this last volume. That aside I was pleased with the action based scenes. The kept me interested and any immature writing was offset by the years I've spent reading about and becoming fond of these characters.
But... the bad parts are terrible and just as bad as I remembered if not worse. There are numerous small inconsistencies that just make the whole tome feel sloppy and weak. Examples? Sure.
- Hermione changes the fact of whether or not she has ever modified anyone's memory before. She states that modified both her parents' memories when she makes them forget about her and sends them to Australia Then a few scenes later she states that she has never done anything like that as she changes the memories of the two Death Eaters, Dolohov and Rowle, in a diner.
- How does Harry have his cloak at the end of the book after the last battle. He uses it to sneak off and avoid attention when heading to Dumbledor's office but earlier after he drops it right before his first duel with Voldemort. From that point until he's carried back into the castle he is playing dead and therefore has not opportunity to pick it back up. It should still be in Aragog's clearing, on top of the death stone hallow.
There are a number of other problems. There's the terrible abuse of off-screen killings. Rowling also has a tendency to introduce long passages of exposition far after they were necessary to make sense of actions. She tries to make up for this fact by sometimes giving us the same overly long exposition twice but that's just worse. Harry's a horcrux? Not only should we have all figured that out by the time we're told in Snape's last memory but then Dumbledor goes on about it after Harry's dead inside the metaphorical King's Cross station. Very useful. An aside here is that I also find that the rest of Snape's memory, his entire back story, makes him less of a sympathetic character. We assumed that he had some convictions of honor or nobility that bring him to spy for Dumbledor. Instead we find out that he was a creepy obsessive who pissed away his entire life on an unrequited childhood crush. Ew.
And then there's the constant retroactive continuity editing. I understand that she had no clue as to what would happen this far into the series when she wrote The Chamber of Secrets. I might be able to forgive her the desperate grasping at horcrux lore regarding Riddle's diary. Might. But what she does when trying to weave out a path of ownership over the Elder wand is flat out wrong. She establishes a certain set of rules and then throws them out in order to make a twist. That's similar to having a murder mystery with witnesses and then it turns out it's not who the witnesses saw, regardless of the accompanying DNA evidence. Here's her path of the wand:
Grindlewald → Dumbledor → Draco → Harry and there it stops.
The problem is that Voldemort bests Harry with magic when he sends Harry to the train station of death. So really the path is:
Grindlewald → Dumbledor → Draco → Harry → Voldemort
We know that the wand owner doesn't need to die because Grindlewald survives his duel with Dumbledor and Dumbledor survives his duel with Draco, dying after that at the hand of Snape. We also know that the Elder wand doesn't even need to be part of the duel that decides its ownership as Harry gains mastery of the Elder wand in his duel with Draco, even though Voldemort is in possession of it at the time. We also know that choosing not to fight back has absolutely no frakking affect on whether the duel is valid or not since Dumbledor most certainly did not fight back against Draco. So during Harry's second fight with Voldemort, it is Voldemort who is in possession and the rightful master of the Elder wand. He should have killed Harry again.
Fine, Harry won. Maybe he's a magic sexy Jesus. Whatever. There are still two more problems with wand issues left in the book. The first is that Harry tucks away the wand and says that as long as he dies a natural death the wand will lose power since it will have no master. But we know that all that has to happen is for him to be disarmed in a duel with any wand and any point during the rest of his life. What are the odds that won't happen?
The other problem introduced regarding wand lore is simply that all one must do to become a new master of a wand is to magically obtain it. That means that everyone who was disarmed with expelliarmus in class and during practice in Dumbledor's Army has lost mastery of their wand. I guess that means it's time to go back to the Dumbledor's Army segments and see who has 30 wands.
Then the book finishes with a disturbing suicide fantasy where Harry gets to witness his own funeral in a way, as he's carried up to the castle, another battle and bam, the epilogue. Oh, the epilogue!
All in all it's a good rough draft but a bit pathetic as a final product made to finish off a 7 year run of a hugely successful franchise. One would think that there would have been more attention in the writing and editing of such a book.
And now, a pre-creation of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film!
Lots of camping. Nothing happens. (The Happening)
EPILOGUE: 19 years later and you're all still friends. In fact, you only seem to be friends with people you knew and your own family. Little creepy, actually. Yay! (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King)
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