Just finished reading the seventh part of the saga in the British
version. First things first: I really liked the small octavo size and the very
handsome proportions. The recycled paper seems to be a bit lighter than usual,
and though bulky the book is fun to hold in hand. I also liked the cover illustration
which is more than the usual tip-of-the-hat to the Discworld series graphics.
In short, it's a fun book to have.
Just to get this out of the way, I'm not a proper "Harry
Potter" fan. On the other hand I do like the series and appreciate what
went into writing it. Besides, most of the stuff that I mentioned in my 60
pages long "The Enchantment of the Modern: A Critical Intertextual Reading
of Harry Potter" from 2003 was on mark, so, yey for me, I guess.
So. The plot is solid, with much more skill put into the narrative then,
let's say, in the first four books. That means that you won't find here the
usual hum-di-dum school stuff 9/10 through, and all the action left to a helter
skelter of 20 pages in the end, or the deus-ex-machina solutions. Rowling even
lets go of the public school backdrop that helped her so much to create the
series, a backdrop that in the last few volumes grew less and less relevant to
what goes on in the main plot.
Despite some 200 pages of somewhat indifferent reading the book really
takes off at about page 350. The plot is thick, but not overcrowded, the tempo
high, and the crescendos calculated is if by a slick Hollywood producer.
I read some reviews that say that the book leaves one a bit emotionally
detached. While finding this partially true I really think that the real end of
an epic saga is a tricky business: the somewhat detached mellow hue is a usual
mark of such endings, and so it must be - you cannot just hammer out ongoing
emotive escalation onto infinity.
JKR kept at her tricky game of being "gory" but not overly
"mature" in this volume. For the first time, or at most the second,
the sexual topic is hinted at in the domination-subversion relations the
characters go through. Brutal rapes, or something close to it, can be discerned
behind the somewhat sweet flashy-greeny-"evil" which makes most of
the fleshing out of "bad things happen" in the series at least twice.
This does not mean that this volume gets anything close to the more common
"when a sword goes through you your shit comes out but that won't stop you
from getting raped if you're a woman" type of "life
sucks"-fantasy that is so abundant these days, but, it's still more than
can be trivially expected.
I'm not so sure that ALL the various little plot lines really got the
attention they deserve, but then again you can't get everything. I For
instance, would have liked to see one of Percy's puns appreciated for what they
are. This has not turned out to be my wild fantasy dream last volume
"Neville Longbottom and the Deathly Hallows" where you see Harry
inconsequentially dying off in the first two chapters, but, financial advisors
and public lynching considered, it remains a solid, well written, if not overly
surprising, satisfying finish to the saga, and that's saying a lot.
Good on you JKR, and, yes, it is going to stick around for quite a
while.
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