a quick note on HP and the Deathly Hallows

7/21/07 (midnight) — i've finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (thanks to zarine). i'm planning to read the whole thing again (more leisurely this time) to make sure i haven't missed anything.

the opening chapters (except ch. 1) are packed with frenetic and dizzying events. it's like JK Rowling decided to jampack this one with as much thrilling action as she can manage. you barely have ebough time to process one shocking development before the next one comes along. the middle chapters are a tad more restful as harry, hermione and ron traipse around various locations in search of various artifacts and anwers.

and near the end, there's the Battle of Hogwarts, an action-filled, rousing confrontation between the two camps that involves humans, centaurs, dementors, giants, elves, spiders, etc. many readers will be pleased to know that a number of characters from earlier books are mentioned again. be warned though, there are a lot of deaths in this book (both major and minor characters). two of my favorite characters actually died (one death in particular really saddened me).

NB: "mastering" or "defeating" death is not as straightforward as you might think. you might be pulled in several directions as more revelations begin to unfold (esp. details regarding harry's family and that of dumbledore). there is also a detailed explanation regarding dumbledore's death in book 6. basically, book 7 is about horcruxes and hallows. and yes, harry is the 7th horcrux.

like the first 6 HP books, there is an explanatory discourse near the end (before the Epilogue), and this — being the last one — ties up all the loose ends that have been left dangling in earlier books.