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thessalianWell, yeah. Spoilers and personal guesses confirmed. Yippee.
Okay, look. This is the book we've all been waiting for. No, I didn't think it was going to be up to much, but the woman has the pacing ability of a week-dead badger! I did not need to spend chapters upon chapters that are essentially the Gryffindor Three bitching at each other interspersed with brief flickers of "OMGWTFVOLDIE!" Sure, teenagers whinge, but they knew what they were signing up for. Ugh. When you're spending that much time looking at how many pages until you get to the end, there is something wrong with the book.
Deathly Hallows. OH COME ON. MacGuffin Ex Machina, anyone? *PUNT*
She copped out. She knew she had to kill Harry but she didn't want him to die, so she copped out. With the MacGuffin Ex Machina. I'd have thought it was a lot more clever, if there'd been any kind of lead-up to it in previous books. AT ALL. Haphazard nonsense flung together in the interest of a big climactic finish. Pity's sake, she had six books to allude to Dumbledore's wand and Harry's Cloak and the first Snitch he ever caught. Or at least 'flesh memories' and how Harry's Cloak is different to other Cloaks, or even how wands can be passed on. Just had to cram it all into the last book, right? No lead-ins. No bits the reader can find in the previous six books and have them say, "Yeah, I wondered about that! Neat!" YEESH.
And the finish. Okay, there were moments. Pansy Parkinson, for a start, and Molly v Bellatrix was amusing. Fred's death? Aside from Dobby, the only one I actually cared about. I still don't see the Lupin/Tonks thing as particularly necessary, though it did give Harry another excuse to be self-righteous, and gods know there aren't enough of those lying around... (Okay, I'll try to turn the sarcasm down a notch or two.) Really bloody quick Percy redemption - no way we could have been shown clues of that while the Polyjuiced Trio were wandering around the Ministry, of course. And, on the whole, everything a fan could've wanted - marriage, kids, happily-ever-after. The works.
I DIDN'T WANT HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
This series stopped being geared for 'happily ever after' right around the time we discovered that Sirius Black had spent over a decade in Azkaban for a crime he didn't commit, and would have to stay on the run or be desouled. When we learned of the prejudices that Remus Lupin faced every day of his life. When Voldemort ordered "Kill the spare" and Cedric Diggory died for the crime of fair play. And so on and so forth. The Potterverse spent several books reminding its readers that life isn't fair. Umbridge embodied "life isn't fair", and so did Slughorn, from the other direction. Both used the system in which they lived for their own ends, either through force or through subtle manipulation (bets on Umbridge having come out of Hufflepuff? She's got the sheer stubborn stick-to-it-iveness) and demonstrated quite well that most of time, it's the vaguely slimy ones with the power, however derived, that get their own way. Even though the good guys had to win, it shouldn't have been at such a relatively low cost.
The book felt ... manipulated, in a way, to me. It felt like there was some kind of tally as far as who died went - walking a fine line between 'liked enough by readers to hit home' and 'not needed for the much-wanted happy ending'. Which, incidentally, read like bad flash-forward fic. Why couldn't Ron or Hermione have died? Or Ginny? Or for pity's sake, Hagrid? Snape had to die, yes. I'm glad he did, because his life must have been a misery and I think he probably welcomed death quite a lot, in the circumstances. And I frankly think that Snape's last memory-blob was the best part of the book.
Know what I really liked, though? However badly written some of it was, and how long it took to get there? Dumbledore's an arsehole! Sneaky, conniving, devious little shit of a man, on the whole. It felt good to see the man as something other than a paragon of virtue. Though I wish the lead-up to those revelations had been done better. On the whole, this book doesn't suffer from a bad story, really - just an overabundance of caution and some quite bad writing, plotting and pacing.
And now I am going to go and re-read the climactic scene, and Snape's early memories, and then I am going to strongly consider punting that horrific book out the window.
In short, I did not like this book, but at least there won't be any more. (I hope.)
Okay, look. This is the book we've all been waiting for. No, I didn't think it was going to be up to much, but the woman has the pacing ability of a week-dead badger! I did not need to spend chapters upon chapters that are essentially the Gryffindor Three bitching at each other interspersed with brief flickers of "OMGWTFVOLDIE!" Sure, teenagers whinge, but they knew what they were signing up for. Ugh. When you're spending that much time looking at how many pages until you get to the end, there is something wrong with the book.
Deathly Hallows. OH COME ON. MacGuffin Ex Machina, anyone? *PUNT*
She copped out. She knew she had to kill Harry but she didn't want him to die, so she copped out. With the MacGuffin Ex Machina. I'd have thought it was a lot more clever, if there'd been any kind of lead-up to it in previous books. AT ALL. Haphazard nonsense flung together in the interest of a big climactic finish. Pity's sake, she had six books to allude to Dumbledore's wand and Harry's Cloak and the first Snitch he ever caught. Or at least 'flesh memories' and how Harry's Cloak is different to other Cloaks, or even how wands can be passed on. Just had to cram it all into the last book, right? No lead-ins. No bits the reader can find in the previous six books and have them say, "Yeah, I wondered about that! Neat!" YEESH.
And the finish. Okay, there were moments. Pansy Parkinson, for a start, and Molly v Bellatrix was amusing. Fred's death? Aside from Dobby, the only one I actually cared about. I still don't see the Lupin/Tonks thing as particularly necessary, though it did give Harry another excuse to be self-righteous, and gods know there aren't enough of those lying around... (Okay, I'll try to turn the sarcasm down a notch or two.) Really bloody quick Percy redemption - no way we could have been shown clues of that while the Polyjuiced Trio were wandering around the Ministry, of course. And, on the whole, everything a fan could've wanted - marriage, kids, happily-ever-after. The works.
I DIDN'T WANT HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
This series stopped being geared for 'happily ever after' right around the time we discovered that Sirius Black had spent over a decade in Azkaban for a crime he didn't commit, and would have to stay on the run or be desouled. When we learned of the prejudices that Remus Lupin faced every day of his life. When Voldemort ordered "Kill the spare" and Cedric Diggory died for the crime of fair play. And so on and so forth. The Potterverse spent several books reminding its readers that life isn't fair. Umbridge embodied "life isn't fair", and so did Slughorn, from the other direction. Both used the system in which they lived for their own ends, either through force or through subtle manipulation (bets on Umbridge having come out of Hufflepuff? She's got the sheer stubborn stick-to-it-iveness) and demonstrated quite well that most of time, it's the vaguely slimy ones with the power, however derived, that get their own way. Even though the good guys had to win, it shouldn't have been at such a relatively low cost.
The book felt ... manipulated, in a way, to me. It felt like there was some kind of tally as far as who died went - walking a fine line between 'liked enough by readers to hit home' and 'not needed for the much-wanted happy ending'. Which, incidentally, read like bad flash-forward fic. Why couldn't Ron or Hermione have died? Or Ginny? Or for pity's sake, Hagrid? Snape had to die, yes. I'm glad he did, because his life must have been a misery and I think he probably welcomed death quite a lot, in the circumstances. And I frankly think that Snape's last memory-blob was the best part of the book.
Know what I really liked, though? However badly written some of it was, and how long it took to get there? Dumbledore's an arsehole! Sneaky, conniving, devious little shit of a man, on the whole. It felt good to see the man as something other than a paragon of virtue. Though I wish the lead-up to those revelations had been done better. On the whole, this book doesn't suffer from a bad story, really - just an overabundance of caution and some quite bad writing, plotting and pacing.
And now I am going to go and re-read the climactic scene, and Snape's early memories, and then I am going to strongly consider punting that horrific book out the window.
In short, I did not like this book, but at least there won't be any more. (I hope.)
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 02:43 am (UTC)MacGuffins? Happily ever after? Good god sister, what book series did you think you were reading? There's no way on earth this could be like Clerks with the down endings.
As for bad writing and pacing, I didn't notice it, least on the first read through, and usually that kind of thing grabs me by the throat and makes me put the book down. So eh, again I just likes it.
Although, I can't help but think that they would have had an easier time fighting death eaters if one of the good guys had a wand made by Heckler and Koch or the Colt Manufacturing Company, but I've watched too many John Woo movies.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 04:34 pm (UTC)hufflepuff? not slytherin?
> She knew she had to kill Harry but she didn't want him to die, so she copped out. With the MacGuffin Ex Machina.
i saw it as the old prophecy-cheating dodge most famous from buffy; just because he had to die didn't mean he had to stay dead.
however, your reading seems different from mine... the way i read it, it wasn't the hallows that kept harry alive - at that point, voldy still has the wand. it was the fact that voldy rebuilt his body with harry's blood, thereby taking on some of lily's sacrifice... thereby in a way making himself a horcrux for harry. in a way.
i just found the hallows to be this big red herring that went nowhere, aside from the wand. and the only bit of foreshadowing that i've been able to dig up is the way all other invisibility cloaks have been carefully kept offstage. although i'm disappointed that harry didn't think, "i've got the most powerful wand in the world and a stone that brings people back from the dead; here are fifty dead people, some of them my friends. hmmmm."
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Date: 2007-07-22 05:26 pm (UTC)Umbridge? No. In the absolute end, Umbridge was doing all that horrific stuff not out of ambition or lust for power, but because she honestly thought it was what was right. When all hands were against her, she persevered and just worked harder to get things the way she thought they ought to be. Her vision might have been warped and twisted, but she really truly believed in it, and was willing to work incredibly hard and face all comers in her defense of what was, in her mind, 'the right way', and in no way did she ever back down or even appear to. Stubborn, holding fast to her beliefs, willingness to work hard, loyalty to her causes and, more importantly, those who embody them ... that's Hufflepuff all the way down the line.
Besides, a decent Slytherin would likely have been a lot more cunning about it. A Slytherin would have seen that new teachers don't make speeches, and not made a scene herself. She'd have instituted change slowly, so that no one could see the true horror of what she was doing until it was too late. She'd have flattered and groomed more than just the more power-hungry and vicious of the Slytherins to do her dirty work for her in the Inquisitorial Squad. The Decrees would have been worded much better, and when that Quibbler article came out, she wouldn't have outright banned it from being read (as stated by Hermione, that's the best way to ensure it gets all over school, after all) - instead, she'd have talked to her Ministry contacts and had Xeno Lovegood and Rita Skeeter utterly discredited, and an article debunking everything would have come up in the Prophet the very next day, without ripples being raised in the school. Think about how Voldemort gained his power at the Ministry, not staging a coup until just the right time. That's what a Slytherin would have done at Hogwarts in book 5. But no, instead she just made her changes and dug in and to hell with anyone else.