![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 11:44 am (UTC)