I finished book 7 last night. It was the second time I had read the book and there were a lot of things that I had forgotten from my initial read, which happened 2 years ago, in about 14 hours.
I was pretty hard on Deathly Hallows after I first read it. I was pretty angry at the ending, and the way Mrs. Rowling handled a lot of the exposition. I'm still not thrilled by either, but I didn't hate the book as much the second time. One thing that bothered me greatly was how passively the plot moves for the first half of the book. Until about halfway through the book, we are subjected to a plodding, slow moving slog of a plot. Everything that happens to Harry and co. is because of something they happened to overhear, or something they guessed about and got lucky enough to get right. It sort of feels like they are treading water until they are, inexplicably, tossed a bone by the writer, at which point the plot sort of ambles forward, then halts again. This kind of writing bothers me. I dont' think it's necessarily bad, I just don't care for it. I like my protagonists to know what's going on, and if they don't know, then they at least should have the good sense to be entertainingly flustered. That being said, there are a lot of really cool scenes in Deathly Hallows. I just wish they were as tautly paced at the beginning of the book as at the end.
I understand why it has to move slow, mind you. Voldemort's regime change, to have any sense of legitimacy, has to move slowly. So that's why they spend weeks in Grimmauld Place and months in the tent. This gives some crediblity to a secret coup that happens within the magical world.
The info dump at the end of the book is going to be somewhat problematic when it comes to adapting this book into a movie. There are pretty much three straight chapters of exposition at the end of the book, all fairly interesting exposition, some of which we've been waiting for since Sorceror's Stone, but yeah... that's going to be tough. Also, Harry's speech to Voldemort at the end is pretty much bull shit. The revelation that Draco Malfoy was the true "owner" of the Deathstick, pretty much completely diffuses the tension of the scene by making it a Scooby Doo moment. Really all of the wand nonsense in Book 7 is a bit troublesome. I suppose that wandlore is a fairly niche branch of magic and it probably wouldn't be covered much in Harry's previous magical education, but still, for a concept that is so important to the events of book 7, and is apparently a somewhat basic concept of wands, it seems like poor planning to have never mentioned it until this book.
I've said it before, and I shall probably continue to say it every time I talk about this book, but the fact that Aberforth is first introduced in book 7, even though he's apparently been in Hogsmeade for the duration of Harry's education is beyond ridiculous. Surely someone would've known of Aberforth's connection to Dumbledore and at least mentioned it at some point during Harry's 6 previous years at Hogwarts.
Anyway, I liked Deathly Hallows much more this time than my first time, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Steve Kloves does with the source material.
Scenes I'm most looking forward to:
1. Graveyard in Godric's Hallow (They better not be polyjuiced during this sequence. This could be a real tearjerker of a scene if we get to see the kids, and not some actors we have no connection to).
2. Xeno's House (The desperation and sadness in Xeno's betrayal of Harry could be another extremely potent scene if handled with the kind of subtlety and emotion that these filmmakers demonstrated so ably in HBP).
3. Gringotts Break-in (Goblins! Dragons! Action! Burning Treasure!)
4. Battle of Hogwarts (No explanation necessary)
5. Dobby's death (Probably the most heartless killing in an entire book or heartless killing).
Things they need to change from the book for the movie not to suck:
1. The fact that Harry and Co. are either polyjuiced or under the invisibility cloak in every scene.
2. Ron and Hermione's kiss. ( I am of the opinion that Ron should sack up, and put the snog on Hermione and not the other way round).
3. Wand nonsense.
4. Harry's ridiculous speech to Voldemort.
Anyway, I'll try to go easy on the Potter posts for a while. I'm pretty sure when Deathly Hallows part 2 comes out, I'll re-read the whole series and have all kinds of new insights (but more likely, I'll just make the same observations I've made previously and act like they're new).
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