Always

I've finally done it, I have finally finished reading and watching the last Harry Potter book,  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.  I'm not gonna  lie, this is by far my least favorite book in the series...but there is still some good stuff too.  For a complete synopsis of the book pop over to the HP Lexicon here  if you are on of the three people left who have not read it.  Lets dive right in, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Camping - Every time I even hear this book mentioned, the first thing I think about is the seemingly endless camping our main trio do.  I understand that they are on the run, and in all honesty a tent stuffed in a magic traveling bag is a new twist on the old "on the run from the corrupt government" deal, but seriously SO MUCH CAMPING!  I felt a lot of this book was just our trio moodily introspecting in that stupid tent that I just really wanted to start skipping pages, even the first time I read it.  It just got really really tedious.

Horcrux/Hallows - I was not entirely thrilled with the addition of the Hallows in this last book in the series.  While the concept itself is very cool, and I loved the story/fable/myth behind it, it felt like it's own separate story and quest.  Especially since it did not seem Voldemort even knew about the Hallows, much less wanted to use them.  The Horcrux's on the other hand really seemed to fulfill that history/mythic/Voldemort/Harry link and to me it kind of made the Hallows superfluous.  I would have much rather seen this last book focus on the Horcrux's and their history and connection to each other and save the Hallows for another story/quest.

Snape - HA!  I was RIGHT!  HE IS AWESOME!!!!!  Ahem...sorry...just had to get that out of my system.  From the very first book I have loved Snape, something about him just always struck the right chord with me.  I don't know if the fact that he did not love Harry like everybody else did, or that he seemed to do the right think while having an attitude or...I don't know what it was but he's been my guy.  After the events in the last book and watching him kill Dumbledore, everybody was all like "see, he's evil", but I still felt like we were missing something.  When he dies and gives Harry his memories and we see the complete tragedy that was his life, and his willingness to risk everything numerous times to protect Harry...well WOW THIS GUY ROCKS!!!!  Anyways I was pretty stoked that I was right and loved that the author really played a very good long game with the readers in regards to this character.

Family - I know this topic comes up in pretty much every rambling I do on HP, but it is a main theme yet again.  Here we see family across all lines and in all forms.  We see the Weasely's, Potters, Lovegoods, Malfoy's (yes I said the Malfoy's), Lupins and any other number of family's do what they need to do to protect each other.  We see fierce mother's love in the form of Molly Weasley taking out Bellatrix to protect her daughter, and Narcissa Malfoy willing to defy the Dark Lord to ensure her son's safety.  We watch a father willing to bend on his beliefs to keep his precious daughter safe in the form of Luna and her father, we see siblings band together when Percy comes home to open arms, and them helping each other through Fred's death.  We hear how Albus Dumbledore's past was influenced more by his family then anything.  I could go on and on, but true to form the author puts family front and center, which is in part what I think the series is about.  It was refreshing to see supposed "bad guys" also display love and protectiveness when it came to their families, showing that every person in the universe wants, needs, and can use family bonds.

The Movies - The book was made into two movies, which was completely unneeded...but was still more entertaining then the book.  As with most of the later movies I felt that the movies focused on the personal relationships more then the overall story and after watching all of them don't know how well the actual story comes across.  All that being said I will watch it over and over and over just to watch my beloved Alan Rickman (I miss you so much)  play my beloved Snape.  The casting of most of the bad guys was pretty cool too.  I don't know...I should probably just not watch the later movies.

The Ending - Ok folks, before we get all up in arms, just remember that this rambling is only my opinion.  I hate the ending of this series.  I felt that after all the creativity and wonder and building up of the story, the ending was to trite and derivative for my taste.  What my big girl pretentious words mean is that in almost any fantasy story, especially the more old school ones, "the hero having to die...but wait not really 'cause he just had to prove that he was willing to make the sacrifice and that is enough now he can come back and marry the girl"  I did not feel there was any real creativeness or story development that came out of the way Harry defeated Voldemort, it felt like every other basic fantasy epic that gets churned out I've ever read.  I guess I just expected more considering the awesomeness of the previous books.

Overall I felt this book was tedious and dark and trite with glimpses of the authors true genius.  Although the series has been getting progressivly older and darker...as it should because of the story arc, this book seemed to be borderline hopeless in a way even the last book wasn't.  I think the biggest issue is that this book suffers by comparison.  The first books were so full of wonder, the middle books continued letting us muggles continue to discover the wizarding world, and the last books still gave us some insight and moments of humor and hope.  Other then the realization that Snape is the man (which I already knew) I don't know, I felt like this book was almost written by another person who wanted to cram all the rest of her idea's into one book, but didn't know how to make it interesting.  I know I sound crabby and bitter, the book was still much better then many books that I have read, I guess I just love certain things about the series to much and they were not present in this book which makes me sad.  I will probably do one more post about the series as a whole but until then Happy Reading Everybody!