And finally, my first attempt at grokking Deathly Hallows...

[lebateleur]

My greatest disappointment with DH is the fact that JKR has once again devoted the majority of the text to answering all the wrong questions and introducing a bunch of new concepts, characters, and backstory that she has no room to develop.



Some things I would have liked to have seen addressed:
* Harry's final relationship to Snape. The one-sided "conversation" of Harry viewing Snape's deepest, darkest secrets post-mortem was a total cop-out.

Anyway, he's (rather unlike Harry) permanently dead. Given his personality and the circumstances surrounding his end, I would imagine his portrait would have had something to say to Harry in that joyful victory bash in Dumbledore’s office (even without those pensieve memories). The Ghosts of Unnotable Headmasters Past certainly did. Except JKR apparently felt we needed to take the dead horse Harry-Dumbledore I've-already-dealt-with-your-personal-failings-and-death-for-several-hundred-pages weep-a-thon out for one more romp around the track, instead.

* Why did Snape even decide to share those memories to the very person whose existence he'd spent the past 17 years resenting when they were too late to do him any good, instead of at any time during those 17 years, when they could have helped him to earn the respect of his peers that he so desperately craved? Or even when it could have saved his life once Voldemort gained the upper hand?

* Some survivor guilt please? Out of all the characters who died over the course of the final four volumes Harry is the only one who gets to come back. Doesn't this seem like something he'd need to deal with?

* It was totally awesome to see how George dealt with the death of his half-my-soul-in-another-body twin. By which I mean, it would have been totally awesome to see how he dealt with it.

* Then there’s Harry’s family. So Dudley got fit and got a personality? When? Why? And hey, JKR, why bother marching us past all that filler about how Lily wasn't a perfect sister and Petunia was really just lost and jealous if you're never going to follow through with it?

* Wizard racism. Are people going to be okay with werewolves now? Lupin's too dead to set an example and his orphaned son conveniently takes after his morphimagus mother. Are goblins to be trusted? They helped out Dean et.al., but betrayed HarryCo big time. And that pesky little issue of Goblin v. Human perceptions of property ownership? Yeah, dropped like the red-herring hot potato it was. Don't even get me started on house elves.

* House prejudice. So none of the Slytherins opted to stay behind and fight the Dark Lord? Not even one? Way to turn said house into more than shorthand for "stock villain." And by the way, thanks for finally developing that "all the houses must band together" Sorting Hat BS you'd been playing around with in the latter volumes. Glad to know that that went somewhere in the end, and no, Malfoy's curt nod to Epilogue!Harry does not. Fucking. Count.

* And what about the Malfoys, whom we left huddled together in the Great Hall at the end of the battle for Hogwarts, largely ignored. Really? No one has anything to say to good ole Lucius? Not after all the shit he's been pulling for the last 20 years? Not after his son was rescued by Snape, then HarryCo, then HarryCo again? Sixty+ people dead over the course of this book alone and the wizarding world is just going to let him be? Funny how these bad guy characters get a narrative reprieves while-good-all-the-while Snape doesn't. How does that work? And how’s Draco feeling about Snape offing Dumbledore for him--the event which should have lead to his family's downfall but didn't because [...]. And the event which ultimately lead to Snape's death.

* It was totally awesome to learn what Umbridge got up to after our tour of the Ministry. Oh, wait...

* Does anyone get what the hell was going on with the Elder Wand during those last 10 pages?

* And why the hell did we have to waste so much space developing the Deadly Hallows only to have Harry be all "Yeah, I ditched the stone (which surely no one will ever think to look for again), but I like the cloak so I'm keeping it and eh, I'll hold on to the wand too until I croak." Talk about a lot of bogus myth-building that went nowhere.

* Speaking of wasted space, I went into this book expecting action and revelation, not 400+ pages of Ron&Hermionie reality show style date-a-thon.

* If Kreacher could Apparate out of Voldy's Lake Of Poison And Death!!1 at his master's command, why the hell didn't Harry think to summon him whilst he was on the lam? Surely Kreacher could have provided valuable information on the movements of the DEs, or the Ministry, or helped them out of some tough spots, or even brought them a freakin' sandwich every now and then, or...

* Sev? Sev? Not an unaddressed issue per se, but I can no longer claim that the books are at least marginally better than the majority of the teenybopper fanfic out there.

* So how the hell did Snape make it past all those hexes in Grimmaud Place?


* Who got that damned Defense Against The Dark Arts position?

* And the significance of the Veil Of Mysteries was...?

* And finally, that craptaculous epilogue, in which we have one child orphaned by a dark magician, and pre-existing house prejudices between wizards who are too young to know what they're talking about. Sounds more like the start of PS than any sort of resolution to the troubles facing Harry when he first boarded the Hogwarts Express.


More to come later, but I'm expecting a phone call.

これで以上です。

Comments

[metal-dog5.livejournal.com]

{{{{Hugs}}}} Now you know why I thought it was fake. These are a few of the questions I've been mulling over since I finished the book in the wee hours this morning. You want me to return the copy I bought for you yesterday?

Worst thing for me was the epilogue made a vague sort of sense after reading the book. I LOATHE that epilogue, more than the pointless don't know what to do with this character deaths, MarySue!Hermione and stupid line of green eyes met black (WHAT!?!?!?!) put together. I almost cried in the store when I saw it was the real deal.

I'll have AIM running all day, if you want to vent.

[amasugiru.livejournal.com]

The one part I agree whole-heartedly with humans vs. goblins thing. That was a really interesting issue she introduced and then dropped like a friggin hot stone.

I thought the first part of the book was like a bad Man Vs. Wild episode. Really, did the character have to spend 400 pages in a tent in the woods. Of course, the 13 year old in me snickered everytime I read about Harry, Ron, and Hermione pitching tents in the woods.

Most of the deaths were completely anti-climatic. I think she had a wheel with everyone's name on it and just spun it a couple of times. Harry spent the most time grieving over Dobby... which I found humorous.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Are you kidding? The entire series is full of issues she developed and then dropped. (Flayed Seatbottom Baby was just the icing on the irony cake.) Not the least of which were the many parallels in life histories between many of the characters...which bore less influence on their fates than the fact that jkr had decided who was "good" and "bad."

I thought the first part of the book was like a bad Man Vs. Wild episode. Really, did the character have to spend 400 pages in a tent in the woods.

::Prepares something intelligent to say about this.::

Of course, the 13 year old in me snickered everytime I read about Harry, Ron, and Hermione pitching tents in the woods.

::iz ded instead::

The deaths were totally anticlimactic--a bad strategy, I thought, in a book where most of the fen (at least those I know) were in it for the interpersonal relationships.

And can I just say here that I will never forgive her for totally Norrington-ing Snape's death? Because I won't.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Ohoho, I had most of these issues too -- plus some that had to do with continuity and logic -- but on the whole I liked the book. There were a lot of highlights and I thought what did happen made sense in context. I mean, since when has J.K. Rowling ever been concerned with reform?

The Thing with the Elder Wand:

The wand changes ownership when one person succeeds in taking it from another. Draco disarmed Dumbledore during the showdown on the tower in book six, so ownership transferred to him. (Voldemort thought it transferred to Snape who "killed" Dumbledore, but (according to Rowling's logic) you can't kill someone who's agreed to die, so it really didn't.)

Then, when Harry disarmed Draco in this book, ownership transferred to him. Spells cast with the Elder Wand always succeed, but only when cast by the real owner. Voldemort didn't really own the wand, so he failed when he tried to kill Harry the first time, and again when he tried to kill Harry the second time. And both times, the spell backfired against him, only the second time he had no Horcruxes left so he actually did die.

I wanna talk about all the things that bothered me but I need a little more time, hold on while I get my notes together.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

And late to the reply as usual...

Thanks for clearing up that Elder Wand stuff for me. I could still quibble mightily with that logic (wouldn't, by jkr's own admission, the wand have ended its run when Dumbledore decided to die? Isn't that what Harry's planning to do with it), but I can see how it would make sense to the author's mind, in a convoluted and not very well considered way. ;)

That said, I'm off to take a look at your grokking.

[doire]

It was totally awesome to see how George dealt with the death of his half-my-soul-in-another-body twin. By which I mean, it would have been totally awesome to see how he dealt with it.

Here's one possibility from xparrot