Final Harry Potter Installment Will Make a Better Film

Ok, if you don't want to know about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet, don't read this. But, I finished the book about an hour ago and I have to vent about it a bit.

If any of you thought that Rowling was writing for Hollywood before, maybe you're right, but this book is worse than any of its predecessors. What is the major edge literature has always had, and will always have, over other forms of entertainment? Imagination, of course. Books are able to provide detail, imagery and beautiful language in ways that no other form of media can. Authors can go on for pages about one simple movement and scene. It may only take a few seconds or minutes to play out on screen, but in a book, when written well and played out correctly, a description can suck the reader in so completely, in a way that movies never could. Readers are able to develop personal relationships with the characters and feel as though they're sharing a special secret with the person who brought them all of this happiness and understanding: the author.

Well, Rowling obliterates all of that in her final book in the Harry Potter series. Rowling has never been a spectacularly gifted writer, in some ways. However, she has always used her greatest strengths to her advantage very well. She has a wonderful imagination, and a great part of her success has been in her ability to create such a believable world that she has held reader's entranced for nearly a decade. It doesn't matter if her sentence structure doesn't quite rival Dickens, Wilde or any of the greats of the British Isles. She created immensely sympathetic characters that millions of readers around the world have fallen in love with -- which is why she doesn't do herself, her characters or her devoted fans justice in The Deathly Hallows.

Just spending a bit more time and details on the scenes would have helped. I know she could never live up to our expectations; we all want to much from a series we all feel so strongly about. We wanted, or at least I wanted, a seamlessly tied up story with no loose ends. It didn't have to be a happily ever after, but something maybe a bit better than the last line of "all was well" would have done the trick.

The thing that is most disappointing is how episodic, yet slow, the book feels throughout its 700 plus pages. Readers are more than 500 pages into the book before Harry even finds another horcrux. When she kills off much-beloved characters, she doesn't even sufficiently explain how they have died, or even give very plausible reasons as to why they've died -- other than to add a bit more suspense for Warner Bros. perhaps. She kills off Fred right when he has been reconciled with Percy again. How does he die? Debris falling from the ceiling of Hogwarts. Do we see George after this scene at all, or even hear what has happened to him after the entire Weasley family (or what's left of it) is seen standing over his body? No. There is an epilogue for the "main" characters, albeit an unfulfilling one. I'm not asking for every little detail to be spelled out, but at least to leave out such major characters as George, who Teddy is left living with, and Luna.

Maybe once I have re-read this book, I will feel differently about it. But the whole time I was reading it, I was protesting what was happening. It doesn't sound like Rowling's voice, with characters randomly dying, suddenly, seemingly to add melodrama and suspense. Rather than relying on talent, Rowling expounds unnecessary plot twist after plot twist, leaving readers uncertain as to what exactly the main thread of the book is, other than the final duel of Harry and Voldemort. With Ron, Hermoine and Harry camping for several hundred pages of the book, it's no wonder she tries to add a bit of excitement to the book, but she does so in all the wrong places.

I hope I will feel differently about it at some point. I didn't like The Half-Blood Prince until the second time around, either, but that was mostly shock at the plot, per usual for the series. But with this one, I remain skeptical that I will ever change my mind. There's always a fool's hope...

Song: I know, I know, I didn't do it. Everyone makes exceptions for Harry Potter, though.