Pottered and Planted

I'm the last in my family to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but once I began reading, I finished in under three days, straight through. I was amazed how quickly it read, since I'm a rather slow reader usually. Perhaps I'd overheard enough chatter among the rest of my family that I had a pretty good idea of what I would find. But still, it really read quickly and seemed to flow well, with chapter breaks about every 25 pages or so.

J.K. Rowling seems to have done a really good job with her final Potter book of the series, I think. She managed to tie up all the loose ends of previous ambiguities of characters and still write a childrens' story. I especially appreciated the flashbacks explaining the motivations and passions as well as foibles of Dumbledore and Snape, the most complex of Rowling's protagonists. And she managed to weave in a masterful, totally unexpected but plausible surprise re: true ownership of the elder wand. Without giving anything away, I was a little bored with some of the episodic near-certain-death escapes and deux ex mechina devices which seemed at times a little too glib for my tastes. Whenever J.K. appeared to be writing herself into a corner, it was just too easy to press the vanish button and have the terrific trio suddenly rematerialize at a safe new location somewhere, or if in hostile traffic, duck under the invisibility cloak. But I was very glad for the rising action and final battles which rose and fell then rose again before the real climax, and the epilog chapter of the new generation of wizards and families. Over the course of so many novels she had quite a task making so many subplots and characters come to a head in a coherent way, but she did it up right, and with grace, humor, suspense till the very end, and a lot of style.

For me, it was a good way to end the summer break, and got me used to reading lots of words again after a summer of more physical than intellectual pursuits before I begin teaching again next week.