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The End Of Potter

No spoilers in the following, by the way.

So, I've finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. That's that then.

I managed to get to the end without having to call any kind of support line, and I suspect that as the full enormity of a world without new Harry Potter sinks in I'll still be able to face the world with equanimity.

I'm being a little harsh - I did enjoy it, as far as one does enjoy them, and found a number of the stylistic and narrative habits that annoyed me about earlier books mercifully minimised. The story does have a strange time structure, with weeks and even months moved through in the space of a sentence at some points, and really, not to any particular point that I could see other than that it allows Rowling to spread out about six weeks' worth of actual incident through the duration of a school year to fit with the formula for the first six books.

Those six weeks' worth of incident are at least eventful, and there's finally a sense of the wizard war that looked imminent at the end of The Goblet of Fire being a reality and out in the open. The relationship stuff is solid, and there's finally a payoff to a lot of apparently insignificant details from earlier books. Also, several people turn out to hold rather greyer positions than their previously black and white presentation might suggest, and there's a climax that really feels climactic.

On the downside, there's that characteristic suspension of the action for entire chapters of exposition, at least one of which was inevitable from very early on in the novels' story and which actually happens extremely late in the proceedings, cutting right into the previously mentioned climax.  And a whole swathe of 'lore' is introduced right here at the end of the series that feels far too late and somewhat Deus Ex Machina (not just the Deathly Hallows, but loads of stuff about how wands work in this world).

Still, it's done now, and while the series in no way justifies all the fuss on an artistic level, as a phenomenon, and as a reinforcement of the value of literacy in kids, I'm willing to give the achievement my grudging respect.