no more harry potter

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...

Seventh and final book in the series, six hundred and seven pages long, I finished it in around two and a bit days...

I tend to do that though... when it's a new book that I haven't read in a series I really like, I usually tend to finish it in remarkably short order. Even when I don't intend to just go crazy and finish the book really quickly, like this time around, I still end up hearing the siren song of the novel and just keep picking it up and before you know it I've been sitting there reading for six hours...

I think I officially started this on Saturday night... just read the first chapter and then I actually put the book down... but then by the end of Sunday I'd read just over half the book... and, well, you know the rest.

Fellow Potterphile Eddy (possibly a greater one, since he's a little more prompt and obsessive about it than me) said when he read the book back in July that he slowed down when he reached the last hundred pages, and didn't want to read the final fifty pages at all... which I can kind of understand, although I didn't do the same thing... although I did what I think I usually end up doing in these situations, I went back and reread bits that I'd just read. Occasionally my mind will wander just slightly, and although I've been reading the words I don't always take them in properly, so with a new book like this I like to make sure I've taken in everything, rereading the previous couple of paragraphs, especially as the book starts to draw to a close and all the plot starts to tie together and the secrets are revealed.

It's a little difficult to write everything I kind of want to write about the book... I don't want to ruin any of it for people who haven't read it yet. I'm SO not about the spoilers, in fact I've been avoiding EVERYTHING in reference to this book since it came out in July... I even skipped reading a cartoon in the Sunday paper a week or so ago, because it was a spoof on part of the book. So this might sound a bit odd if you haven't read the novel, but if you have you should know what I'm trying to say.

I don't know if it was because this is the final book in the series, or because the stakes are so much higher in the plot or what, but I found myself getting all weepy in spots... a lot of spots actually. Sometimes for the obvious reasons (Chapter 4), but sometimes because I was just touched and moved (Chapter 3)... and it got to the point where I was pretty much turning into a weepy mess just about every other chapter... but nothing at any point in the book quite compared to the complete puddle I dissolved into at the end of Chapter 23 and the beginning of Chapter 24... we're talking "cried like a baby", big heaving sobs in fact!

But at the same time there were a bunch of spots where I cheered... and at least two spots where I actually did it aloud... a little tragic, but it seemed to be the right thing at the time.

I'm not unhappy with the way the book ended... in fact the series had been headed in that direction for at least the last three books, and while there were some surprises (both good and bad), it kind of ended the way I expected. And pretty much all of the little "mysteries" and loose plot ends were wound up by the end of the book, which gave everything a nicely finished off feeling. One thing I am glad about is that JK put the final "epilogue" chapter in which confirmed a lot of the things that I'd suspected... although, I have to say, not all of them... and a quick look around online after I finished either confirmed other things I suspected or were pleasant surprises about some of the things not mentioned.

I will say one thing directly... since Rowling came out (to coin a phrase) with the fact that she'd always considered Dumbledore to be gay, it was interesting to read parts of this book with that in mind. I wonder, if I hadn't known that little factoid if certain parts of the book would have had that slight air of subtext to them... almost like she was laying it in for people who knew... or if it was just because I did know, then suddenly I was reading in subtext where it didn't necessarily exist. I think it's possibly that there was subtext, because at no other point in my rereading this time around did the thought really occur to me, other than during this last book.

While I don't know that reading the book was necessarily a life changing event on it's own, I don't disagree with something else that Eddy said just before he finished the book.... "I know life will never be the same again when it finally ends"... even though I can go back and revisit the story, I'm always going to know how it ends, and it's never quite the same as the first time.

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