| |
|
I didn't have any expectations of this (except for an almost manic hope that Snape wasn't BAD), but I was still disappointed. I get the feeling that as the franchise has become more and more frantic, the willingness of JK's publishing house to actually edit the books has diminished accordingly, such that the last three in particular have really suffered. I started reading Deathly Hallows by reading it out aloud to my partner (so neither would have to wait until the other had read it) but the prose was so awful that I couldn't stand it and I gave up - we read it in turns (life is in shifts with a new baby anyway).
Complaints about the writing aside, I thought that most of this final book's flaws stemmed from one fatal mistake - I don't think she ever should have taken it out of Hogwarts. These are essentially good old fashioned school stories, and by a) removing the main three characters from Hogwarts and b) not really allowing the narrative to shift away from Harry, she limited herself to a very narrow range of storytelling possibilities. I was so utterly bored in the first half of the book with all that 'now we're in a forest, now we're in another forest, now we're fighting, now we're in the tent, now we're out of the tent, now we're on a moor' etc etc - all I wanted was to find out what life was like in Hogwarts with Snape as headmaster! Imagine how much more interesting it would have been if they'd stayed at school - the friction between Harry and Snape (OK I'm a Snape fan), the tension with Ginny, the underground movement of the students...
And so while I was happy that Snape was GOOD, I was also really disappointed that his story, which was so much more interesting than Harry's, was relegated to a couple of pages of expose at the end. I was also really sad that he died - it was the only death that moved me, actually (except maybe Hedwig and Fred, a little).
Oh, and I thought the coda was crap. For pretty much the same reasons that have already been given in this thread. |
|
|
