Plot spoilers will appear in this discussion for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Don’t read any further unless you already know plot twists or if you don’t care whether you learn plot twists. If you are subscribed to comments here using RSS, you should probably treat that feed most warily until you finish the book.
I really enjoyed this one, despite the plot-holes the pacing was mostly excellent. I’m glad she trimmed it down compared to previous doorstoppers.
Despite the grim and ever-mounting body count, the way the arcs of the large themes about evil, honour and death work out seem proper, also the depiction of how the Death Eaters’ shadowy reign of terror not only horrified but surprised people with the speed in which it radically changes their society, and that the Malfoys didn’t suddenly become nice people just because they stopped supporting Voldemort is realistic. I like that there were ragged ends in the weft of the final tapestry. Many of the character journey resolutions were most satisfying even when tragic, although I echo the thousands online going “why wasn’t there more Luna?” (who wants to bet that Luna will be the character guiding us through the mooted Potterverse encyclopaedia?).
It’s hard to avoid wondering why they had to spend quite so many months camping out before they came up with decent plans to move the Horcrux acquisition forward though, and Notgruntled notes an inevitable Movie Moment:
Harry, semi-conscious, on the banks of the ice pond, wondering who saved him when he hears “Are you mental?” is gonna be a show-stopping scene in the movie.
A nice parody of the Deus ex Machina overload is Potterdammerung Mega Spoilers. The author drops in buckets of allusions to classic books and movies just as Rowling does in the HP books, and I don’t think he misses a single plot-hole.
However, if you will pardon me deploying a florid metaphor, despite the fact that I can see the flaws under the litcrit magnifying lens, the larger achievement certainly does shine ever so brightly, and it may just be the flaws that make it so. Onya, JK.
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“My theory is that people who do like the texts, but still want to be critical, avoid writing about them because they don’t want to be lumped in with the crappy celebratory scholarship”
I think this is a good point. Sometimes it is a difficult path to take critically, esp when there is a saturation of modest or mediocre engagement. The best critical work will get done later, it will be by somebody who likes the books (I strongly believe in the alignment of love or seduction, and critique), and it will take a bit longer to emerge.
The reasons for the dismissal of these texts that you refer to seem to be disciplinary. Cultural studies does well with text-in-context, with the ‘event’, especially the mass-mediated event, as opposed to the text in itself. That is why HP is perfectly suited to a cultural studies type analysis of fan communities, creative reading etc, and why other disciplines may find the series wanting, and be better suited to waiting it out until the fuss has subsided.
Daughter and I finally caught the HP5 movie yesterday. Bloody hell they trimmed the plot right down, didn’t they? Trimmed too far for my taste – I do understand the constraints of time in films, but:
* no portrait of Mrs Black?
* nothing about Hermione and Ron (and Malfoy) as prefects?
* not a sniff of Quidditch and all the team upheavals etc?
* no Pensieve?
Once JKR’s deal with Warner Bros for the seven films is all done and dusted, I really do hope she underwrites an animation production house of the best anime tradition to do multiple-episode versions of each of the books. Then they can do these more interesting elements full justice.
Yeah, I’m completely with you on that one, Tigtog. Especially about someone taking the time to reproduce the series visually. probably around the same time that Adam’s point (comment 51) comes to pass. When saturation level has decreased!
You think they could have squeezed in the prefects…
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