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Well I’ve finished it have you? My copy of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows came on Saturday morning, delivered by the postman courtesy of Amazon, yes I was one of the 1,500,000 people who pre-ordered. I read non-stop for about 8 hours on Saturday, and then finished it on Sunday after another 6 hour session.

This post will have some spoilers in and thoughts of certain aspects of the story, so only click to Read More and continue reading if you have already reached the end of the book.

The book started as I suspected it would, but that expectation was blown out of the water once the Death Eaters attacked and we had our first death so early on. I thought it was a great way to set the stage and make all of us realise this book was going to be different than the previous 6 in the series.

One thing that was exactly the same in this book as all JK Rowling’s other masterpieces is the way it encourages you to keep reading and very rarely gives you an opportunity to put it down. All the way through I found myself doing that “Oh, just one more chapter then” type of reasoning with myself, so much so, that I didn’t have time for dinner on Saturday.

The whole camping part of the story, while necessary did drag on for a bit too long. Although I can see the film of this book being a 4 hour spectacular, I can easily see how this middle portion of the story could be shown on screen in a fraction of the time it took us to read it. I don’t begrudge the section of the story though, as it was a journey, which all 3 of the main characters, Harry, Ron and Hermione had to go on. Without the long, trudging and sometimes nasty journey the ending wouldn’t have been possible, and the series would have felt incomplete somehow.

Dobby’s death was both shocking but brilliantly executed, and it became the thing Harry needed to make him act rather than think. I found it the saddest death of the lot, even more so than Fred Weasley.

All the way through the book, I found myself constantly changing my opinion of how it would end, and who would die. Snape being good or bad was one of those plot points which has endured right from the first book to the last, and the answer and explanation of his actions was brilliantly done.

The big battle scenes in Hogwarts was well told, and exactly what was needed. Throughout the series, we’ve had battles, mainly between Voldemort and Harry, but to finish the series off in style it needed that huge coming together of Death Eaters and Harry supporters. Reading these sections felt almost like watching a film, and I have a complete image in my head of what happened.

And so to the big question, would Harry live or die, well he technically died, but he just chose not to remain that way. I love how this was explained, and the whole section of him and Dumbledore chatting felt very ethereal. When he came back, every part of me was willing him on, and urging him to wait for the right moment to strike. I think younger readers may have a hard time grasping the concepts discussed during these parts, even I had to re-read bits for it to make total sense.

The ending for me was good BUT, it could have been better. It seemed to just end very abruptly, I wanted to know what happened to Harry and the rest of the main character in the immediate aftermath of Voldemort’s death. And then we had the epilogue. This was very skillfully written to include as much information about as many characters as possible in to a short chapter, but again I wanted more. There was no mention of what Harry did now, whether he;d ever become an auror (I assume dark magic and forces still exist even though Voldemort is dead). What happened to the Death Eaters who survived the battle?

I was actually surprised about the happy ending, as in a fit of stupidity I read a spoiler site 2 days before release and so thought Ron would die at the very least. I’m pleased it ended as it did though, with the right people getting together, and things being back to normal as much as possible.

I suppose it comes down to 2 things, leave people wanting more, and leave the possibility open for more books in the future, and JK Rowling has achieved both of those with The Deathly Hallows.

Great book, a fitting end to the series, and I can see a revisiting of Harry’s world in a few years, even if Harry is no longer the star.