And So It Goes

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:08 AM Eastern on 24 Jul. See below.]

Without going into any detail at all at this point in time for reasons which should be obvious, I confess that I found Year 7 of the Potter saga, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final volume of the series, to be largely a major disappointment. For the most part the book plays out like a Hollywood bubble-gum action flick with loads of effects without sufficient cause; several deus ex machina, a never acceptable device; characters — even well-known and beloved characters — drawn as if by rote; and throughout, prose and imaginative plotting and situations a whole order of magnitude inferior to the previous volumes in this series. It's not until the last 150 pages or so of this 759-page volume that Ms. Rowling once again comes into her own and displays the narrative and imaginative gifts that have made this series the worldwide phenomenon that it is.

Too bad.

And so it goes.

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Update (7:08 AM Eastern on 24 Jul): On the evidence of more than a few eMail responses to my above comments, I see that some clarification of one of my remarks is in order.

By my saying that, "It's not until the last 150 pages or so of this 759-page volume that Ms. Rowling once again comes into her own, and displays the narrative and imaginative gifts that have made this series the worldwide phenomenon that it is," I meant to say only what I said. I did not mean to say, or even so much as imply, that I thought Ms. Rowling handled the ultimate dénouement of this series in a satisfactory or satisfying way. I in fact think just the contrary. To my way of thinking, Ms. Rowling, in bringing this epic saga to its close in the way she did, displayed a colossal failure of nerve that was most egregious, and more than just a little surprising. But given that my saying any more at this point in time would constitute a spoiler for those who've still not read the book to its conclusion, for the nonce, that's as much as I can or am willing to say.