Overall, I was pretty pleased. I found the penultimate expository dialogue a little strained, and a few things happened a little suddenly, but those are pretty minor quibbles. There was a lot more that I enjoyed.

agreed. the penultimate stuff was a little convoluted. i liked the epilogue lots though.

I finished up the book this morning, (after sacrificing many hours of sleep I most likely will suffer for losing).

I have quite a few beefs with the ending. I'm really kind of disappointed that Harry learns about Dumbledore's plan to die through the pensive. And the conversation he has with Dumbledore while semi-dead seemed a bit of, i don't know, a cop-out for a lack of a better term.

The 19 years later summary also seemed unecessary in it, she doesn't really show much with exception of Harry and Ginny winding up together, and Ron and Hermione. If you're going to show life down the road, show what they're doing (what did Harry end up doing with his experiences versus Voldemort?)

I did really thoroughly enjoy the book. I wouldn't have been up until 4 am otherwise.

I was disappointed in the death of Dobby and Fred. I had expected Neville to die getting vengance on Bellatrix, but was pleased that he had found himself as it played out in the story.

Maybe it was my sleep deprived state, but what happened to the liquid Harry captured from Snape as he lay dying? I don't remember anything happening with it.

ysa -- the liquid was snape's memories, for the pensieve. I think the two things you complain about were the two things that I thought were most awkward. What I felt let down by, though, was that the resolution with snape went so quickly & smoothly.

I was mostly pleased with the ending. It would have been nice to see a little more of what happened to people in the epilogue, or elsewhere in the book. I really wanted to see Dolores Umbrage get what she had coming to her, for example. But all in all, I thought it wrapped things up pretty well, and I was very happy as I was reading the end.

I had expected Neville to take out Bellatrix also, but it was kind of cool that Mrs. Weasley polished her off.

i found mrs weasley's battlecry a little too ramboesque.

i found mrs weasley's battlecry a little too ramboesque.

Yeah. me too. I cringed.

I too found the conversation with Harry and Dumbledore at the end a little awkward, but partly because I kept wondering if Harry was still naked throughout the entire scene. I would have liked to have known what the little whining creature was. Was it Voldemort?

I was also disappointed with the epilogue. I wanted to know what they had gone on to be in their lives, what kind of careers they all had, not just who they married and how many kids they had. All we really found out beyond the family information was that Neville was teaching at Hogwarts.

I think my biggest problem with the book in general was that there weren't any suprises. It was an enjoyable read, it wrapped the story up nicely and it ended up pretty close to how I figured it would, but there just wasn't anything that I'll still be thinking about days from now. Maybe I was expecting too much.

I'm with mollie on the epilogue; I wanted to hear more about the character's lives and work, not just that they had kids. She could've thrown a few enticing bones in the epilogue about their jobs. Or perhaps a 1 or 5 year later epilogue also (two epilogues? why not, it's been a long series!). Since the series was so focused on life at Hogwarts it would've been neat to show "graduation" festivities or whatever they do there, though I suppose it would've been anticlimatic after the battle victory.

Overall, the book was a worthy finale and wrapped up the Voldemort plot well, and probably better than I realize since I haven't been a serious fan so I surely missed a few nice tied-in details. I was ready for Ron or Hermione to die, so that was...well not exactly a let down, but a little surprise. I cried about Dobby's death, though I always thought he was an annoying little twit. I agree that the pensieve revelation of Snape's motivation was not the best way to cover those points; it seemed a cop-out compared to writing an awkward Snape and Harry "reconciliation." But hey, this is kidlit :-).

Some random comments:
Oh my gawd, she used the words "bitch" and "effing"!
I wonder if they will also cast Helena Bonham Carter as Andromeda (Tonk's mom who is described as greatly resembling Bellatrix). She could totally pull that off.
I would've preferred more Hogwarts and less camping in the woods. Or 1-2 other locations that weren't camping in the woods.
When the "Voldemort feeling remorse" stuff was described, I was worried that the ending would be Voldemort turning into an emotional sobbing wreck who would then kill himself or die from grief; glad that didn't happen.
Mollie, I think the little creater in the Harry and Dumbledore scene symbolized the little part of Voldemort's soul that had been in Harry.

I intend to re-read all of the books on order again. So far I'm on Book 4 of this quest. Hopefully on re-read of 7, I'll fill in some of the gaps that my sleep deprived brain glossed over. (Thanks to claxy for pointing out the pensive memories to me).

I was dissapointed hat she killed Fred. I understand that the whole Weasly family couldn't come out unscathed from all of this, but tey've already had maiming, was the death really necessary?

And while I appreciate the fact she wrote in a reconcilliation of Percy and his family, it really should have cropped up a few times beforehand, instead of just out of the blue. It seemed almost as if someone said she should add something about it in. I'm going to assume that Percy's reconcilliation gets skipped over completely when the movie gets pieced together.

It is weird that this book doesn't have us scrambling about for clues and details so much as filling in bits we may have missed along the way. I guess that's what happens at a conclusion.

I was most disappointed that none of the children in the epilogue were named Fred.

I won't complain too much since I wasn't able to put the book down, but it definitely would have been nice for the two great revelation scenes with Snape and Dumbledore to have been revealed in more bits and pieces over the course of the book, and I sure got tired of sentences describing how weeks passed while they camped from place to place without accomplishing anything.

I think Harry was dressed through the Dumbeldore scene. There was a brief mention of him wanting clothes and a very nice cloak appearing.

I actually was pretty pleased with the epilogue. For all the speculation--Harry's going to be headmaster, or teach defense against the dark arts, or be an auror--I think what he became--his parents, basiscally--was pretty appropriate.

In terms of purely idle speculation, T & I figure that he is idly rich, given the gobs of money he's inherited.

I was really disappointed the that actual search for the horcruxes ended up being less puzzling. It seemed like it was all just handed to them one way or another.

I didn't like the way that she killed off Snape and redeemed him. It seemed rushed almost, like it was an after thought.

I'm also puzzled as to how Aberfoyle (am I remembeing that right) got the mirror that allowed him to see Harry. Don't you have to have the other mirror in order to communicate (or see) through it?

I also wish they had done a bit more with the school in this book. She could easily have added a page or so to the end of the chapter about the graduations, Harry, Ron and Hermione finish school. Something at the very least.

I mean, good on Neville for becoming the herbology teacher, but what did the other's do besides procreate? I (being the hopeless romantic I am) would have loved to have seen Harry flashback to his wedding to Ginny. The epilogue could have been a series of flash backs and that would appeased me completely.

I'm really curious about what the fanfic will be like after this.

Small matters:

I recall that before Harry meets Dumbledore at Kings Cross, he wishes for some robes and they appear, so he would have been dressed.

I would be surprised to see any appearance by Andromeda in the movie version. Her part in the book is not really crucial to the plot.

I do hope that when they do the movie, I get to see Maggie Smith dueling. One of the few things I didn't like about the OOTP movie was that they left out the funniest moment from the book, though I can see how it might have been less funny on screen.

Thanks Rob for the clarification of Harry's nakedness during the Dumbldore scene. I must have missed that detail. I probably need to give book 7 another thorough read through. I sometimes unintentionally skim when I'm anxious to find out how a book ends.

Intellectually, I'm kind of starting to be swayed by the naysayers, particularly:

http://evestoryblog.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html#8335158851702816196

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_07/011732.php

The point about the Unforgivable Curses is pretty strong, I think.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows about an hour ago. I have an odd empty feeling like I was running hurriedly through and now that it’s over it’s quiet and I have nowhere to go. And I feel a little cheated, too.

Harry’s quest seemed, while I was reading, to echo The Lord of the Rings for me. A great and arduous task, too big for the bearer, with long spans on how weary everyone was. Maybe Rowling was making a point that the quest to kill Voldemort was ultimately Harry’s but throughout the series she has seemed to vacillate on that point. Harry feels he must do things alone and yet always receives help in the eleventh hour from his friends, never seeming to learn the lesson of trust. Well, he expanded his secret circle to include Hermione and Ron but they didn’t seem to offer much more than companionship and bodyguard service. In fact, Ron’s big superpower seemed to be that he came back. We got glimpses that Neville, Luna and the others had been planning and fighting, and even Ginny seemed to be doing more than stamping her foot and insisting she was capable. I would have loved to see the finish of Neville’s journey to becoming Harry’s equal (or his better in that he is more open, less of a loner).

Why were unforgivable curses flying from everyone’s lips? At the end of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Snape blocks Harry from using any unforgivable curses again and again and even tells him, "No Unforgivable Curses from you, Potter!" Even when I questioned Snape’s loyalty, I assumed that Harry ended up being saved from himself by not using them. I thought that Harry would learn to control his anger and fight a clean fight well and be more powerful that way. The worst thing about the Order using unforgivable curses, for me, was that no one questioned it. They’re Unforgivable; they’re Dark Magic and carry an automatic imprisonment in Azkaban. And yet it seemed there was nothing to take their place but stupify, expeliarmus, and wingardium leviosa. A patronus charm, powerful and difficult to conjure, can shoo away dementors and can be pressed into service as an express owl but seems to be of no other use.

The break-in into Gringotts seemed shoddy. They spent weeks planning it with Griphook yet they seemed to have no knowledge of what safeguards were in place and no contingency plan to get out. It seemed far too easy to imitate a customer and be let in. Their one great advantage was the help of a goblin but he was no longer an inside-man and didn’t seem to tell them much about what to expect. Surely there had been many attempts to gain access by using polyjuice and using the imperious curse on an employee. There seemed to be nothing in place to prevent it.

Harry, Hermione and Ron freed a dragon from Gringotts. They freed a house elf once and felt bad about the enslavement of most of the rest of the race lots of other times. Why was there no mention in the aftermath of abolishing slavery? And if the goblins believe a goblin-made object to be bought only by the first owner whereupon it reverts in ownership back to the goblins, why don’t the wizards honor that? The wizarding community doesn’t seem particularly enlightened, in spite of electing a black prime minister, I mean minister of magic. And I might be missing a point here, but why did Hogwarts revert again to having houses? I’m sure it’s all a very British tradition but after the battle, there was a moment where all barriers were broken down and everyone ignored the house divisions in the Great Hall and intermingled. It seemed important and freeing to me yet in the epilogue the divisions were just as strong as ever.

How strange to have built up so much suspense over whether Snape was triple-crossing or only double-crossing and then put the matter aside until the end of the story where it was resolved with a little dribble. I had a feeling he was trustworthy but I was never able to corral my ideas as to why. And I longed to see Draco Malfoy given the opportunity for redemption. Or at least to have let go of the apron strings, step out of his father’s shadow and make a strong choice one way or the other. It seems to me that he will never stand on his own, even if the Malfoys are forgiven. Strange how there was the echo of parental love being stronger or more compelling than the evils of the world at large with the Malfoys--as there was with Potters--but it didn’t help them save Draco, Harry did.

These thoughts might give the impression that I didn’t like or enjoy The Deathly Hallows but that is not the case. I was engrossed in it and rushed through it to find the end. It was just such a different book than I think I expected that I am grappling with that loss. I imagined it would be a swirling series of battles and adventures, far reaching as Harry searched the world for answers. Then found them.

I found this book much more coherent and in many ways more satisfying than the previous one(s), but I also agree with Jen13 about some of the disappointments. Things with Snape worked out about as I thought they would, but were too rushed and expository to be ideal. Around the middle of the book, I was feeling pleasantly surprised about the degree to which Rowling seemed to be dealing with the house elf issue, even bringing in goblins (who I'd frankly forgotten about) and looking like making it into something important and significant. But then it drops out utterly, leaving only the sword coming back, goblins shed somehow, and thoughts of Kreacher making them nice hot pies or whatever now that they've finished their battles. Disappointing.

I didn't much mind the hanging around camping in the woods trying to figure out what to do, though it dragged a little bit. I did sort of mind the whole conceit of the Deathly Hallows, which felt stilted, but what are you going to do? The final conversation with Dumbledore was nice in the way it made Dumbledore imperfect, but again it felt excessively expository, and I especially didn't like the way Dumbledore kept insisting that Harry was remarkably, enormously selfless and a better man than he was -- the actions of the books themselves never quite managed to convince me of that, so I slightly resent being told that it's the case.

I read somewhere else a suggestion that it would have been nice if Rowlings had decided to spend a good chunk of the camping-around time not with Harry and his companion(s) but back at Hogwarts with Neville et al. Indeed, that would have been cool. Though on the other hand, kind of her to leave that whole swath of time open for the fanfic writers!

Oh, aaaaaand: It seems that Rowling is just not built for writing clever sleuthing stuff. Once again, too many questing mysteries (for my taste) were solved by dumb luck. There's plenty of scheming and searching, yes, and plenty of succeeding in coming to the center of a tricky puzzle, but very little connection between the two. Far too often, it seems to me, things work out because the characters conveniently overhear something or conveniently are in the right place at the right time. This comment in the Kevin Drum thread Claxy linked sums up this problem fairly well, I think:

This is actually related to the biggest complaint I have about the entire series, namely that so much of the "action" is actually one of four things:

1) Overhearing important conversations that just happen to take place nearby for no good reason. (E.g., "Oh, and how is Ginny?" being asked by the group that just so happens to camp next door to where Harry and Hermione have pitched their tent.)
1a) Overhearing important conversations because you happen to be wearing an invisibility cloak.
2) Seeing through Voldemort's eyes.
3) Watching a recorded memory in the pensieve.
4) Having Dumbledore patiently explain things to you.

My non-scientific estimate is that at least 1000 pages of the entire series is made up of this. Pretty much all of Book 6, for example. And to have Snape's death be entirely comprised of 1, 2, and 3, with no action from Harry, was truly disappointing.

I don't have anything interesting to add about the book. I did like the camping scenes, as much of the book as they took up. I think the Gringott's robbery would have played slightly better as a rushed job instead of a planned one, but it didn't really bother me.

Where did Neville get the sword from, by the way?

If Harry had to be resurrected, I liked how she did it.

My favorite part of the book was the Aberforth scene leading into Neville's appearance and the reveal of the Room of Requirement and how we find that Neville has managed to organize the entire cast to fight for Harry. I also enjoyed hearing about Neville and Ginny and Luna being up to Harry, Ron, and Hermione's old tricks.

I had decided what my least favorite part was but now I can't remember.

Overall I think Rowling did a great job wrapping things up. There were little nits to pick, but I can ignore them because everything else was put together so well.

Yeah, the whole "overheard" conceit is a bit much. It basically gets at my take on the entire series, which is that while Rowling has a great story to tell, she's really not a great writer, and the story suffers for it.

Unrelatedly, was it really necessary to redeem Dudley?

I think Neville gets the sword from the Sorting Hat.

Unrelatedly, was it really necessary to redeem Dudley?
I don't think it was necessary but I liked that she showed that he could grow up and think for himself. The bit with the tea he left for Harry was nice. It started the book off with something positive for Harry to experience before all the deaths started. And you can imagine that Dudley and Harry ultimately have a friendly relationship and Harry can have Muggle relatives who don't hate him.

Unrelatedly, was it really necessary to redeem Dudley?

I think it was sort of an artifact of one of the subthemes, that children don't have to become their parents or something of that nature.

Harry is a nicer boy than James was. Draco isn't necessarily a death eater (though he doesn't really get redeemed much). Dudley isn't necessarily like his parents.

I think there was an attempt to bring in coming-of-age and self-identity bits into the tale, but it didn't really make it through cleanly, and it all sort of seemed to be the same general thread of jerk-ass kids having a chance to not entirely be jerk-ass.

There's also something in there about redemption at the hands of the mother. Petunia sort of wants to say something when they part ways, Narcissa saves Draco and of course Harry's entire protection.

To some degree, I wish Draco had taken on his role as Death Eater with glee. Completely rejected the saving grace that Snape's killing of Dumbledore afforded him and reveled in evil anyway.

I think Neville gets the sword from the Sorting Hat.

I don't seem to remember how the sword moved from Griphook's possession to the Sorting Hat.

Unrelatedly, was it really necessary to redeem Dudley?

I think that it was necessary, in that the theme of 7 (and the whole series) was "family" (both the families that you are born into and created families- I guess you could toss the "love" thing in there as well). I think that every character that is motivated by the best interests of family (Weasleys, obvs., down to and including the Malfoys, Dobby and Kreacher, and even Snape- with his courtly love of Lily) comes out victorious in the end, whereas the characters that willfully reject family (Voldemort, Bellatrix, etc.) all lose.

Dudley's redemption was Rowling's loud signal at the beginning that this was what the story was about. And, this is probably why that the epilogue had nothing to do with what the Potters or the Weasleys were doing with their lives; in the scope of the entire story, it was unimportant and would have detracted from what Rowling was beating into our heads throughout the book.

Also, once we discovered that Tonks and Lupin were dead, it was fairly certain that Harry would cheat death (for the whole Harry:Teddy Lupin::Sirius:Harry parallel), which made Harry's sacrifice of himself a little less tragic. I would have liked to have Harry give that last full measure of devotion at the end, but that's just me.

I don't seem to remember how the sword moved from Griphook's possession to the Sorting Hat.

Magic.

I think in book 2 we learn that the sword makes its way to a noble and courageous Griffyndor in their time of need. The sword isn't hidden inside the hat as a matter of course, the hat summons it, and I suppose proves the goblins wrong that the creator is the ultimate owner of their works (sorry Johnny13!).

the whole Harry:Teddy Lupin::Sirius:Harry parallel

Can you elaborate? I'm not seeing the parallel (which isn't to suggest it doesn't exist).

I don't seem to remember how the sword moved from Griphook's possession to the Sorting Hat.

Magic. No, seriously, you don't see what happened -- I guess the hat determined that Neville deserved/needed it more.

Mollie, I think the little creater in the Harry and Dumbledore scene symbolized the little part of Voldemort's soul that had been in Harry.

Yep, I'm positive that this is correct. I'm glad that Dumbledore didn't spell it out for Harry.

Ah, I had forgotten Book 2. I'm pleased that the Hat chose Neville, since it was required for him to play nearly as important a role in Voldemort's defeat as Harry did.

the whole Harry:Teddy Lupin::Sirius:Harry parallel

Can you elaborate? I'm not seeing the parallel (which isn't to suggest it doesn't exist).

At Shell Cottage, Remus Lupin asks Harry to be Teddy's godfather, and Harry accepts. Actually, as soon as this happened, I was fairly sure that Lupin and Tonks were not going to survive the story. Harry had to have the same relationship with Teddy that Sirius had with him.

I rather disagree that Ron and Hermione's responsibilities were minor, or that that was a bad thing. The moral support/surrogate family that Ron and Hermione made for Harry was absolutely crucial. The responsibility for killing Voldemort had to lie nearly exclusively with Harry, but they were there to keep him on track (as best they could) after the horcruxes and away from the hallows.

I'm actually impressed that Rowling kept as much on theme as she did, without getting distracted with other plot elements. For a book as long as this was, the plot is relatively clean.

At the risk of monopolizing the conversation, here is the extended epilogue article that Rob had posted elsewhere.

I agree with YSA that Percy just popping in out of the blue for a last-minute reconciliation seemed like something an editor asked for and the author just crammed in without thinking much about the flow. But then, Rowling isn't at all a tight plotter and there are shattered bits of potential plot dangling throughout the series that are never picked up again. Similarly, she fails to lay her groundwork for the threads she does develop. Did we ever hear of Grindelwald before? That whole hallows gimmick seems almost deus ex machina, window dressing to provide a little smidgeon of plot excitement on the way to the Voldemort denoument. Redfox may be right that we're expecting a suspense author; I confess to disappointment that what we're getting is a storyteller for juveniles (and one of considerably lower expertise than, say Pullam).

The middle of the book, with all the wandering around, did indeed drag and failed to be evocative of the despair that I think Rowling was reaching for. In fact, the whole use of time in the book strained my credibility. Here's Voldemort strengthening his power base and offing wizards and muggles daily, but Harry just hangs at the Burrow waiting for Bill & Fleur's wedding or spends weeks in the tent trying to come up with an idea on how to proceed with very little apparent anguish over that elasped time. I realize that the plot element in all of that was that he had to reach the understanding that he wasn't in control of the events and was just a player in the wizard chess game between Dumbledore and Voldemort, but it was weakly done. And I appreciate Jennifer13's observation that after the books seeming all questy, suddenly it was Harry playing out someone else's set piece with everything falling into his hands. I think the ultimate example of this is the ending of Voldemort, in that Voldemort essentially kills first the scar sort-of-horcrux and then himself. Harry's presence, while pretty vital, seems once again to be more a case of his presence letting events flow around him than a direct result of his own will and creativity.

Jenifer13's point (same comment linked above) about the breakdown of houses at the climactic events is a good one--I read past it at the time but she's right that the single group is very refreshing and powerful. But now I think about it, I wonder if that is just more of the spirit of the epilogue: nothing really changes in the wizard world; they all carry on with their pretty, traditional English lives without having made substantial changes other than killing off Voldemort. What about all those racial and class tensions raised through the whole series? Happily ever after for HarryGinnyRonHermione is all very nice, but are those house elves still slaving away and the goblins still counting up interest owned on things they made and muggles still clueless pawns and mudbloods still second rate?

If this were an adult book or the work of an author of greater skill, I'd suspect that this and the last few sentences at the end (sorry--don't have the book in front of me to quote them) were laying groundwork for the next big rise of peril--undoubtedly to be dealt with by the next generation of wizkids. I'd even see the survival of Draco as part of that, setting up the next evolution of the dark/pureblood side.

And a couple things I found irksome in this book:
I felt as though Ron was particularly colorless in this one--just a few "mate" and "blimey" comments, but little substance. Aside from killing the horcrux, he seemed awfully flat. And what was with all of the underwear comments? Shades of Captain Underpants: was this somehow Rowling's sop to younger readers? At least three times (when Ron freaks out that Hermione says she's laundering his underwear at the Burrow; at 12 Grimaud Pl. when Hermione swears using "Merlin's pants!" and Ron replies with "Merlin's most baggy y-fronts"; and then when the soup that !Luna is brewing at the Lovegood residence is described as smelling like "burning underpants") she uses this image, and the sniggering childish humor of it seems out of place.

And, last, she was graceless in handling the Dumbledore reveal. I knew that more about him had to be part of this book--his death in the last one was a great big billboard pointing to the message "more to come about Dumbledore!" And she obviously tried to prepare for that with the Skeeter bio and the obit, casting doubts on his morality. But it was ham-fistedly done and too much was left for King's Cross scene, where it was all just plopped in Harry's lap. Really, what changed with that, other than explaining why he died? Harry was still marching to Dumbledore's plans, no more his own agent than ever. So, once again, maybe okay for uncritical kids reading for the plot high points, but unfulfilling for adults in a way that kidlit doesn't have to be in the hands of a truly capable author. This is a story, not a novel.

Here's a lengthy online chat w/Rowling which reveals a super-fan level of detail on who did what after the book, how Neville got the sword, who killed who, can Harry still speak Parseltongue, what happened to Voldemort in death, and so on.
http://the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/7/30/j-k-rowling-web-chat-transcript

We do hear about Grindewald a few times here and there. It's on the back of Dumbledore's Wizard Trading Card. And (I think) it gets mentioned when they talk about his awards being stripped from him in Book 5. I don't have the books in front of me right now to look it up exactly.

Ah, thanks YSA--he didn't play enough of a role that I took him for anything other than background, I guess. Still feels like he was pulled out of a hat, though.

This is a problem I've had with several of the books(OotP especially) but spending the first 500 pages stumbling around in the woods and accomplishing almost nothing got really old. If you are going to have a quest, then why the hell have that quest result in bupkiss and then drop almost everything that the questers were seeking into their laps in two short narrative-strangling expository sequences at the very end of the book? Even when they did accomplish something in this ~quest, it was mostly by accident. They could have done just about as much by simply hiding out with the rest of the Order most of that time and then still going on the couple of raids that did result in horcruxes. And if the idea of the quest was to be suspenseful and emphasize how hunted and under duress they were, that didn't work either, because bad things only happened when they screwed up or took unnecessary risks, and you could see almost everything coming. You didn't have the feeling that the Death Eaters were right on their tail this whole time, even though Rowling went out of her way to emphasize that this was the case over and over again. Show, not tell, etc.

She also fell down when she tried to go back over familiar territory and revert back to more overt juvenile-lit themes. We really didn't need yet another entirely unsuspenseful set-piece involving the possible breakdown of the RHT triumvirate this late in the game. It felt like Ron really regressed in this book after having grown quite a bit in the last few, which was a shame. She just didn't give him much to do, except for leaving and coming back. And like Salt mentioned, the attempts at kiddie humor just fell entirely flat. Like it or not, this thing had evolved into a fairly grown-up and serious world by the end of the series, and she should have kept the courage of her convictions and written it that way.

I mostly liked how the character arcs all worked themselves out in the end, but not at all how she got them to that point. The Snape resolution was especially disappointing. With so much time spent in the earlier books focusing on the uncertainty surrounding their relationship, it's disappointing that Harry never had to actually trust Snape. The defeat of Voldemort was also awfully legalistic and convoluted. It felt like she had written herself into a corner there, with the linked bad results of having to kill Snape almost offstage and have the final battle turn on a weird footnote of Wizard property law. The various battle deaths were also handled awfully peremptorily, especially Lupin and Tonks. I know she had to establish that this was for keeps and that not everyone was going to get through alive, but she could have handled that a bit better and more humanely. I was similarly disappointed in the aftermath of the final battle. She just trailed off very quickly with no real closure, and the epilogue was a tiny dribble, and as others have mentioned, the lack of followthrough on the socio-political and moral issues of the Wizarding world was disappointing. What the heck were they putting their lives on the line for, if everything just went back to the same unjust arrangements, and the seeds of the next Voldemort were left to germinate in the ruins? I guess that's a valid view of how history actually works, but it's a heckuva downer in a fantasy world. She does address most of those issues fairly satisfactorily in the unpublished epilogue stuff linked off of this thread, but, well, it's unpublished.

Which brings me to Our Hero. Harry has got to be one of the strangest Our Heroes I've encountered. I don't think I would have minded at all if he had died as scheduled, except insofar as it would have made me feel bad on behalf of all of the other characters. He's like a negative-space outline of a hero, a frame on which to hang events and relationships and a mythos, but a pretty much a cipher in his own right. He is kind and likeable enough in a bland and generic sort of way, but he doesn't really grow or change a ton, as his fairly inherent and fixed character traits and abilities (and, just as often, Hermione, who to me is the real hero of the books, especially since she didn't have the benefit of being a Chosen One) seem to determine that he will make the right choices most of the time. At least, insofar as he is allowed to make choices at all, which is not very often. Salt's mention of the issue of agency is very apt, and it'd be interesting to discuss that in a bit more detail after I've gone back and re-read the other books again. He may well work as a hero in Rowling's moral universe, where humility, family, love, and relationships are the measures of goodness and worthiness, but he's definitely a real outlier in the genre as a whole.

Looking back over this, I have probably been a bit harsh. I tore through the thing in two sittings, so she must have been doing something right, and like I said, I was pretty happy with the ultimate resolution of everything. She put together a really compelling universe and some characters who will stay with me for life, whatever her other flaws and tics as a writer and moralist.