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well. that's that, then.
I got home at 1:30 last night and read six chapters before I decided I was just looking at the words and there wasn't actually a stopwatch or finish line, so I went to bed around 3:00 and slept (not v. peacefully, I'll point out) until about 10. At which point I got up and read the rest, pausing at occasional putting-the-book-in-the-freezer points to get dressed, make coffee, be with my thoughts for a few minutes, etc.
Anyway, having closed the back cover, I am now ready to make my predictions.
Well ... wow. I was impressed from the outset with the grown-up-ness of Harry; she did a nice job following that trend to its conclusion. Well done, JKR and Editors! In fact, I was pleased with pretty much the whole thing. I admit misting up several times and punching the air several more. I'm still not really behind the Lupin/Tonks union, but now that they're both dead, that's dramatically all right with me. And of course I regret the death of Fred Weasley, but there was no way that family was going to get off with just a severed ear, I mean, come on. And it had to be one of the twins who bought it; it would have been far too devastating to kill Ron or Ginny, and killing (only) Percy or Charlie or Bill wouldn't have been nearly devastating enough. Bad luck, twinnies.
I was struck along about the time Dobby died that she's gone from being derivative of Roald Dahl (cupboard under the stairs for $200, Alex) to being derivative of Lloyd Alexander (insisting on digging the grave manually -- though Alexander's hero did it with his bare hands, but he was a real man [g] -- as well as kindness to "lesser creatures" which comes back and pays off, the whole slaying-a-serpent thing, etc.. etc.). Not that this is a bad thing; I'm just saying. We do know that means young TR Lupin is the Next Hero, right? Albus Severus Potter, Schmalbus Severus Potter.
Which brings me to the one thing* I didn't care for, really, which was the ever-so-slightly treacly epilogue. It was like I could hear the string section thanking god it was almost over.
(* Okay, the biggest thing. I was also, as I said, not really on board with Lupin/Tonks, and I'm still not wild about Bill/Fleur -- ooh, but thank GOD she made it clear his name is William and not Bilius, kthx -- or Harry/Ginny, but I'm not really exercised about any of these, and I can see where Harry and Ginny were doomed -- er, fated -- to be together right from the get-go. Fine. The fact that he'd have been better with Luna is just something we're all going to have to deal with in our own time.)
Other details: okay, WTF heritability of the Fidelius Charm? No, seriously, WTFF? I'm not even talking about what that would do to my carefully-considered universe in which Bill Weasley has been told a secret but cannot reveal it, and nobody else can ever be told it because the Secret Keeper is dead. Because yes, hi, my stuff = not canon. But -- seriously -- wtf? The secret is originally concealed within a single living soul. And when that soul is no longer living, it passes to a whole bunch of living souls? SOME CHARM, Y'ALL. I do not accept this. (Still less do I accept that if practically the whole Weasley family is in hiding at Aunt Muriel's and Arthur is the Secret-Keeper, Bill will -- even if Arthur told him the secret -- be able to tell Harry and everybody about it. Hi, Bill, fucking FIDELIUS CHARM, genius. If I'd been Bill, and found myself suddenly able to tell everyone the secret my Secret-Keeper father had told me, given this heritability feature I'd have suddenly been VERY VERY CONCERNED ABOUT MY FATHER'S SAFETY.)
(Not that I've, you know, spent ages thinking about the Fidelius Charm or anything.)
[eta: Ooh, also, morally ambiguous ends-means pfft-on-your-long-term-consequences Dumbledore? Fits totally for me with a Dumbledore whose Patronus would be an ostrich, which I believe I declared at Nimbus 2003. I know we've got canon that it's a phoenix now, which, fine, but I'm just saying.]
[another eta: But, fifty fatalities? Fifty? That's ... shockingly low, really, and on balance I'd say the good guys were extraordinarily lucky not to lose any more than fifty people. Yes, okay, it's fifty people in one battle, and of course they lost more than that in the course of the war(s); and yes, we are supposed to understand that the magical population is rather smaller than the non-magical population; but still. JKR once told us that Hogwarts' student body numbered "about a thousand", right?, at any given time. If x is defined as "the majority but not totality of people between eleven and about seventeen and a half", and x=1000, then if k is defined as "persons over seventeen, with a couple of outliers, killed from the generally weaker but ultimately triumphant side in the climactic battle of a war almost two generations long" and k=50, that's -- well. I'm not sure any of the characters realizes how few people that is. I'm confident JKR didn't give any thought to how few people that is, because with this book, she's demonstrated conclusively that she stops counting at -- do it on your fingers, from Harry and Remus' conversation in the kitchen to Remus' arriving at Bill's place [eta4: and really, Remus was dead the minute he named Harry the baby's godfather; you'd think the guy had never heard of a full circle (assuming he was at all invested in his own survival, which is by no means a sure thing)] -- nine. ;-)]
Oh, but, I was supposed to be talking about predictions. Which are these: nobody will be delighted, but nobody will be miserable. This is because she's managed to give us a finale in which everybody was right! Trust Snape; Snape is a Very Bad Man. Well, yes. Both of those things. (Which I've been saying all along, by the way.) Trust him because he is a very bad man; Severus Snape: friend and foe. The Snape Loves Lily people finally got their wish, as well, bless them. (How can I now forget that once I dared to be in love, alive, and whole, in Lily's eyes?) Harry was the last Horcrux, but he didn't die -- or he didn't stay dead. (Harry Potter, meet Buffy Summers.) Sort of everything anybody wanted more or less came true, with the exceptions of (a) a total absence of canon!slash and (b) the final crushing disappointment for the Harmonians, who really were just plain thwarted. Pity.
And my final prediction: the movie version of this book? Is going to be FUCKING AWESOME (eta3: but I really wonder how or even if they're going to manage to bring it in at PG-13).
Anyway, having closed the back cover, I am now ready to make my predictions.
Well ... wow. I was impressed from the outset with the grown-up-ness of Harry; she did a nice job following that trend to its conclusion. Well done, JKR and Editors! In fact, I was pleased with pretty much the whole thing. I admit misting up several times and punching the air several more. I'm still not really behind the Lupin/Tonks union, but now that they're both dead, that's dramatically all right with me. And of course I regret the death of Fred Weasley, but there was no way that family was going to get off with just a severed ear, I mean, come on. And it had to be one of the twins who bought it; it would have been far too devastating to kill Ron or Ginny, and killing (only) Percy or Charlie or Bill wouldn't have been nearly devastating enough. Bad luck, twinnies.
I was struck along about the time Dobby died that she's gone from being derivative of Roald Dahl (cupboard under the stairs for $200, Alex) to being derivative of Lloyd Alexander (insisting on digging the grave manually -- though Alexander's hero did it with his bare hands, but he was a real man [g] -- as well as kindness to "lesser creatures" which comes back and pays off, the whole slaying-a-serpent thing, etc.. etc.). Not that this is a bad thing; I'm just saying. We do know that means young TR Lupin is the Next Hero, right? Albus Severus Potter, Schmalbus Severus Potter.
Which brings me to the one thing* I didn't care for, really, which was the ever-so-slightly treacly epilogue. It was like I could hear the string section thanking god it was almost over.
(* Okay, the biggest thing. I was also, as I said, not really on board with Lupin/Tonks, and I'm still not wild about Bill/Fleur -- ooh, but thank GOD she made it clear his name is William and not Bilius, kthx -- or Harry/Ginny, but I'm not really exercised about any of these, and I can see where Harry and Ginny were doomed -- er, fated -- to be together right from the get-go. Fine. The fact that he'd have been better with Luna is just something we're all going to have to deal with in our own time.)
Other details: okay, WTF heritability of the Fidelius Charm? No, seriously, WTFF? I'm not even talking about what that would do to my carefully-considered universe in which Bill Weasley has been told a secret but cannot reveal it, and nobody else can ever be told it because the Secret Keeper is dead. Because yes, hi, my stuff = not canon. But -- seriously -- wtf? The secret is originally concealed within a single living soul. And when that soul is no longer living, it passes to a whole bunch of living souls? SOME CHARM, Y'ALL. I do not accept this. (Still less do I accept that if practically the whole Weasley family is in hiding at Aunt Muriel's and Arthur is the Secret-Keeper, Bill will -- even if Arthur told him the secret -- be able to tell Harry and everybody about it. Hi, Bill, fucking FIDELIUS CHARM, genius. If I'd been Bill, and found myself suddenly able to tell everyone the secret my Secret-Keeper father had told me, given this heritability feature I'd have suddenly been VERY VERY CONCERNED ABOUT MY FATHER'S SAFETY.)
(Not that I've, you know, spent ages thinking about the Fidelius Charm or anything.)
[eta: Ooh, also, morally ambiguous ends-means pfft-on-your-long-term-consequences Dumbledore? Fits totally for me with a Dumbledore whose Patronus would be an ostrich, which I believe I declared at Nimbus 2003. I know we've got canon that it's a phoenix now, which, fine, but I'm just saying.]
[another eta: But, fifty fatalities? Fifty? That's ... shockingly low, really, and on balance I'd say the good guys were extraordinarily lucky not to lose any more than fifty people. Yes, okay, it's fifty people in one battle, and of course they lost more than that in the course of the war(s); and yes, we are supposed to understand that the magical population is rather smaller than the non-magical population; but still. JKR once told us that Hogwarts' student body numbered "about a thousand", right?, at any given time. If x is defined as "the majority but not totality of people between eleven and about seventeen and a half", and x=1000, then if k is defined as "persons over seventeen, with a couple of outliers, killed from the generally weaker but ultimately triumphant side in the climactic battle of a war almost two generations long" and k=50, that's -- well. I'm not sure any of the characters realizes how few people that is. I'm confident JKR didn't give any thought to how few people that is, because with this book, she's demonstrated conclusively that she stops counting at -- do it on your fingers, from Harry and Remus' conversation in the kitchen to Remus' arriving at Bill's place [eta4: and really, Remus was dead the minute he named Harry the baby's godfather; you'd think the guy had never heard of a full circle (assuming he was at all invested in his own survival, which is by no means a sure thing)] -- nine. ;-)]
Oh, but, I was supposed to be talking about predictions. Which are these: nobody will be delighted, but nobody will be miserable. This is because she's managed to give us a finale in which everybody was right! Trust Snape; Snape is a Very Bad Man. Well, yes. Both of those things. (Which I've been saying all along, by the way.) Trust him because he is a very bad man; Severus Snape: friend and foe. The Snape Loves Lily people finally got their wish, as well, bless them. (How can I now forget that once I dared to be in love, alive, and whole, in Lily's eyes?) Harry was the last Horcrux, but he didn't die -- or he didn't stay dead. (Harry Potter, meet Buffy Summers.) Sort of everything anybody wanted more or less came true, with the exceptions of (a) a total absence of canon!slash and (b) the final crushing disappointment for the Harmonians, who really were just plain thwarted. Pity.
And my final prediction: the movie version of this book? Is going to be FUCKING AWESOME (eta3: but I really wonder how or even if they're going to manage to bring it in at PG-13).
no subject
Holy Harry Horcruxity aside (as I said I would never accept that no matter the retcon she attempted), it's the above various derivative bits that irked me more. That and the disappearing plot points(i.e. where the fuck did Kreacher disappear to, I'm sure he could have been useful in any number of situations) and exactly how did the Sword manage to get back from Griphook and into the Hat?
no subject
"Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that [the Gryffindor sword] out of the hat." (Or something like that -- I don't have it in front of me to check the exact quote.)
So, Neville, being a true Gryffindor, was able to pull the sword out of the sorting hat and thus swipe Nagini's head with it. I actually thought it was pretty fitting. :)