Books Without Limits

For Harry Potter fans, this book was the much anticipated end. For me, the book as a whole was enjoyable, but the ending was a great disappointment. Rowling has been many things over the course of her infamous young adult series, but until this moment, trite was never one of them. Unfortunately, she chose to give an ending designed to make those fans that need rainbows and sunshine blown up their asses happy, instead of the right ending for the book. I appreciate that the right ending would have been the hard ending, and the most difficult choice(s), but it was needed. A friend and colleague mentions Rowling’s desperate need for an editor in her review of the book, and I think she is spot on – a good editor would have challenged this ending for the pablum that it was.

Now that you have my synopsis, this is fair warning of spoilers ahead for those who haven’t read the book. If you don’t like to know how things turn out before you read them yourself, or if you are still way back on one of the earlier books, stop reading.

As with any series, there have been other times when a choice made by Rowling sent the storyline in a direction I was not happy following, because it didn’t seem to fit. The other diversions (Using Cho and then Ginny as a love interest is one example that comes to mind) never took the story too far off course, however; and I always thought of them as Rowling’s way of giving a nod to that portion of her fans that thought Harry needed that kind of story arc to “make him more believable”. I much prefer a story that makes the harder choice, on the whole, but I am fully aware that not everyone is like that.

This book followed the path Rowling took with books five and six. That is to say it ran long overall, and had a few glaringly weak plot points that made the story stumble in places. In spite of these brief hitches in flow, I was going along swimmingly, as usual unable to put the book down. One thing Rowling has mastered is the art of making us want to know how each book ends, in spite of anything else. If you are a Harry Potter fan, you know what I mean. It is much more rare for a Harry Potter reader to draw out the reading over several days than it is to finish the book in as close to one sitting as possible. For the most part, Rowling’s words are like potato chips – you can’t have just one, you want them all. Have I tortured the metaphor enough yet in trying to make my point?

One of my favorite parts of the book happened within the first few pages of chapter three: the Dursleys were finally out of the picture. To say they outlived their usefulness to the plot several books ago would be too kind. I let out an actual whoop once it sunk in I wouldn’t have to read about them any more once I flipped to the next chapter. The first clue that I wouldn’t like the ending also happened in that chapter, when the hideous Dudley was given a pat chance to “redeem’ himself with a stumbled, red-faced pseudo “apology”. Little alarms began to ring in my head. Surely Rowling would have the courage it took to give the story a fitting end?

When we began to see what was happening with all of the major characters, I was distracted from my trepidation about the way the story would end. By the time we were at Fleur and Bill’s wedding I had quite forgotten it might be an issue. By the time Ron chickened out of the mission like a little brat, hurting Hermoine and possibly damaging his friendship with Harry, I had even forgotten this was to be the last book – I was quite immersed in the story unfolding. In fact, I was so engrossed I almost didn’t notice the odd constructs of time that went on while Harry and Hermoine were supposed to be spending weeks or months in hiding. I still couldn’t quite pinpoint what was wrong with the overall story arc’s timing there, to be honest. It just had an underlying weirdness of time to it that didn’t match the events in the story quite right. Luckily, by that time the fact that I was hooked kept me from dwelling on it too much.

Once Harry, Hermoine and Ron were captured and taken to Bellatrix and the Malfoys, I kept my fingers crossed that Draco, at least, would not be “mysteriously contrite”. Thankfully, he was the same sniveling coward he’s always been in the stories right up until the very end. I was worried, after the Dudley incident, that Rowling was going to try and redeem all of the “bad” major players, which would have been a crushing blow to the stories. Happily that was not to be the case.

One of her character decisions that made me sad was the short shrift she gave to certain characters, like McGonagall and Hagrid. Sure, they were in the story, but not as much as I felt they should be considering the major role they had played until now. Not only that, McGonagall, especially was written in a very different way this time – as if she was more coward than not. Since I’d never seen her as one to run and hide, or even to squeal at spiders, for example, the way she was portrayed truly surprised me.

Some people have complained that Rowling lied about how many people died in this book. Not really. It depends on our definition of death in relation to Harry Potter’s world. I believe she split hairs, especially on Harry. He technically “died”, she just didn’t leave him dead for whatever reason. If you take into account the hair splitting and the sudden compulsion for a happy ending that defied both logic and story line, then she killed off exactly how many characters she promised.

That brings me to the ending. What the heck was that all about? The strong way to end the story would have been having Harry die, then having Ron, Hermoine and Neville realize what was happening and complete the task after his death opened the door for them to do so. The end. None of the useless tripe about getting married, having kids and all that crap. Ron and Hermoine you already assumed would have a happily ever after, complete with traditional Weasley brood. We didn’t need that part spelled out. Harry should have never had a love interest in the first place – he was never that kind of hero. The clean ending would have lopped off the last chapter altogether and include a true hero’s death for Harry and hero’s actions for his cohorts, not the sniveling, puling, blowing-sunshine-and-rainbows-up-my-ass “Dallas” style “dream sequence” “not death”. Shame on you Rowling, for being chicken when it mattered most.

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