Deathly Hallows

n.b.
PLOT
SPOILER
ALERT

If you haven't read the book don't read on!

I did well. Harry Potter arrived from Amazon on Thursday so I collected it around 6 in the evening when I got back from an all-day First Aid Course! That's five days after the launch and I had managed to totally avoid all plot-spoilers - good for me.

I buy from Amazon USA so the cover is the one at the top. If I'd bought in New Zealand it would be this one. Why do they do that? I prefer the NZ one. The leaky cauldren has a page where you can view all the various covers from around the world for all seven books and there's quite an assortment. I hope all the words inside are the same no matter where you buy.

So I read the first 500 pages through to 1.30am then another 100 or so the following morning. Back from work Friday and finished off the 759 pages at 1.15am Saturday morning. And, as you all will know, the last word isn't 'scar'; that sits eleven words from the end.

JK has always said she wrote the final chapter right at the beginning of the series but I reckon the 'Dear Padfoot' letter from Lily on page 180 is what she wrote back then. Up to that point the book felt as though it had been written by someone other than JK but then it picked up her usual style but not as extreme as usual. The entrance to Gringotts (p531) is a tad unconvincing but the exit on the dragon's back is genuine HP - see the Kiwi cover. So somewhat unconvincing until p576 when Hogwarts eventually makes its appearance then she's all-systems go and its a real HP book.

On p548 I sussed out that Harry was a Horcrux (or I actually sussed he and Voldmort - we can all say that now, can't we? - were the same which is pretty close to Harry having part of Voldemort's soul, isn't it?). On p601 I thought the sorting hat would be a Horcrux so I got that one wrong and I was convinced Hagrid was the one who would be killed but apparently JK was under a threat from her sister if she did that so he escaped.

My guess is JK was thinking, 'Gee, I wish I had eight books to spread the tale across,' but there are only seven years of secondary school so I guess she was stuck. It could have been reduced to six and a half books though. All that wandering around the countryside and house-sitting was a waste of time. Get to Hogwarts and get the job done!

Terrific; absolutely as great a feat as LOTR, no question about it. 'History of Hogwarts' here we come.