On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate it about an 8. It has a compelling storyline, with a good deal about the origins of uber-bad-guy Lord Voldemort. There's much teen romance among Harry's cohort, and a lot of that bit is quite funny. But I'm not particularly objective about Harry Potter, because I'm so very fond of the characters.
There is one notable, disturbing, saddening death at the very end, and thematically it felt quite similar to the notable death in the previous book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." I keep wondering why J.K. Rowling kills off her best characters. I don't see why these characters have to die. In literature, we expect characters' deaths to serve a narrative purpose, and I don't really see what that is in these cases, except to show that Lord Voldemort is evil, evil, evil and wants to kill all the good guys. But we knew that already.
Of course, a narrative purpose could be revealed in Book 7, and I think it likely will be. But that's about two years from now! Meanwhile, I feel pretty darn depressed. Rest in peace, oh notable character from Harry Potter, whose name I will not reveal here!
A lot of the Harry Potter fan web sites essentially shut down on Saturday to allow the web masters and the fans time to read the book. Some of those fan sites are already back online, and the commentary and theories are fascinating. My favorite, Mugglenet.com, comes back online on Monday. This is one of the best parts about Harry Potter, that there's an online community willing to discuss the book ad infinitum.
One thing I know for sure ... When the next and final installment of Harry Potter comes out in a few years, I'm going to buy it at midnight, and then I'm going to stay up all night and read it in one sitting. I won't bother going to bed!
UPDATE: Several groups of fans got to interview J.K. Rowling over the weekend, and those interviews are starting to hit the web this week. She pretty much directly addresses my complaint about character deaths:
Sorley Richardson for Publishing News - Why did you have to kill Sirius when it was the best thing that happened to Harry for years?Read the whole interview here.
JK Rowling: We are back to me being a murderer, aren't we? People have asked me this a lot. I have been repeatedly told Sirius was my favourite character, why did he have to die? You can imagine how bad that makes me feel and in fact after I killed Sirius I went on the Internet and somehow stumbled across a fansite devoted entirely to Sirius and I killed him in the last 48 hours, so that wasn't good.
I think you will realise why he had to go in terms of plot when you read the seventh book. It wasn't arbitrary although part of the answer is the one I have given before. It is more satisfying I think for the reader if the hero has to go on alone and to give him too much support makes his job too easy, sorry.
No comments:
Post a Comment