Paulo's Book Club: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

I'm going to try to do this like a real book review, I'll discuss some plot points but I won't give away the ending. If you haven't read the book by this point then you are not really a fan and deserve to have the ending ruined. But if you plan to read it and don't want to be checkered by my opinions then don't read past this picture.



First off, the book is 759 pages. It might have been 150 pages or so too long.

The first 300 - 350 pages of the book dragged on. It seemed more like it belonged in the Lord of the Rings series, not Harry Potter. For several months and hundred pages they were camping out along the English countryside on a quest for a powerful object. That sounds just like Frodo and Samwise. And the chapter called "The Battle for Hogwarts" was also atypical of what we've come to expect from the Harry Potter novels.

Also, the tone of this book was decidedly darker. There was no quidditch (and therefore no "Weasley is our King," my favorite part of any of the books), there were not funny names for spells or books or old wizards. All the book was about was the quest for the Horcruxes and the impending attacks from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

And the search for Horcruxes was very vague because we didn't know what the Horcruxes were which made it very confusing to try to follow along.

But once the book got going and Harry started progressing towards his goals, the book was an absolute page turner. Most of the long-standing mysteries were explained in satisfactory fashion and everything made perfect sense in the end.

And the last chapter provided a very fitting ending to the series of books that I've loved so much for the past 7 or 8 years.