Reviewed by alisoninbookland on
Once again, there’s so much to cover….
I’m so glad that the story didn’t take place at Hogwarts. Hogwarts is fantastic but for what was needed for this story, it wouldn’t work. We needed the freedom of being in the real world to tackle the Horcruxes. Not to mention the trio needed to see if how their eduction stands up. I think they did pretty well for 17 year olds who dropped out of school. Not many school kids can take on full grown dark wizards and walk away from it.
You could really see how the kids have matured over the course of the series. Luna is as odd as ever but she can keep it under control when it’s needed. She was willing to do whatever it takes in battle. Neville was awesome! He’s no longer the timid, bumbling boy we met in The Sorcerer’s Stone. He’s now a pretty skilled wizard who did nothing but fight for the whole year. He truly is his parent’s son. Hermione was as clever as she’s ever been and she set aside her romantic ambitions to save the world. How often to we see that? Can we get more female characters like this?! Ron took a step back with his maturity but in the end he redeems himself. He was always the least mature of the trio but I always knew he would end up doing the right thing.
And then there was Harry… It’s no secret that I get annoyed with him. His heart is in the right place but his temper sometimes gets in the way. In the end, things all worked about because he was willing to do anything to finally end this. The fact that he was willing to die was unbelievably mature of him (and it was pretty awesome that he managed to save people because of it). I know we all would like to think we would do that for our loved ones but could we actually do it? I was terrified just reading about Harry doing it.
I’m very glad there was more light shed on Dumbledore. His death in the last book was so sad because we only started to get to know him. There was so much more we needed to know! Like Harry, we start to find out in this book how little we really knew about Dumbledore. It’s a bit scary to find out you really don’t know the person you’ve put your faith in. We didn’t know his father was locked up for crimes against Muggles. We didn’t know he had a ‘sick’ sister. We didn’t even know he had a sister. We didn’t know he was friends with the dark wizard he defeated. How much more did we not know? Thankfully, Dumbledore got to personally clear up a lot of the questions we had.
The book was the mother-of-all info-dumps. The end of all the books always have large info-dump sessions. It’s understandable because there is a lot to tie up. This book had to tie up this story as well as the series as a whole. There is so much information going on. It’s really quite brilliant. I’ve re-read the books in a pretty close time frame so I got to see and remember how everything falls into place. It’s still amazes me at the thought she put into the books. Every tiny details she mentions, there’s a purpose for it.
This book brings to light all the issues the other books simply just hinted at: the injustice and inequality of this world. Chamber of Secrets introduced the idea of blood purity but Deathly Hallows brings it back in full force. The trio is outside of the world for most of the book but you’re still able to pick up on what’s going on. We’ve jumped from a mild intolerance from bad guys to anyone of “unclean” blood being rounded up like animals and having to defend themselves.
The intolerance of the other races isn’t explicitly stated in the book but a reader can pick up on the problems. Goblins, werewolves, giants, and all the other creatures that wizards refused to treat as equals for years didn’t help the good guys out. In the battle of good vs evil, you would think more people would be on the good side. Can you blame the “creatures” though? Why would you help people out when they’ve done nothing to help you out? What happens after the Battle of Hogwarts has never really been discussed but I can only hope that the characters start working on their inequality problems in this world. It almost was their downfall. To very roughly quote Dumbledore, hopefully they realized that they should judge people on their choices rather than their abilities or past actions of others.
The bottom line? It was a very solid ending to a fantastic series.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- Finished reading
- 4 March, 2015: Reviewed