Books: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I have to say I enjoyed author J K Rowling's latest (and reportedly last) book in this series. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows strikes a pretty fast pace from beginning to end. For me, it all gets sorted out just a bit too conveniently at the end but she does answer most outstanding questions from the earlier books and she maintains strong continuity with them. Unlike several of the earlier books that start by repeating key aspects of the story so far (presumably for those who haven't read the earlier books), this book gets straight into the new storyline without wasting time on a recap. I appreciated that. I'm sure this book has the best film-making material since the first book but it'll no doubt be several years before we see one (presuming the franchise hasn't run out of steam by then without a flow of new books to cross-promote the movies).

Recommended!

 (as is the whole series if you haven't read them)

----- WARNING: PARTIAL SPOILERS BELOW HERE ----

 I liked the way that Snape's role was finally explained. In the earlier books, he'd teetered between being a good guy and a bad guy. I wasn't expecting the news of Dumbledore's terminal injury and that worked quite well in explaining Snape's role. However, I found Dumbledore's participation in Harry's "lamb to the slaughter" life a bit hard to swallow. It just didn't really fit well with the rest of the story. Once again, I also found Voldemort's role a bit odd, where he was so all-powerful, except when confronting Harry, even given how that's explained. Setting the final chapter 19 years later was a nice finale. I liked Ron's humor most of the way through the series and I liked his quip near the end of that final chapter. J K Rowling's writing style has stayed quite consistent throughout the books and this continuity is evidence of that. Thanks for the series J K !