First off DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE FINISHED THE BOOK 

Now that I've finished Deathly Hallows, I was wondering how everyone else felt about the ending. Were you left satisfied, or did you think Harry should've died? Were there any questions that didn't get answered? Personally I thought the ending was fantastic. Rowling's not the greatest writer stylistically, but she excels at telling a good, surprising, satisfying story, and this book is no exception. I had my doubts for a while... while I highly enjoyed the book all the way through, I was a bit nervous when I realized I had only 200 pages left, and hardly anything had been wrapped up. However, the last hundred pages were masterful, brilliantly, and movingly tying up loose ends. Snape's flashbacks and the chapter where Harry marches to his death (or not) were beautiful and gripping. I am really intrigued by the Aunt Petunia character, and this book makes me more so. I wish we'd seen more of the "secret" side to her in the series. Snape's true motive is also fascinating and the last two books really revealed him to be a very intriguing character. I'm a big Dumbledore fan, so it was nice that it felt like he was still around, via much more information on his past, the appearance of Aberforth, and even a scene with the man (or ghost... or something) himself at the end! My only complaints are minor: my biggest one is probably the whole Elder Wand subplot. It was kind of dumb. We'd never even heard of this thing before, and suddenly it's so terribly important. There were gaping holes in the plot here too (why is Voldemort so ignorant? How come he didn't recognize Grindelwald, or realize that Dumbledore had the wand? After all he'd faced him before. And many act like the Deathly Hallows are common knowledge, but none of the main trio, or Voldemort, had ever heard of them). And the whole thing with wand switching was overcomplex, and sometimes didn't make sense (Harry's logic at the end is baffling). And why did Lupin and Tonks have to die?! Okay that's not really a complaint, but I was very depressed when I read that. Also the famous final chapter came off as a bit corny and underwhelming. Still this hardly impeded my enjoyment of the book. Rowling knows just handle the progression of the plot, and the conclusion leaves you satisfied, which is quite a feat for a seven part series.

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

As a fanboy, I was grateful for the relatively happy ending, and while I have to agree that your observations about the weaknesses of the story are all valid to some degree, I admit to holding the Potter books to a different, admittedly more generous, set of standards.

Frinstance, I don't care that there's no final, sound explanation for why Harry keeps surviving Voldemort's attacks -- everything said about it is on the vague side, but in the end it's handled in such a way that this doesn't pierce my suspension of disbelief or emotional investment in the story.

The complexity of some of the plot detail, including the wide assortment of Important Magical Items that are strewn all over the place, has been pointed out in the reviews I avoided reading until now, but I find Rowling is usually pretty good about leaving enough signposts to keep people oriented.  ("Usually" -- the were a few moments where I had to read a given passage or page five or six times to get exactly what was being said, or to understand that I wasn't meant to understand it yet.)

My complaint about the final chapter was simply the lack of more, but I see why keeping it to a short slice, narratively well-chosen, was her choice.  At any rate, it was worth losing my Saturday reading it, and my Friday night standing in line for it.  And I'm feeling pretty confident there will be more books from her, set in that world, which would be fine with me.

The ending was way too Hollywood for my liking. One of the things I've always loved about the HP books have been the very dark endings, so I was unhappy with the ending of this one. Lupin has been my favourite character for years now as well so I found that really annoying. However I think that the chapter where we find out the truth about Snape was one of the best chapters I've ever read in the Potter series, and as mentioned above, Harry's march to death was fantastic. I would have prefered if Harry had died as for me the entire series was biulding up to his death.

Also the 19 years later thing was so cheesy I almost threw up. "Albus Severus..."

I would've been very happy if the book ended with Chapter 34.  I think the ending was VERY lame and left it wide open for a brand new series... I thought she didn't want spin-offs and such.  I can see the Potter kids cartoon right now...WAIT!  Do I smell a cheap money making scheme.  Someone get on that.

The book was really very good and exactly how I expected it to be.  It was as if we were part of the magical world now, already having been through it all with the kids and now it was common place.  All the spells, even the ones I've never heard, made sense in context and I didn't think what does that mean, where are they going?

I did have to read several pages over with the whole Hallows thing going on and was a bit confused, but I never did put it down (except for work of course) and was sad to see it end.

Did anyone see this new series?  They gave us a bookmark for it when we got our book.

Obviously Harry Potter books appeal to an thoughtful crowd if you intelligent Gazetteers read them. I just finished ranting against HP on another board where people were discussing the author's claim that someone or other was gay in the series pretty harshly.

Please explain the appeal of Harry Potter to me.  I am hoping its just a kind of escapism for adults to read these children's books with the same enthusiasm children do, and that you seek your intellectual nourishment from more substantial, mature literature...?  I don't mean to insult, truly.

I think it is a refreshing escape to read Harry Potter.  There isn't all that terrible real life murderer, rapist, stalking, cop type fiction books.

It's a pure and good fairytale.  Loyalty, friendship and good vs evil are the main topics and it's just a feel good escape.  I got my daughter hooked on them and now we can sit around and have Potter talk.  That's one of thae last things holding us together at junior high age.  They are just really good books!  Very well written, involving us in a world that's not ours and people and places and worries that aren't ours.

Oh my, yes. I read "adult" books on a regular basis, which is part of the reason why I was drawn into the Harry Potter series. Just a moment of escapism into a child's mind. It was fun to read with the wide eyes of a kid again, even though nothing outright "wowed" me. It was just good clean fun. And I never really read kids books when I was a kid, so I find that now and then I'm intrigued by books aimed at children and young adults.

I'm just a reader in general. I will read most stuff just out of habit and curiosity, something that has both brought me to a great many wonderful stories and sadly to an almost equal amount of pure shite (Dan Brown, I'm looking RIGHT AT YOU). And that's how I ended up with Harry Potter. My brother had left his copy of the first book in my mom's car and we were heading someplace on vacation and I was bored and picked it up to thumb through it and became rather engrossed. It's a pretty well-written series for being children's books. Most of the time authors kind of simplify their writing to cater to the perceived minds of children, taking for granted the intelligence that kids possess at that age. So it was refreshing to pick up this book that was written like the author was speaking to young adults rather than children, but not so much in a way that would confuse or alienate the younger audience. And it was just a ripping good tale anyhow.

Now, my reaction to the final book in the series...I'd kind of reserved myself on this one, waiting to see if maybe I was judging too harshly. But from what I've seen of other peoples' comments both here and in various blogs, I can see I'm not alone when I say that I was pretty disappointed with the last book. To me it felt rather slapdash and contrived. Like Rowling was kind of haphazardly throwing things together to twist the book towards a pre-determined ending rather than everything progressing as naturally has it had been. There were a lot of things suddenly thrown into the last book that we'd never seen mentioned before - Elder Wand, anyone? For Christ's sake, something THAT important should have been mentioned SOMEWHERE in the last six books! - and the whole "I get your wand if I disarm you" thing. WHERE WAS THIS RULE IN THE PREVIOUS SIX BOOKS?! "No, we must have a plot device! One that will easily unravel all these twisted threads I've created!" Ugh. And whereas the whole concept of the Horcruxes was fascinating at first, it eventually just felt really lame and way too easy. I get the distinct impression that the ending the book had was not what was originally intended. The tacked-on prologue was just that...tacked-on. There's no way that was how she intended the book to originally end. It lacked any imagination and was void of any of the spark that her writing normally has. Instead of feeling satisfied with the series (and really, I would have been satisfied whether or not Harry lived or Voldemort died; I just wanted it to feel genuine!), I ended up feeling cheated out of a solid seventh installment. Too much explaining had to be done to get to the end of it. That tells me there was something wrong with it to begin with. For a series that Rowling claimed to have so well-planned in her head, the book read like a last-minute disaster.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."