astolat

I had fun on line Friday night, even if there was really not much of a party going on by the time I got to the bookstore, but it was nice out and there was a Coldstone Creamery open, and people wearing Hogwarts scarves all over, and while we were standing on line someone came by handing out these advertising cards for a martial arts dojo for kids, with picture of cute little girl on one side, cute little boy on the other, both looking very earnest in their little martial arts gis, and at the bottom on the boy's side this truly priceless ad copy: Defense Against The Dark Arts classes! Come learn how to use your "wand" against the dragon! (Quotation marks theirs!)

Being the evil-minded people we are, we laughed and laughed.

And then I stayed up until 4:30 am reading the book, and finished it Saturday morning, and have to say, that thanks to the ad copy I was in exactly the right mindset to properly enjoy the whole hilarious bit after Harry has, uh, symbolically castrated Draco and is now using his wand, where a wand knows its master has been defeated, and yields to the conqueror, and not only that but every other wand they might own knows it too and recognizes its new master, and Harry then announces to the world that he has uh, mastered Draco -- AWESOME, and I now want the story where the wizarding world hierarchy is all about conquering other wizards so you are the master of their "wand"... yeah. *coughs* I make my own fun, what can I say.

Things I really liked -- I know this will sound minor, but the fairy tale of the Deathly Hallows, which was a lovely little pocket of a story -- well-written, and a refreshing interlude, and I am always a sucker for anything like that, written in a different style and set apart from the main narrative, that fleshes out the universe.

The bits with Harry and Hermione in the graveyard -- I've never been an H/H shipper, but that could make me one. The image of them walking quietly through the snowy deserted graveyard with their arms around each other, after Hermione's given him the roses for the grave, was just very tender and loving, so much more for me than any of the overt romance, except the Ron/Hermione kiss was really yay.

Dobby's funeral was effective and touching also, and the moment of Harry going to his death when he brought back his dead to escort him through the dementors -- I thought the dialogue there was wonderful, simple and real, and in that scene I really felt both Harry's courage and fear.

I did come away from this whole book liking Harry a lot more than before. I generally have a knee-jerk contrary reaction to being told-not-shown that a character is awesome and a real hero and fabulous, and Rowling was telling me for six and a half books that Harry is brilliant without particularly showing me anything I found convincing evidence, until this book. In retrospect I really like, now, how Harry sort of bitches and yells a lot (mostly about people not handing him plans or telling him clearly what to do), but then when he IS told, okay, here is the plan: you go to Voldemort and DIE -- he doesn't say a word, just sucks it up and goes.

Of course it is awful that he can do that, without bitching, just walk straight to his death -- misery-inducing if you think about it, that he doesn't value himself to the point that he's perfectly willing to accept that his job in life is in fact to die, and there's no alternative, no way out. But I buy it, given everything that's led up to this, and it makes him someone both extraordinary and also sad, and now I want to cuddle him and give him chocolate and therapy.

Seeing more of the Ravenclaws and Ravenclaw House was great, especially the password on the door. Having seen OOTP the movie last weekend totally helped make Luna for me, also -- great actress they found for her, just perfect, and I could hear her voice saying the lines. And Neville! I ♥ Neville, and also this glorious work of art. ♥ I loved that he was the one to kill Nagini, and that Godric's sword came to him (although, hey, that must have pissed off those goblins if the sword can still be yanked out of the sorting hat, huh?)

Okay, bail now if you don't also want the stuff I didn't like! (Er, not that you aren't welcome to read and disagree and throw rocks or whatnot. Just I don't want to harsh anyone's buzz. *g*)

In general, I thought the pacing of the first two-thirds was terrible, all the wandering in the wilderness killing time so it would fill out a year, and the way she kept Harry constantly thinking "Damn! Nothing is happening! We're just wandering around in a tent not accomplishing anything!" did not appease me. It also didn't make things better that what ended the wandering in the woods bit was the absolutely horrible idiot moment where Harry *says Voldemort's name* despite being warned that it really is booby-trapped now. I really just goggled at the page. I did like the bits in Godric's Hollow and with Luna's father, and Hermione's awesome getting them out while preserving his story and protecting Luna.

I've thought that all the books starting with 4 could have done with being shorter by a third, and that it hurts them to be as long as they are; in this case, it was *so* slow at the beginning that it hurt my enjoyment of the later parts, because I was bored with all of them and reading fast. Re-reading some of the later parts as I write this, picking and choosing, I'm enjoying it more. It annoys me, because I can't help but feel that there is a crisp, exciting book of about 300 pages just as good as Azkaban hidden in every one of books 4-7, and I would like to read them.

There was a lot of exposition, wandlore and Hallows and Horcruxes, and especially the complete mess of the resurrection stone -- that was actually a ring, which was a Horcrux that killed Dumbledore and got broken, except it's not a ring, it's a stone, and the ring is broken but the stone isn't, and now the stone, or is it the ring, is in the Snitch, and just, what? huh? The best I can come up with is the stone was *set* in a ring, and when the ring was broken the stone came out, but really I am just guessing, Maybe I missed something, but it would have been helpful to have that made a little more clear. It's not like she wasn't interrupting for exposition anyway. :>

Then there were the bits with Griphook the goblin in Bill's house, where they're hanging out with him, but he's bloodthirsty and he eats weird food and his feet are dirty and he's really kind of unpleasant! Gosh, it's too bad goblins can't be like those awesome house-elves who get special powers from subservience and will swap around their politics and be ecstatically happy to be doing menial labor for you once you just show them a tiny bit of kindness. *facepalm*

I was also disappointed when she had all the Slytherins desert Hogwarts at the end. I get this is a taste issue, because I am one of those people who often likes the villains best and wants them to be interesting and competent and done in shades of grey rather than black, where obviously for Rowling it is all about Harry and the heroes, and she wants them in shades of cream against a background of solid black. But hey, Slytherin scarves and t-shirts sell too, so throw us a bone? *wistfully*

I have been resigned to Draco being a cringing vicious git since book 5 (and hey, actually he was better than I had braced myself for! with even a few slashy moments aside from the whole Harry using his "wand" thing, haha), and the Death Eaters a bunch of groveling strawmen once Voldemort actually came on stage, but this thing where the entire *house* is either evil or stupid or cowardly annoys. Yes, it would be great to have a hat that could sort out all those crappy people at the age of 10, but then maybe you should just expel them instead of keeping them at the school and teaching them dangerous magic? Maybe Hogwarts is like a private school and they're the legacy kids of the alumni who pay for everything.

And I couldn't even get very excited over Snape being a good guy, because though I know people have been worried about it, I thought it was completely obvious that he was going to be, so it wasn't a surprise, and his actual death and the revelation were IMO really wasted. Snape's already dead by the time Harry finds out, and lamely, because Voldemort kills him to get control of the wand, a mistake, and on top of that, instead of mercifully avada kedavraing his loyal servant, he has Nagini bite him so Snape can die slowly and conveniently leaves the room with enough time for Harry to collect Snape's helpful memories, which Harry then goes up to the headmaster's office to look at just because he is depressed and hasn't anything better to do; it's not like Voldemort is about to attack in five minutes or anything. Uh.

Finally, on one level my schmoopy heart was warmed by the epilogue of them all putting their kids on the train -- really I feel it was intended as "And they all lived happily ever after" with a few fun details -- but on a meta level, I found it a real bummer. Not so much because she paired everyone off in the boring obvious heteronormative ways, because I knew she was going to, and also fandom can and will fix that in a second, but because of the awful sense of inertia. It's nineteen years into the future and they're all in exactly the same places they were nineteen years before, both in relation to each other and in relation to their environment. In fact, in the same places they were twenty-six years before, because all the friendships and pairings are basically as they were set up in the very first book. The kids are being put on the same train, to go to the same school, to what, re-enact their lives? Without Voldemort gumming up the works, presumably, but in the context of the backstory with Grindelwald, you sort of expect that hey, it's just about time for another Dark wizard to come along, who will have to be faced by Harry and Ron and Hermione's kids! and hey, we get to tell the whole story over again!

So the feeling I walked away with is, what Harry fought for was to lock them into this idyllic 1950s-esque suburbian status quo, where to me, his fight should have been all about diversity and progress, while Voldemort's side were the ones wanting to lock them into some kind of false-nostalgia for a time when wizards did things the Good Old Way. At least there should have been goblins in the train station putting THEIR kids on the train too; a tiny little house elf with giant eyes and quivering ears, timidly getting aboard. The kids going to Hogwarts on a high-speed maglev train in Muggle clothes with cellphones, rolling their eyes at Mom and Dad for still going on about that boring pureblood and muggleborn stuff, when everyone knows what's really important right now are ipods and environmental wizardry, etc. Or something -- just a sign that no, we're not frozen in time.


All right, enough of that! Where's the fanfic! Is there any Harry/Draco yet? *coughs*

Actually, I went looking on del.icio.us and while I haven't found any DH stuff yet, I did stumble on a really amazing post-HBP story by fourth_rose, The World of The Living, which I'm sure everyone in the fandom has read but I highly recommend to anyone like me who's been out of it for years. *g*

I also have to share this, passed along by bethbethbeth, which is mightygodking's hilarious page-by-page summary of DH. Read and lol.