Bookshelf

🎨 Impressions

First off, this is a great and highly enjoyable book in itself, as well as a worthy conclusion to the seven book spanning saga that is the Harry Potter canon. Another solid 5/5 stars fun and exciting read. I don’t regret starting this series in my late 30s in any way, which is not to say that there’s any particular age at which it’s more enjoyable. I read the final chapter on a flight to London with my whole family, where the two oldest daughters (10 and 12 years old), my wife and I visited the Warner Brother Studio Tour of the Harry Potter movies. Of which I had seen two, about twenty years ago. My wife has been a fan of the story and my two oldest daughters have read all books during the past few months for the first time. Visiting the studios has been a perfect way to end this three month long Harry Potter phase of my life for now.

Now, the book. One of the exciting things of the series is to witness how Rowling’s writing skills have improved over the years. Some criticisms I had for the earlier books have disappeared, e.g. the often rather slow openings. Deathly Hallows gets right into it after a short nostalgic closing chapter at the Dursley’s, and we witness the first huge fight. A number of Death Eaters attack seven different Harry’s, who are his polyjuice-potioned friends, accompanied by the Order of the Phoenix members. Not even ten percent into the book, two characters already die. First, Harry’s poor owl Hedwig is just obliterated by a Death Eater curse. And the tough old fighter and planner of this escape, Mad-Eye Moody is hit as well and falls to his demise. That’s a big blast against our heroes and a sure sign of the things to come. This book won’t be a walk in the park for them and the people surrounding Lord Voldemort clearly present a bigger threat than anticipated. Their powers seem unmatched.

I couldn’t help but think that especially this opening fight scene on brooms in the sky was written with the idea of making it into a huge block buster movie afterwards. Even tough a couple of the former books were also written while the movies were already being produced and released, they didn’t feel like movies as much as this one to me. This is okay, and the confusing way in which the fight evolves does work in a written form, too. My heart rate was clearly elevated as I rushed through the pages trying to find out how this scene will unfold.

Afterwards, there’s some needed room to breathe in the book. Harry, Ron, and Hermione try to find out more about Voldemort’s Horcruxes, which they need to destroy first in order to finally defeat him. The late Professor Dumbledore left them each an ominous item somehow connected to finding out the truth without giving away too much of what they already know about Voldemort’s secret. What a thin line to navigate! The most valuable currency in this book clearly is information. There is so much secrecy involved, and strategies of what to reveal to whom at which point are deployed by so many characters, it’s at times hard to keep track. I find myself often wondering why certain leads weren’t just explored earlier, leaving me with a feeling of having discovered a sort of plot hole I couldn’t put my finger on perfectly. At times it seems constructed, is what I’m trying to say. Like the scaffolding of the story breaking at a certain point and being repaired with duct tape in a haste. But, it’s not enough to kill the illusion for me. I’m still highly invested.

This all made me realize that I identify most with Hermione in this book. She is the only one who really has a strategic way of navigating through this entangled mess of conflicting interests. And that is prioritizing acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is power, especially so in the Harry Potter universe. It seems odd that this isn’t the main focus of the characters who are in even more dire situations. And after six years of magic school, how can the others all know so little? For example, Ron is practically useless as a wizard. At the end of every book they had these apparently quite difficult exams and were spending so much time revising what they had learned, but what exactly is that? They still know nothing about the most relevant bits of history, they know just a handful of spells and curses, and many of those still fail or go wrong anyways. What have they been doing?

After about a quarter of the book we get the Harry Potter version of the Red Wedding, known from the 2000 book “A Storm of Swords”, the third book in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series which was the basis of the popular HBO show “Game of Thrones”. Seven years later, Rowling published this story, and it’s honestly nearly as gripping as the impressive storytelling of that George R. R. Martin scene, even though there are no violent deaths. It’s a major turning point, because now the Ministry of Magic, which is the de facto government of the Witches and Wizards, has been overrun and taken over by Voldemort and his Death Eaters. The previous Minister, a person named Rufus Scrimgeour, has been killed and the wedding party at the Weasley’s place, where the nucleus of the people actively involved in the resistance are located, is stormed by an army. Our protagonists suffer a huge blow and the situation is looking very bleak.

Voldemort and his people have now gone fully Nazi Germany. So-called Muggle born and “half-bloods”, who are people who have a mixed descent of magical and non-magical ancestry, are treated like the Jews were treated in the beginning of the Third Reich and now have to register first before getting an unfair and biased trial and then being sent to prison just for not having what they consider to be full-blood. The main newspaper called The Daily Prophet is used purely as a propaganda device from now on. Lies are spread, doubts and fears are nourished. Voldemort wants to do a sort of ethnical cleansing of the whole Wizarding world. It’s still not sufficiently explained how he came to this idea and conviction, but then again, it’s also very tough to actually pinpoint how Hitler and other evil dictators arrived at their plans which then lead to all this unnecessary suffering created for so many people. Is it just a blind desire for unlimited power, nothing more?

Quite possibly there’s some underlying fascination with this evil behavior hidden somewhere in all of us. So many popular stories follow a similar development which seems to be based on Hitler’s rise to power. The Lord of the Rings (Sauron) and Star Wars (Emperor Palpatine) come to mind.

How is the Hogwarts school still open? I’ve been wondering this for the past three books. Who in their right mind would still send their kids there? And now that it’s openly in the hands of the people who clearly are planning a genocide? I would have expected a bigger Fight or Flight response from the normal folks. More people uniting to build a resistance and also more people to flee the country. But both doesn’t really happen, apparently. People are just still sending their kids into the school which is now being headmastered by a murderer. Granted, many people don’t believe Harry’s account of the killing of Dumbledore due to the propaganda released by the authorities, but Snape’s affiliation with the Dark Lord is known just as it is known he has risen again.

As the plot moves on and our three heroes try and move forward with finding those Horcruxes, I was amazed at Rowling’s idea to have them get frustrated with each other. While it may not be a classic plot device, its fitting nature adds a layer of bleakness to the entire endeavor. Harry’s lack of leadership leads to the hopelessness arising in the others and they start fighting until Ron even leaves them, causing Hermione to cry for weeks. They visit Harry’s parents’ graves, get attacked by Voldemort’s snake Nagini, narrowly escape that villain and in the process get Harry’s special wand destroyed. No plans left, no one to help. That is such a sad low point and Rowling created this situation so perfectly. They just seem so lost at going at this insurmountable task. It drags you in. At times they are spending literal weeks in their hidden tent somewhere in the countryside without doing anything. Not following up on any leads, not trying to talk to anyone or ask for help. This strikes me as odd, but since they can’t give away any information about what they’re trying to do, it’s in line with the constructed plot.

We learn a bit more about Dumbledore’s character in this book. He isn’t the God-figure he seemed like. This adds a nice touch to his previously one-dimensional character. In the end it’s still clear that he learned from the mistakes he made early in his life and spent the largest part of it trying to make amends for it, but I was wondering if some of the strategic information-withholding towards Harry was a type of sinister chess move on his part. It doesn’t seem likely to me that being surrounded by this much danger for so many years would make a headmaster into a person which would be careful to tell people who could step up to the challenges how they should go about it. Maybe this is another bit that was constructed afterwards by Rowling so everything kind of fits together.

Harry Potter. What exactly is his motivation? Is it still revenge on Voldemort for revenge’s sake? He doesn’t mention it, but does he feel like he needs to kill him to bring justice to him because of the murder of his parents? Harry keeps saying that he needs to do the things Dumbledore wanted him to do. Like a godly plan he just has to follow and can’t question. Obviously, it’s for the greater good if Voldemort is stopped, but it doesn’t clearly seem to me that that’s Harry’s motivation. Is he even interested in the wellbeing of others that much? It seems questionable to me at times. I find it hard to identify with him in this book.

I was also contemplating why Slytherin still seems so attractive to many people, both in the story and also in real life. Is it maybe because they have a clear goal and are active and passionate about reaching it? The good guys are always just reacting, resisting, trying to keep the status quo as it is. As bad and evil as the plans may be, they are the ones who try to shape and change the world. The others are merely existing, not unlike plants. Maybe that’s it?

This book echoes the previous books’ tendency to have a long build-up during the middle part of it, but here it’s often punctured by exiting scenes, such as the protagonists getting captured and brought into Malfoy Mansion, which happens after about 60% of the book. It’s fun to see how the selfishness of the Death Eaters gets in their way, and their collective fear of their leader nearly paralyzes their ability to make decisions about this new prisoner situation. Oddly enough, bratty Draco isn’t so bratty anymore. He refuses to identify the transfigured Harry, thereby playing a role in saving Harry’s life. Is he afraid? Is he pitying Harry? He spent the last book trying to live up to his master’s plans for him and kill Professor Dumbledore, but wasn’t able to go through with it in the end – has he lost his evil drive or maybe even gained a conscience? Clearly there’s been something of a character development, but it’s not on the nose.

During the escape from Malfoy Mansion, another two deaths happen. The sneaky traitor Wormtail and the beloved little house-elf Dobby both lose their lives because they wanted to help Harry, even though in Wormtail’s situation it was just a flicker of an idea to do the right thing that brought him down. It isn’t openly stated, but the death toll of people who tried to further Harry’s cause is mounting. He is leaving an actual trail of dead. You feel it in the words though, how heavy this weighs on Harry. Brilliantly done by Rowling.

By 70% of the book we have now had four side quests. All of them are separated by weeklong breaks, sometimes even monthlong ones. Is this engineered so as to have the whole story arc again span a full school year? Because there doesn’t seem to be a reason for Harry and the two to be planning a rather simple heist like the Gringotts break-in for more than a few days. It might be the breather we needed, though.

Coming back to those four side quests. The first one’s objective was to safely move Harry away from the Dursley home. It succeeded but resulted in two deaths, Hedwig’s and Mad-Eye’s. Second, we had the trip to Godric’s Hollow, where Harry’s wand got destroyed and there were no gains. Thirdly, at the Lovegood’s place we learn about the Deathly Hallows but the protagonists get imprisoned right after, Wormtail and Dobby die. And lastly, the Gringotts heist, where they succeed in attaining the Horcrux but at the price of getting their accomplice Griphook killed and revealing their plan of getting and destroying all Horcruxes to the previously oblivious Lord Voldemort. Every advance comes with little gain if any, but always at a heavy cost. It still feels like they are mostly stepping in the dark and it’s really easy to empathize.