I just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (#7) for the second time, and I am amazed all over again at the brilliance of J.K. Rowling. The story is a masterpiece.
Reading it through the second time was much different than the first – the first time I read so fast and didn’t catch a lot of stuff. I started it at about 1:00 am the day it came out and read for about an hour, went to sleep, got up at 7am and read until about 8pm that night to finish. I just couldn’t slow down because I was desperate to know the fate of Harry, Voldemort, and the wizarding world in general.
The second time through I read much more slowly and was better able to appreciate the intricacies of the plot. The most amazing thing about this series is how well each book works together and how previous books foreshadow events in later books. For example, although he didn’t know exactly what it was at the time, Harry saw Ravenclaw’s diadem when he hid his Potions book in the Room of Requirement in the 6th book. The most astute reader perhaps saw the foreshadowing there, but I didn’t catch it!
Also, we were familiar with the bartender of the Hog’s Head Inn before the 7th book, but she never gave his name. Aberforth was there all along, we just didn’t know it! She uses Hog’s Head as the setting for many of the most pertinent events in the story as the place where Professor Trewlawny made the prophesy about Harry and Voldemort, where Hagrid bought the dragon’s egg from Professor Quirrell, where the first “Dumbledore’s Army” meeting took place, and finally where Harry, Hermione, and Ron were saved from the Death Eaters and able to enter Hogwarts to fight the final battle against Voldemort and his followers.
Rowling knows how to thicken a plot to perfection – I loved the introduction of the Deathly Hallows into the story. I loved how we got to know more of Dumbledore’s character through his search for the Hallows and how Harry had to make a choice between Horcruxes and Hallows…the more I think about it, the more brilliant it gets.
That a single woman could have come up with this story seems impossible. I would have to say that the Harry Potter series is the best ever written. I hope Rowling writes something else as amazing as Harry Potter, and soon!
[photos from wikipedia.com]
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