IMO, the main failing of the book was that little of the major actors (The hallows and the myths surrounding them, the Cloak, the Taboo, etc etc...) none of that got mention in the previous books so it seemed to hit me out of nowhere. After 6 books, that is not good. the build up should have logically started with the Half-Baked plot and there should have been forshadowing in the previous books. The previous books have been very xenophobic in a sense, since Harry has remained content in his own little world. This book is the polar opposite. The contrast is disconcerting.

On the second read, with ignore on, I enjoyed it much much more.

4/5

As a novel, and as a fountainhead of a 7 book, 10~ year series,

2/5

I feel however, the potential in this book for provding fanfiction is nearly endless.

 

I've read so many posts on other sites about how parts of DH brought them to tears, and how some parts were just so sad.

It's quite easy for me to determine if something is going to make me sad. It's the Optimus Prime benchmark. Is it sadder than Optimus Prime dying?

99% of the time that answer is no.

After a second read I'm sticking with my 2/5, and still wondering how Harry named his kid Severus. I don't care how much he loved Harry's mom. He still treated Harry like absolute shit for 6 years.

 

4/5 here.

I went into this book with the idea that it was going to be worse than HBP. I knew that a few plot ideas that have become cliche thanks to fanfiction would appear because they had been fairly obvious from day one. Lastly, I knew...as much as it saddened me...that it would end up Harry/Ginny.

As much as I hate the fact that Snape was redeemed, I find that the fact he still dies, never really did jack shit to be "good", and was only ever doing it for highly selfish reasons....I can live with.

I liked the twist she gave on Dumbledore's life. He was manipulative, slightly dark in personality, but in general tried to do what was right. It made him feel more real than a lot of the other directions she could gone with it that's for damn sure.

The action was pretty good. I mean...come on, how do you get better than Getaway!Dragon in a kids fantasy book? The battle at Hogwarts read a little thin, but still managed to convey the "epicness" if you will in a "Oh we had to run through this kickass battle" kinda way.

Dobby kicking the bucket sucked. I liked Dobby, but at least he went out with style. I feel the need to write a Hero!Dobby fic now.

Neville has always been a character I wished we could see more of and in a way I got that wish here. We saw him start becoming the hero he was in this book back in OotP, then when he responded to the call for help in HBP. While the slightly uber!Neville in DH was a stretch it wasn't totally out of line.

Hermione's apparent knowledge of all spells ever invented was a bit dodgy. Along with the slight plot hole of her having modified her parents memories,...only to a chapter later say she's never used memory charms. All in all I was able to pass the trio's sudden jump in APPARENT spell knowledge as one of those off-screen things. I mean, for fucks sake, they've been at that school six years. Surely they learned SOMETHING besides the handfull of spells shown in the previous books.

Dead Mad-Eye sucked, but fit. Dead Tonks and Lupin...I saw it coming the second they asked Harry to be the godfather. Dead Fred....that SUCKED. Though the movie Drop Dead Fred was excellent.

The fact that Draco, Narcissa, and Lucius lived dissapointed. The fact that Molly Weasley killed Bellatrix had me laughing out loud. I can honestly say that, and her calling Bellatrix a bitch, had NEVER entered my mind as canon and not fanon. Big points to JKR for that bit of fun.

All in all I have to say I'm happy with the book. Room for improvement? Sure. Horrible trash not worth reading? Hardly. It was a good book, but of course it's now fashionable to claim it was "crap" and "I never liked her writing anyway." We'll just ignore those 7 books you've got there alright?

 

What I liked was Remus telling Harry to cut it out with Expelliarmus and to do something else. Granted the kid doesn't listen but I found it funny that even Rowling thought he was a shitty wizard.

 

Yup, one of the better moments in the book; Remus making Harry relize that he is shitty excuse of a wizard. I think it was the best when Remus blasted Harry across the room.

 

I honestly enjoyed the book. There were a few things that I found extremely annoying, and I'll probably edit those in once I'm not so tired, but after the train wreck that was HBP, this was reasonably good. The epilogue made me want to throw up, but I don't consider that canon. Overall, if you keep HBP in mind, this is a solid 4/5.

 

And making him learn a few flashy new spells would do...what exactly?

Mah~ It's not just the wand that makes the wizard.

 

I don't know about you guys, but I spent about half the book laughing my ass off about all the penis metaphors. Elder wand- :banana:

 

best line of the book "brains like that, you could be a deatheater son" brilliant!!

 

*reads the thread*

Wtf. Seriously, people, one person says they dislike the book and then out of nowhere comes an army that only parrots said person's arguments and gives the book awful, obviously biased ratings. I'd have no problem if you gave the book a 1 or 2/5 if you actually explained why instead of just echoing what other people say.

As for me? I just read through it. For the grand majority of the book, it ranged between "really good" and "epic", with "epic" being the action scenes. JKR really got things nailed down there: my pulse was racing all through the book, whereas with HBP I only really felt strong emotions towards the end. The ending was anticlimactic - a huge build-up, a massive battle... and Voldemort gets offed by his own rebounded curse. Wtf. On the other hand, the conversation between Harry and Co. and Dumbledore's portrait afterwards kinda made up for it. (As in, it doesn't fix things, but at least it ends the chapter on a good note and leaves me smiling)

The epilogue... well... ugh. As I'm far too pleased with the rest of the book, I'll just use the word "atrocious" to describe it, and leave it at that.


Overall?

4.5/5. 5/5 just to spite the bandwagoneers (or if you ignore the epic fail that was the epilogue.)

 

My favorite part of the story was the Weasley family reunion, and when Percy put his arm around Ron after Fred died. That was powerful.

I give it a 3/5 due to the 3 "super items"-thingy. I didn't like that.

Glad to see that Neville had grown some backbone too!

 

That part, I liked. It was always a bit of a mystery why people were so superstitious about it, and in retrospect it's easy to see, Voldemort jinxed the name in the 1970s, and then it died after 1981, only to be re-jinxed in 1997/8.

(Which also alleviates SOME of the holy-crap-what-the-h-e-double-hockey-sticks info regarding Dumbledore - the man kept placing himself at personal risk every time he said Voldemort's name in the 1970s... but then if EVERYBODY said his name, what are ~50ish Death Eaters going to do against a wizarding population 10 or 20 times the size? After the first AK, the sheer magnitude of even half-competent Stunning spells in response would have fixed things, IMO. Or, for that matter, a Muggleborn carrying an illegal gun would equalize the odds. )

 

Mhm.. This thread is funny cause Its like watching a bunch of mimes mimic each other with 1/5 or 2/5.

Anyways, I rather enjoyed the book. Neville as other as said, was just awesome. Mad Eye Neville for the win.

I, like Kender, laughed out loud when Molly killed Bellatrix and called her a bitch. That was just funny.

I rather liked that we finally have some damn history on Grindelwald and Dumbledore. It's about freaking time. It will be interesting to see how fanfiction applies those facts.

Griphook owned in this book. Period.

Luna's father made me laugh just for the simple fact of his name. Seriously, Xenophilius or something? Haha.

I was rather surprised that Snape and Lily met before Hogwarts. I was rather pleased with JKR's handling of Good!Snape.

The wand theory was something that many of us have been dying to have. Its nice to have more theory on that.

The Deathly Hallows were a bit of a deus ex machina but I could live with it.

The epilogue was just there to put a closing so she doesn't get bugged to write a Post-Hogwarts book. I expected something like that so it didn't bother much as much as I thought.

All in all, this book gets a solid 4/5 from me.

 

Liked the book, but there are a few plot holes that need to be pointed out and hopefully cleared up on later by JK.

Factual-

Levicorpus- Is a Non verbal spell yet in the Gringotts chapter Hermione incants the spell using her voice.

Hermione- In the 6th book Rowling says Hermione had every spell in her spell library non-verbal, yet in DH there she was shouting spells off everywhere.

Opinionated-

Dawlish is a senior auror yet supposedly he is a weak person so they sent him after Neville's gran. I'm sure I read somewhere Auror's were smart and needed top grades and all sorts of stuff and yet are considered weak by Neville?

It says just before Molly takes on Bellatrix, Bella has prodigous skill and can hold off 3 duellers at once and then a housewife comes along with no combat experience and shows Bella death's door?

The sorting hat- Is it like the vanishing cabinet, connected to the sword? Otherwise there is no way Neville could of pulled the sword out. Also it is burned and yet in the epilogue it is back and sorting students? A hat burns quickly and no-one puts is out and wouldnt it be really hard nigh almost impossible to repair a magical object of that power?

However, dont get me wrong I quite liked most aspects of the book and found it an enjoyable read...

 

Well, I absolutely love the book.

I personally think it's really surprising that JK Rowling had Harry&co eliminate all horcruxes in 1 book, I thought it would never work, but she did it and wrote it believable too. It was very smart of her to let Voldemort think of all the places where the horcruxes were hidden, while Harry was in 'his head', as Harry would know the places to look for.

This book is much better than HPB, or any other harry potter book, IMO.
I thought the undercover break-in in the Ministry was amazing, and the break-in in Gringotts was great. JKR made Harry smarter - he pretended to be dead, he wouldn't have done that in any other book, he would just fight and die anyways - and he's more powerful too (I absolutely loved his use of the Imperius curse- who would've thought that Harry potter would use an unforgivable - two unforgivables even, as he also used the cruciatus curse on that Deatheater).
The history of Dumbledore was very interesting, I'm glad JKR didn't make him the 'great great superman' some people thought he was. Especially that bit about Grindlewald and Dumbledore's sister was well written - JKR made Dumbledore more human than he was in all the other books.
And of course there was almost no Ginny in the book! Absolutely fantastic. I half expected that Ginny would join the trio - thank god that didn't happen. She got almost no lines at all!
And Griphook! Yay! When I read his name I thought, oh god, here we go again - cliche Griphook!Friends ahoy - but it didn't happen. Griphook was not a nice little goblin that wanted to help Harry, he was just a greedy ugly goblin.

So yeah, I liked the book. Of course it had its faults - little plot-holes and a puke-worthy epilogue, sometimes unbelievable situations where Harry gets saved (riding on a dragon out of Gringotts is IMO not believable), the final battle between Voldemort and Harry was a bit short and weird, but I think that JKR did a good job.
I think it's a 4.5/5 or more (if she had a different, or no epilogue it would've been a 5/5- who calls his child Albus Severus? Such an ugly name)

 

Ok, let's start from good points and proceed downwards.

Excellent:

- Voldemort's showmanship
Am I the only one who liked the way he manipulated and led around his death eaters, calling himself 'Lord Voldemort' and such? Not his actual plots and plans, mind you; just dialogues and general charisma.

- Cursed word 'Voldemort'
Pretty good idea. I've actually had a similar plot bunny.

- Underground radio and school resistance
Now that was just cool. Should have put in more of it.

Good:

- Manipulative!Dumbledore
*points finger mockingly* Ha ha!
Really, the old man's back-story and scheming were pretty good. The only thing missing was an expansion to some conspiracy theories in earlier years. Seems like a missed opportunity.

- Character deaths
I was pleasantly surprised by the number of character deaths. I may not like that Tonks and Dobby are dead, but I appreciate JKR's attempt to overcome her own pussyness and actually try to depict a half-realistic war.

- Areal action scenes
Pretty neat. Harry actually kills some people there (they fall stunned, but still).

Meh:

- Ginny
No, she doesn't need to go any lower. Her input in story in general was absolutely minimal. If she was a girl I approved of, I'd be pissed off I haven't seen more of her. If you're reluctant to read this because of HG, don't be; it doesn't bite... too hard.

- Redeemed!Snape
So expected. His fascination with Lily doesn't make much sense (considering the way he treated Harry), but I guess it's as good excuse as any to promote the mercy-kill theory from HBP.

- Ministry takeover
Soo, Voldemort needs less than two weeks to organize a complete takeover of the government? What the hell has he been doing for two years? On the other hand, the idea in general was good. Upping the stakes a bit.

Bad:

- Hermione
Too competent. She's like a universal band aid for any situation where some bit of knowledge is required. I mean, she did have good OWL's and all, but she's far from a prodigy like Dumbledore, Riddle or Snape. Harry and Ron are supposed to be decent students, but here, they are depicted as total bozos, thanks to her doing almost all the magic in the trio. The only reason she doesn't sink into the next category is that JKR made sure to make her rather uncertain under pressure.

- Life on the road
The central part was fucking boring. I had to literary force myself to keep plowing through all that pointless filler. I have a feeling JKR wanted to write something like LOTR, but lacked the plotting skills and foreplanning to pull it off properly. Thus, instead we have the trio wandering around aimlessly and angsting abut their cruel fate - for pages and pages and pages, until the next deus-ex machina finally steps in and gives them their next clue.

- Voldemort's sticky end
Sooo, by forcefully taking your opponent's wand, you take over the ownership over it? Wow, I guess DADA classes are a riot when practicing Expelliarmus. Everything about this finale seemed kind of random, too complicated and simply put - lame. Some good ass-kicking duel would have fit much better than this shit IMO.

- Snape's sticky end
It was just lame. Snape was depicted as a pretty kick-ass wizard here, but Voldemort shows him his little snake and he freezes, squealing like a pussy. Pathetic. I was hoping for some dramatic duel or a last stand or ANYTHING but this random fucking shit.

- Imperius and other canon upgrades
I'm displeased for the most part. Imperius is way too powerful, you can be your own secret keeper, house elves can transport people through wards and tracer spells and 17th birthday limitation(s) were just STUPID. Lots of potential plot holes if people start using these 'improvements'.

Terrible:

- The dratted epilogue
Duh.

- Harry's character
Once again doesn't learn anything new, as he spends all the free time twiddling with his dick. Refuses to use lethal measures and instead recycles the same 2-3 curses from OOTP. His entire repertoire is consisted of 10 or so spells mentioned in canon - for everything else, he relies on Hermione. Apparently, he hadn't even heard of transfiguration (didn't he get like E at OWLs?). Only a symbolic usage of Unforgivables; Imperio could have been used a LOT more often and Crucio was totally misused and unmotivated (I expected him to fry Umbridge or Bellatrix, not some random guy for being mean to some hag he barely knows). Forgives everyone, including the manipulative!Dumbledore and the greasy sallow child molester who had spent the entire life jerking off at the memory of his mum. Refuses power, preferring to be an average shmock.
Simply said, terrible. Absolutely terrible. The worst Harry ever.

----

Overall, the book had its good and not so good parts, but its main problem remains the general idea and direction JKR had taken starting with HBP.

Until OOTP, the point of HP was mostly self-empowerment; Harry and his friends were spending a lot of times learning new spells and skills that depended on their own power and dedication. Magic was fair, straightforward and fun.

But with HBP, the focus suddenly shifts towards enchanted objects and arcane/emotional crap. Harry stops practicing curses and starts tinkering with potions; Dumbledore spends all his time blabbing about some enchanted trinkets and obscure soul/love magic. Even Draco uses fucking trinkets to try and kill Dumbledore. What the hell happened with good old incantation, concentration, firm rules, homework?

DH continues in that same vein; More uber-powerful magical items, more arcane random magic and less actual brains and skills. Harry doesn't learn a single new spell during the course of book (and he has a LOT of time). Instead, we have even MORE fucking trinkets; uber wand, fabulous stone, mega cloak, yippee tents, potions, more wands, more crap... Even fucking Rowena Ravenclaw is smart only because of that super-brainomatic thingamajig on her head. And magic connecting all this is more random than ever; love sacrifices, remorse for redemption, freaky soul trips, death wish repelling AK, conquering wands like a fucking pimp hookers.

What the hell happened the whole 'wands only' rules from GOF? Isn't the whole point of being a wizard that you can do stuff WITHOUT having to carry around a bunch of junk with you? What's up with everybody suddenly squabbling over some fucking enchanted garbage, like bums in a refuse yard?

Honestly, this HP setting is a LOT different from the post-OOTP setting we love and know. I'm not sure I'd be able to write anything meaningful in this land of flashy trinkets, screwy random magic and deus-ex machines. Give me a wand, textbooks and an eager hardworking lad ready to learn and prosper; not this scavenger hunt shit.

Thus, if seen as a continuation of HBP, this gets 3/5.
As a standalone fic... err novel, no more than 2/5 (and that's generous too).

 

I don't have any more need to justify my 1.5/5 than someone else his/her 4.5/5. It is just a stupid number with little meaning other than I liked more or less compared to others. If your heart bleeds because I disagree with you, just suck some blood-replenishing potion and go cry together with the whole JKR ass-licking entourage. I blame her editors as much as her, perhaps more.

It is just a matter of what we are comparing DH to. Though I read Nabokov, Tolstoi or García Márquez, it would be stupid of me to bring them into the comparison.

My assessment is based on general fantasy novels. Think Tolkien, Scott Card, Asimov's first three Foundation books, Stanislav Lem, Ursula K. LeGuin, Michael Ende... JKR doesn't hold a candle as a narrator to your average God of fiction literature. She can measure up in terms of imagination, which is no little feat, but that's it.

Will I re-read any book of the HP series? Probably nope, I'd rather try a new HP fanfic. I love her universe, not her books. Thank gods for fanfic.

That is not to say the book is worthless, it has its moments. I agree with most people here that the Gringotts robbery is a great action chapter that got me hooked. But JKR is constantly making me tilt my head. I prefer my fictions more self-consistent and less dependent on outrageous Deus Ex Machinae.

 

Quoted for truth and emphasis.

I have to agree with damned near everything Sree says. I honestly wonder how many of you people who voted one start actually bothered to read the book. I like Bioplague. I find a lot of shit he does infinitely amusing. But I also find some of the shit he does intolerable.

The rest of you... The rest of you, it seems, have taken "court jester" to mean his opinion holds and water at all with the staff. Bio is one of the few people I've talked to that said the book was utter trite.

I didnt like a lot of shit in the book. But I thought that a lot of it was damned good. And Fuck you, Bio, if you disagree with that. In this respect, I dont give a shit about your opinion, keep it.

The Taboo was a fuck of an interesting idea, who the hell cares when it was introduced.

The Hallows themselves were interesting, no matter how much you cry "too late!!1"

And how the fuck do you know Death Eaters weren't using the imperious curse on ministry employees in the first rise? I don't recall much of THAT being mentioned in canon. Apparently they were using it enough that it was a plausible defense to get outta prison.

 

3/5

Liked the take over of the Ministry. Dumbledore's gone, along with all his power and influence, so it's natural that Voldemort would stop playing it cautious and move in for the kill.

Loved Dumbledore. Good guy, but he's the leader of the light in the middle of a war...ya gotta do what ya gotta do - including lies and manipulation. Kudos.

Disliked Hermione - What ever potiental she had as a character, was ass-raped. Seriously, she's all supportive of Harry up until fith book, then suddenly turns sceptical and completely narrow-minded. Just when she was starting to change. Poo.

Hated Chicken-Ron. Voldemort's name is made a Taboo..and all of a sudden Ron starts demanding that they stop using the name, when they don't even know it's been made Taboo - Handy that.

Also fucked, given the fact that they haven't even faced Voldemort recently! Just Death Eaters ect. Obviously the Hat only put him in Griffindor because he was unsuited for any of the house's, but Weasley's are always put in Griffindor.

Overall not a exciting read, but I enjoyed putting my feet up, sitting in front of the fire, drinking a whisky and paging through.

Though, it must be said - J.K. Rowling is to characterisation what Adolf Hitler was to human rights.

Not enough character depth.