You can't really hate the epilogue of DH because you knew it was created with a very specific intention and awareness of the massive audience in mind. There was never going to be an end where Harry became good!Voldemort, or something quite like that. Harry wasn't going to be alone and unmarried (yet happy with his successes). Harry wasn't going to be a "superhero" after Voldemort, because he had already decided he didn't like the limelight, nor was he ever particuarly good at most magic to begin with. He never found that right drive, even with his life on the line.

I love both books because you can basically ignore them and get some good stories started by starting just where HBP begins.

 

I didn't vote. Half-Blood Prince is my favorite book, and in recent years Deathly Hallows ranks second in my favorite list. I didn't like it once a read it, I felt like I was reading another fanfic, but thanks to people like Taure and afrojack (among others) I discovered things from the plot I didn't catch in the first read, so yeah... I don't think lowly of it anymore.

 

I liked HBP because of that past and background stuff related to Riddle, those Harry's routinely session with Dumbledore. And in DH, the group's journey through the forest, visit to Godric's Hollow. It was just the pairing fuck up and few plot devices that were introduced that irritated me. Other than that, I can't really say if any of them can be put in worse sort of category, at least in my opinion.

 

I’ve bolded the points that I actually didn’t like in each story.

I actually liked Half-Blood Prince. In fact, it’s my third favorite book in the series. The only part of the story I really didn’t like was the romance, which was admittedly atrocious, but I also don’t like romance in stories in general. Other than that, HBP was a pretty damn good book in my opinion.

Deathly Hallows, on the other hand, is the only Harry Potter book that I actively dislike. It may have something to do with reading many, many post-HBP fics and feeling let down by JKR’s vision of book seven, but it was also in no small part due to how damn sappy the story ended. Ugh. That isn’t to say there weren’t awesome moments (raiding Gringotts and flying out on a dragon was a holy fuck awesome moment), but it’s the only book in the series where the good points didn’t outweigh the bad for me.

 

HBP is the kind of book I wanted all along from the series: a focus on Hogwarts school life, with war stuff in the background. The only thing that brings it down is how lame Harry was. Rewrite HBP with a more competent Harry and I'd be a very happy bunny. And I'm not talking anything massive here. Just remove the 3 or 4 lines about Harry struggling with school work and nonverbal spells, and replace them with 3 or 4 lines about him working harder/finding that magic is getting easier. It does nothing to change the plot, really, but would make me infinitely happier.

 

I'm probably one of the only people on this site that didn't find Hallows nearly as offensive as it could have been. I've really only got three bones to pick with it, which is a lot less than can be said for some of the worse books in the series, and even with those issues, it's still not that bad. I've definitely seen series cappers that did far worse cougheragoncough, coughartemisfowlcough.

Globalize (or at least Continentalize) the Horcrux hunt so it doesn't seem so small, give a sense of direction to the middle of the story where it just kind of floundered around for fifty pages of forest faffing until Snape bailed them out, and have Harry confront Voldemort in a mental/spiritual battle instead of a physical one, and it's perfect in my eyes.

Even without that, the only truly irritating thing is the final fight. Voldemort maybe didn't give as much of a shit as we think he did about magic as a whole, so maybe he only wanted to hide his Horcruxes in the U.K. So that can be justified. So too is the faffing about bit. It's annoying, but also logical. The trio were kind of screwed at that point.

Harry defeating Voldemort because Voldemort basically killed himself was just sloppy, though. You can keep everything else the same. Just change that last bit at the very end. Maybe turning the Elder Wand on it's master creates another Priori Incantatum effect, and Voldemort and Harry have to fight one final duel of wills, or something. It's not like there's precident for what would happen if you threw down against the Elder Wand's master like that, so you can make up whatever you like, and it'll fly as long as it's not too absurd.

That just irritated me. Voldemort died the way he would have died against Kira, Sherlock Holmes, the Doctor, Lelouche Lamperouge, or even Dumbledore. It was the death you die when you oppose a manipulator of events. Harry isn't that. That's why it felt less like "Voldemort got set up and screwed over by someone of superior intellect" and more like "Voldemort got his shit rocked because sometimes in real life you get your shit rocked by things you can't control."

Don't believe me? Replace Harry with Dumbledore. Suddenly the scene is fucking perfect. Dumbledore looks at Voldemort sadly, seeming to not offer any resistance, and throws out a "there's still time to turn back even at this late hour, Tom," and Voldemort is like "You old fool! Enough of your blathering! AVADA KEDEVRA!" and then it just fucking bounces off some random wand Dumbledore picked up earlier and Voldemort dies. Flawless victory, that's what happens when you use the Elder Wand against it's master. The End.

But Harry isn't Dumbledore. We were expecting a Heroic victory, not a Manipulator victory. It's an unsatisfying finish because it feels as though Harry accidentially stumbled into Dumbledore's win, which he basically did, in all honesty, and that anyone else could have taken Harry's place and it would have worked out just as well, all things considered. Harry basically wasn't a necessary factor in Voldemort's downfall, and I see that as kind of a big fucking problem, seeing how the entire series is named Harry Potter And The Title.

Other than that, though, I had no real qualms with it, honestly. The Epilogue was bad, in the same sense that most openings for a piece of fanfiction are bad, but I understand why she wrote it (fuck your sequel-itus; I'm out, son), and you don't have to read it if you don't want to. You can just close the book before that part. You can make up whatever ending you like for Harry. I personally like going the "perpetual bachelor private investigator/wand for hire" route, where we flash Wizarding society forwards from the Victorian Era of England to something closer to the Roaring Twenties and Thirties of post-Industrialized America.

But then, I'm a humongous noire fanfag and think they made a terrible mistake by just leaving the Auror television show as an April Fools joke, so what do I know.

Voted HBP, not because I particularly hated it, but because cocksucking Draco Malfoy motherfucking disarmed ALBUS GODDAMNED DUMBLEDORE.

I mean Jesus you guys, at least have Snape do it or something. Nobody wants Draco to be sympathetic except for the Felton fangirls.

 

I like both books, so I won't vote.

 

I think you'll find, Lord Raine, that almost everyone who has posted in this thread seems to like DH and/or HBP. There seems to be some misconception that DLP as a whole hates those books. Maybe it was the case a few years ago, but many DLPers like the DH at the very least.

Honestly, though I'm among the haters of both books, I have to say that DH was a well put together book, and Rowling did a great job of pulling together so much of her world in that final work.

 

See books 1-7 for further examples of the above.

 

I like both. Even the worst bit of HBP, the romance between Harry and Ginny, is bad because of the execution, not the concept - I've always quite liked the pairing, although I'll concede that it's rarely done well (same for most romance in fanfic, to be fair). It's not as action packed a book as others, and there's certainly an argument that parts of it border on filler, but it's fun, a lot of it is interesting, and it's probably the funniest book in the series.

Deathly Hallows is, of the two, probably the worst, although there's a whole stack of awesome in it, right from the word go. The business with the Elder Wand doesn't quite qualify for Deus Ex Machina status, but it's introduced far too late in the game to be convincing or satisfying, and the deaths are poorly handled. I missed the fact that Tonks and Lupin were dead until Lupin showed up when Harry has the Ring, and had to backtrack. And yeah, the epilogue's a bit gloopy, but meh.

But yeah, basically, both are still good books. I think the main problem with them is that they're not the books people thought they would be.

 

Eh, I blame the really shitty keyboard in my Ipad and it's been only 3 months since I really started writing in english. I can understand just fine, though. Although I voted I hated both of them, I really liked them, but comparing them to books 1-4 that I loved... You get my meaning. And the 5th book is the one I dislike most. I just think it went the wrong direction.

To Rache, I only got drunk once in my life, among other very stupid things, I posted an incredibly stupid post on a thread here. So no more alchool for lil' me.

 

They're both awesome books when you rise out of your post-teenage trance and actually enjoy the story. Sure, we might have wanted to see some things more or bits didn't live up to our expectations but in all seriousness, with millions of HP fans all over the world with different desires as to how the book should end, I'm glad she stuck to her guns.

Millions of people all over then world have found a love for literature because of these books so at least fucking respect them rather than throwing out a bollocks thread entitled, "Which is worse?" with an equally bullshit poll.

You think they were bad? Put up or shut up. Write something better than either HBP or DH.

You're the overweight alcoholic football fan in the pub screaming, "HOW DID HE MISS THAT? HE'S FUCKIN' USELESS."

 

I don't think either are "bad" and I'm frankly sick of all the negativity.

 

I seem to be with the majority in saying that I liked them both. However, I would give the edge to DH as it validates something we already knew; how much of a bad-ass Dumbledore was.