Deathly Hallows

Let me put a disclaimer out first. I am not a big Harry Potter Fan myself. The mania around the time the fifth book got released pulled me into it. Read that one, Book 1 and Book 6 before this and took the easy path out with 2, 3, 4 - Watched the movie before I could get my hands on the book or at least that's what I tell all HP Fans/Friends before they start making fun of me.

About this book, it was enjoyable yet disappointing!!! A bit of a let-down for me!!! Great expectations that were belied. Don't get me wrong. Deathly Hallows was thoroughly readable, yet too predictable - very few plot twists that one has grown to expect from JKR. The death of XXX (Don't want to be a spoiler!!!) when it came was way too sudden.

Also quite a bit of the book (e.g. The trip to xxx, yyy) can just be thrown out of it without impacting anything. If a movie is made, the climax would probably be an hour before the movie ends. The last 100 pages was all about tying all the loose ends and ensuring that there is no scope for another book.

The last paragraph though may lead you to believe that the next HP book could be called "Harry Potter and the Deadly Dudley" now that Dudley too had become a wizard. :-)

Also, parents trying to encourage their children to read it (to improve their english as suggested by Deccan Herald) - Beware!!! You can expect a lot of questions from your Class V kid if you do let him or her read this book. Questions like "What is Snogging?" are bound to arise. I know Rowling had promised a lot of Romance in here. But when all of her previous books were readable by kids and adults alike, this one surely isn't. Wizardry might be something that the kids of today might not be able to duplicate. But this book might motivate them to do some other things HP and Ginny did. ;-)