merelyn | (no subject)

I just finished it. Some general thoughts:

*The first chapter: BRILLIANT. The minister exchange did a fabulous of setting up the scene and was a very clever way to do the whole "previously on Harry Potter..." recap. The dread and sense of darkness was there immediately. I only wish she'd followed through on it. For the rest of the novel you only get vague mentions of people getting killed, but nothing near as unsettling as the first chapter.

*Harry: Okay, after suffering through Harry's angry, angsty (justifiable) pissiness all through Book 5, I was left wondering where the hell it went. After the whole Sirius breakdown at the end of OoTP I would have expected it to be even worse. Instead we get stoic, suddenly all mature Harry? A very quick change indeed. Maybe he was just going through the stages of grief thing. I felt like she could have at least given us even a paragraph to explain this.

*The romance: Hey, Ron and Hermione? back in Book 4 the whole bickering, making each other jealous thing was cute and amusing. By now, it has worn very, very thin. Just get the fuck together already and stop being so annoying!

Tonks and Remus: eh, whatever. Kind of clumsily inserted, IMO. Still, the whole young and whole speech at the end just made me want to give Remus a hug.

Harry and Ginny: ECK! I've figured it out: JK Rowling wasn't convinced either. It showed. Whereas she's totally capable of doing romance stuff between other people, when it comes to Harry it all just falls flat, because JKR knows, as I do, that single!Harry is how it must be. :) Harry's feelings toward Ginny sounded a lot like his feeling to Cho all over again. There was nothing- NOTHING- to build this up at all. He didn't even like her at the beginning of the book! Way too short. The kiss after the Quidditch game seemed v. premature and just...off. And as for her side of things, it was completely platonic, and then suddenly they're making out? WTF? Just no.

My belief in single!Harry has been one I have firmly been commmitted to for years and years, the girlfriend being the one thing I was sure wouldn't happen. All through the H/G romance bits, I kept being like, "But wait! Harry's not supposed to be with anyone!!! He's the hero architype! He has to be alone! He's Luke Skywalker! AGH!" Thankfully, Harry eventually saw the wisdom of this. (Okay, so he didn't say it in those words, but still.) Really though, the speech to Ginny was far too dramatic for what the situation called for. "We can't be together, *angst*" Harry, hun? You were barely together to begin with! So H/G met as a end as equally and ridiculously abrupt as their beginning. I was too pleased with the result to mind much. Ha! Take that!

The H/D shippers must be pleased, incidentally. Draco's character came out almost exactly as fanon has always predicted. I think they're the only major slash pairing that has emerged unscathed from Books 5 & 6. I'm not really feeling the slash from these books anymore, I have to admit. Sadness.

*Percy- one of my favorite characters. I actually liked that it wasn't resolved just yet (mostly because I fear how it will be resolved). Makes me want to write fic, because damn, I would love to tackle Percy's view of Fudge's sacking, the reveal of the Ministry's ineptitude, and even more interesting, what his conversation with Rufus Scrimgeour before the Christmas scene must have been like, when it must have been perfectly obvious that Percy *was* just being used to get to his family, just as Arthur told him before. And when he actually sees them again, knowing they were right all along? Oo-hoo. Fascinating. I wonder what they're going to do with the Ministry and Percy in the next one. Scrimgeour must play some part in the next book; I'm curious as to how his character will pan out.

*The overall narrative: Book 5 was a sort of 'pile of the crap' fest, where things just got worse and worse, the events all plummeting downward to the Department of Mysteries showdown. Granted, this made the book one of the least enjoyable reading experiences I've ever had, but at least it was going somewhere.

Book 6 lacked a certain...drive. It felt more like the earlier books, a fact I enjoyed superficially. However, I felt that JKR did an about-face with all the darkness and raised stakes that she had in OoTP. She pussied out. The whole Horcruxes thing was interesting, but the sense of immediate danger just wasn't there. The cave showdown felt like it came out of nowhere. And the end, where you just get told what happens between the Death Eaters and the DA/Order fight? Not that compelling, sorry.

*That being said, Snape: The drama, oh goodness, the drama. I was truly hooked in the book for the second chapter on. For me, the Snape drama was really what kept the book chugging along, and definitely provided the most gripping moments. Seriously, how brilliant has JKR been with his characterization? For a Snape fangirl like me, I spent the second chapter going, "Oh, Severus, what a fabulous sneaky actor you are, yes, keep on playing Bella. Heheh." Of course, by the end of the scene, I was like, "Oh shit, what have you gotten yourself into, this is not good, not good at all." This held true for the rest of the book, where even someone like me, who is (basically) sure of his ultimate goodness, doubted Snape for just for a moment or two in every scene he was present in.

I am still in COMPLETE DENIAL over the ending. I just can't, can't believe that Snape would want to kill Dumbledore. I will continue to hold that he had to do the Unbreakable Vow to keep his cover, that Dumbledore knew all about it, and that Snape killed him because he was forced to, and that look of loathing on Snape's face was reserved almost purely for himself. The Dumbledore/Snape relationship has always been fascinating to me, and I really have to believe that Dumbledore did have a reason to trust him. Dumbledore knew he was going to die anyway, I think.

Overall, I was impressed with how fine a line JKR got Snape to walk. I'd be interested to see how it all played out for those who aren't Snape fans. The most interesting thing, I think, is that we still don't know for sure what side Snape was ultimately on; I think you can make equally viable arguments for his Betrayal of the Order as well as for the idea that he is still good and will ultimately come back in the next book. I am eagerly awaiting this.

(Also, how tickled was Mere by the last page? TRIO LOVE 4EVER! The three of them so belong together. *huggles icon* OT3!)

ETA: Also, dude, how much stuff does JKR have to cover in the last book? Finding all of the remaining Horcruxes and the war and the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort? I hope she can cram it all in.