Harry Potter Meets the Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub

[perlmonger]

I found the whole thing as mixed as I expected; JKR can’t actually write very well, and she had very ambitious targets here. It was actually better than I feared; she managed to pull threads from earlier books together well and the middle section, with Harry, Hermione and (Ron) was particularly good. The last parts were less successful: I suppose it was necessary to write with the future movie[¹] in mind, but the lack of casualties in front-rank human characters, Fred aside, didn’t work for me. Remus and Tonks were disposed of, but in such an offhand way that it just felt like someone-the-readers-know-but-not-too-important had to have died, and they (as two of the most interesting characters[²]) lost the spin. Dobby had to die, of course, as “free” elf or no, his job was to sacrifice himself.

I suppose there are only so many ways a Last Battle can be written; JKR I think managed to include all of them. The less said about the final postscript, the better. But overall, a worthy enough conclusion to the series and certainly one of the better of the books. I’m moving swiftly on to a re-read of The Mouse and His Child to remind myself of how good children’s literature can be.

[¹] word chosen deliberately
[²] semi-human subject to prejudice, and one of the strongest woman characters in the books, in a mixed-race marriage

But I read no explanation of why (in the UK children’s edition at least) there appears to be a Constitution class starship somewhere behind one of the Hogwarts towers. I think we should be told.