I Just Finished The Deathly Hallows.

Which means that I finally dared to read Caltech Girl's review, though she does keep it nicely spoiler-free. (The link, of course, does contain spoilers.)

She quotes the first review as pointing out that Book #7 in the Harry Potter series lacks charm, but that didn't really concern me. Given how much had to be packed into this installment, it was inevitable that its structure and pacing would be different from that of the others. I was absolutely aghast, after all, when I finished The Half-Blood Prince and realized how much ground she was going to have to cover in the final volume.

But she manages it—the trade-off being that the last book reads like an action movie some of the time. But I never remember anyone complaining that the Die Hard series lacked "charm."

The thing that Rowling attempts, in this series—and largely manages, quite well—is that she duplicates the experience of adolescence, in real time. That is, subsequent generations will be able to read one of these books per year, at an appropriate level of development. I don't think that's ever been done before: even the Little House books, though they come close, don't change in the same way. The sentences get a bit longer, but the words don't. The subject matter becomes courtship, rather than store-bought soap vs. homemade. What doesn't get broached are the Big Issues: good vs. evil, the permanence of the soul, the enticing possibility of life after death. And those books remain charming. Yet charm is not part of the experience of being 17 years old. Not in any conventional sense. It's appropriate that it falls by the wayside as one moves along in J.K. Rowling's series. (I did once read a fascinating article in American Heritage that discussed The Long Winter, and suggested it as a candidate for Great American Novel. Certainly, it is the most adult of the Little House Books, and the bravest. But it is still social history more than politics and theology.)

I found myself in these last few Harry Potter books (as with the very early ones) thinking once more about A Wrinkle in Time, which also tackled the subject of evil. And Madeleine L'Engle came to exactly the same conclusion J.K. Rowling did: when good sets out to fight evil, it is the power of love that is its main weapon.

And those who have truly given themselves over to evil cannot see this.

More below the fold, spoilers and all.

Naturally, I tried to figure a few things out, attempting to use the clues within the text more than "what would the writer think?" (Although I've thought all along that the presence of twins might make it tempting for Rowling to sacrifice one of them, reasoning that it would be enough for one set of that exact DNA to live on. And though she does that, at the end the body count includes enough beloved characters that one cannot accuse her of cowardice: the sacrifice of Remus and Tonks is particularly gutsy, though I didn't get a sense of who it was that was bringing up their baby, even in the "Nineteen Years Later" segment. I might have missed that, though.)

I was right that the Ravenclaw tiara was the unidentified Horcrux, but I mistakenly theorized throughout most of the book that it was the one belonging to the Weasley aunt. So of course I imagined that after the Hogwarts battle there would be another one, at the Weasley "safe house." This wasn't either logical (in that case, which Horcrux was at Hogwarts?) or sound from a storytelling point of view (it made far more sense that the action ended at Hogwarts). But I thought I was being clever.

I've certainly thought throughout that Snape would turn out to have been working for the Order all along: certainly the point is made that he is a master at Occlumency, and therefore would have been able to keep an important secret from Voldemort. But any careful reader knew that, I think. And I've always thought that Draco Malfoy would turn good (reluctantly, of course) at the end—but I didn't imagine that his whole family would, or that he would go as far down the path of evil as he did.

Kreacher's transformation was a delightful surprise, and I found myself buying it. Furthermore, the subplot of Rights for House Elves was masterfully handled: after all, Hermione's early efforts to eliminate this sort of slavery are treated as jokes. The point is made, time and time again, that (in contrast to slaves in real human history) the elves want to serve, to be owned. Yet that doesn't, Rowling asserts in the end, absolve anyone of the need for basic human decency. Or: love.

There were a few tiny discontinuities, such as the fact that the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack got smaller this time. (Adults never had to crawl through it in the old days, after all.)

But the entire series is still a stunning achievement, pretty much unprecedented in its scope and reach. (Tolkein fans will disagree, but I have to give the nod to Rowling because of her humor, her eye for detail, and the fact that this narrative continues through seven books, with her imaginary world holding steady—and its rules consistent.)

Finally, Rowling managed a shout-out to the blogging world via the underground radio show Potterwatch that operates during Voldemort's regime: "River," "Royal," "Rapier," and "Romulus." Sometimes telling the truth requires one to assume a new identity, no?

It's always a lovely thing when something so popular actually has the quality one is looking for. Nice when the "masses" don't turn out to be "asses," after all.