Finite Incantatem

Am I tired of the Comic-Con recap?  A little bit, but at least I can rest assured that it's going to be a while before anything reaching this level of nerdiness is posted on ze blog.

I'll bring it back bit by bit though, with my thoughts on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." 

Having only been a relatively recent Potter fan - I started my interest after four books had already been published - and having just seen the movie adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," my fervor was high.  Because it was the last of the lot, reading through the book actually instigated me finishing Haunted well faster than I had planned.  As soon as Grace and I receive dour copies from Amazon (in a special Harry Potter muggle-proof box, no less) we tore into them. Yes, it was a marathon read at over 750 pages, but it never really felt that long.

Obviously, I loved it.

For anyone who hasn't read it, I'll try and remain as spoiler-free as possible.  Not that it would make any sense in the first place, but I'll try.  When last we left our hero, Harry had been tasked with an important mission by his mentor and headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, Voldemort had waged all-out war on the wizarding world, and the entire planet was in imminent peril.  Gifted with this dangerous task, Harry and his pals, Hermione and Ron, with little clue as what to do, seek to defeat Lord Voldemort using their hearts and their heads.  As bare as the plot sounds, there is much much more involved.

J.K. Rowling, the author, has wound up the complexity of her plot so tightly, you would imagine her editor would go insane from the numerous dangling plot threads.  Surprisingly, there are very few cracks in the Hufflepuff Cup she's cast.  As airtight as the events leading up to the climax are, the story is just as gripping.  I found myself rapt by dilemmas, surrounded by the intricacies of emotion, and engrossed by every distress visited upon the lead characters.  There are deaths and there are casualties, and Ms. Rowling really makes every one of them count.  Nothing is brushed off or sugar-coated, the attitude towards death and danger is just as foreboding as it would be in our own, living, non-fiction world.

That's what the books have always been about, interestingly enough.  In many recent interviews, Ms. Rowling has been frank about how her own mother's death greatly influenced her authorship of the series.  Honorably, I believe it serves a greater good as the pathos shines through what lesser authors would write as schmaltz.  What's more, the emotional content has always been the strong suit of these stories.  Most especially in this book, and the last, when death comes home to roost.

What I've always loved about them, aside from the large heart at the center of all her novels, is the expansive size of her imagination. While some fantasy novels are content to take an old concept and call it their own, these books have elevated the magic of, well, Magic.  The mythology for me has always been most fascinating aspect and the newness of the visuals really spin her world in a new cloth.  The concept of witches and wizards is quite old, but her treatment of their lives as ordinary is what makes each installment believable.

The extraordinary is what makes them loveable.

I bid a fond farewell to this world that Ms. Rowling has created.  While she takes a well-deserved holiday, and I myself take a break from reading for a short, short while (to soak in the "Deathly Hallows"), I'll be thinking more about what these books have meant not only to me, but to her adoring fans.