Fresh Fish Served Daily

Since Dane is out of town for RAGBRAI I decided to forgo the madness of the bookstore at midnight and instead ordered my copy of Deathly Hallows from Amazon. I started reading it Saturday evening and devoted most of Sunday to finishing it. Couple of thoughts below the cut (WARNING! SPOILERS!):

I totally called it on Snape. Granted, I didn’t guess at his involvement with Lily, but I knew at the end of Half-Blood Prince that it was way too easy that he should be a bad guy. I would have been pretty disappointed if there hadn’t been a little twist there.

Oddly, I think the death that saddened me the most was Hedwig. By the end of the book so many had died, and most of them during the same battle, that it didn’t come as such a shock anymore. Hedwig was the first to go. It didn’t help any that she’s just an animal and couldn’t defend herself.

One of my favorite things about this installment was that the little touches that make you love the characters seemed to be more prominent than previously. I loved the entire story of Kreacher. The scene in Luna’s bedroom with her paintings was wonderful. And McGonagall had the best lines and was even more kickass than usual.

Anyway, I liked it a lot, and thought it was a fitting end to the series. I’m still undecided on if it will become my favorite in the series. It’s been Order of the Phoenix (emo-Harry notwithstanding) mainly because I thought it had a good balance between silly and serious. Deathly Hallows was necessarily more serious, and I did miss seeing them spending time at Hogwarts, but it was pretty exciting.