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| Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) | 
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| Author: J. K. Rowling
Creator: Mary Grandpre
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $34.99
Buy Used: $2.50
You Save: $32.49 (93%)
New (212) Used (382) Collectible (102) from $2.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  3236 reviews
Sales Rank: 83
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Edition, Book Seven (7)
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 784
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.4 x 2.2
ISBN: 0545010225
EAN: 9780545010221
ASIN: 0545010225
Publication Date: July 21, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Recycled Library Edition
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| Customer Reviews:
 Don't waste your money!!! July 21, 2007
126 out of 493 found this review helpful
JKR decided to write this book as fast as she could. Too many spelling and grammar mistakes. Not to mention all the loopholes. Hermione wipes her parents memory, but can't remember how to do it to Death Eaters less than 100 pages earlier? Ginny offers her body to Harry as a birthday gift and is left on the sidelines waiting for her man to return home from war. Hermione is turned into a crying, shaky, and emotional wreck. Ron needs a "how to guide" in order to learn how to act around girls. Harry comes off clueless and and A-Hole at times. JKR decided to kill off people, for what seems like no reason at all.
As far as the plot...WAY TOO MANY HOLES. The horcruxes become a subplot to the Deathly Hallows. Voldemort dies the same way he did in Book 1, through his own rebounding curse. JKR had this build up to LOVE being the power-he-know-not, but LOVE isn't a factor in the final victory. Yes Harry gets his family in the very end, but no where along the line does he have ANYONE tell him that they love him. Too many problems to mention. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY.
Why did it have to end like this? August 17, 2007
113 out of 169 found this review helpful
I've been a huge fan of the Harry Potter series for a long time now, and I have to say, these books were all brilliant up until the seventh book. This one was overly long and drawn out, poorly written, and predictable to a fault, except of course when something ridiculous happens.
Rowling breaks the rules of her world in just about every other chapter. Problems and plot twists are consistently summed up by the simple explanation of "something strange happened that nobody ever knew was possible". Examples: the sparks from Harry's wand, Kings Cross, Ron coming back.
The entirety of the wand plot fits this bill perfectly. Nobody had any inkling previous to this book that disarming someone's wand made you the rightful owner of the wand...yet that fact is of the utmost importance in the final scene when Voldemort learns that Draco is the rightful owner of his wand since Draco was the one that cast the disarming spell...wait a minute, all of the characters have been busy disarming each other all throughout the course of this series! That must mean that all of the wand ownerships have been discombobulated somewhere along the lines! As it turns out, the fact that there has been established precedence over the use of the wand-ownership rule has no bearing on the fact that Rowling needed something to happen and so she broke the rules to make it so. Also note that Dumbledore beat someone whose wand was apparently "unbeatable". Way to stay consistent!
Other times, the author includes obvious references to other fantasy/literature and world history events just for the heck of it (and of course, to add an almost pointless plot twist besides). Examples: Griffyndor's sword, the locket, the fact that the entire ministry of magic is Nazi Germany, etc.
The book was stretched out needlessly just so that it could conform to the school year and the pacing of the original books. Harry and Hermione wander aimlessly around the world going on quests that lead nowhere and add nothing to the plot (Godric's Hallow, endless camping sequences). In addition, many characters from previous books that were unimportant to the plot of this book make their unnecessary (and page-wasting) return (Krum and Rita Skeeter in particular, but there were more).
If you're like me and you enjoy reading about some of the minor characters like Luna, Ginny, MaGonnagal, Draco, etc...be prepared, because they get almost no screen time whatsoever, with the single exception being Neville. Ginny is consistently kept out of the way because she is underage, and this volume goes to show that her entire purpose in the series was just to eventually become Harry's girlfriend. A very disappointing way to develop her character.
Then there are the main characters, who consistently act out of character, and prove to be rather poor role models for the children who are reading these books. Hermione and Ron suddenly both become incompetent wizards who yell at each other ceaselessly, Harry performs an unforgivable curse and apparently feels no remorse whatsoever, Lupin goes from being a strong positive influence into a weakling, and that scene between Harry and Ginny in her bedroom was a bit too suggestive for a children's book if you ask me. In addition, Ron gives Harry a book about how to seduce witches (even though he should clearly be able to tell that Harry is interested in his little sister- yuck!).
As far as I can count, Hagrid should have died three times during the course of the book, yet lives on despite. The same can be said of Lucius Malfoy, who seems to get an endless number of screwups and still remains on Voldemort's good side. Of the characters who do die, there is often very little reason that they should have died, and even less explanation of who killed them and how it was done. In the cases where we do see the character's dying, it is often for unexplained reasons (just what exactly happened to wormtail's hand where it suddenly became possessed?...oh yeah, another bit of "mystery magic").
Let's not even get into the epilogue. That was a complete and total waste of space, talking only about the five characters whose fate we could have guessed from as early as book 3...and where does Rowling get those awful names?
As others have mentioned, the addition of the Hallows added nothing to the plot whatsoever. The horcruxes were plenty on their own, and because Dumbledore spelled them out in detail in the last book, there was no mystery there. In fact, there was no defining plot line like there were in other books. Every action scene basically uncovered one of the missing horcruxes, so there was no "oh wow, I wasn't expecting that!" moments like there were in every other book of the series. It was like watching the characters go through a checklist.
And then there were the totally unbelievable sequences that catch you off guard with just how ridiculous they are. Can anyone tell how Harry managed to crash land the motor bike exactly at the spot where he was supposed to land, or how Hagrid managed to survive jumping off said flying motorbike, and live to tell the tale? Why can Voldemort suddenly fly on his own? why did voldemort choose to light the sorting hat on fire and use that to torture neville? Why is it that nobody seems to be able to tell that Harry is still breathing in the forest scene? Of course I know that this is a fiction story, and fantasy besides, but it really sucks the realism out of the world, which Rowling has worked so hard to keep up for the first six books, when these sorts of things happen.
Then, in quite possibly the only worthwhile and unexpected twist in the entire book, Rowling manages to all but ruin one fan-favorite character. The rest of the story unfolds almost exactly as we all expected it to from the beginning. Snape's character development was one of the only worthwhile pieces in the book.
Overall, a very poor way to end an otherwise phenomenal series.
Something Went Awry July 21, 2007
110 out of 305 found this review helpful
I think it's safe to say that Harry Potter has officially jumped the shark. I've never expected great things from J.K. Rowling; she was never among the ranks of brilliant writers, but she wrote fairly well, and she wrote a story enjoyable enough to follow for the past decade...
with the exception of Deathly Hallows. I'm beginning to wonder what happened to the special continuity editor they hired to keep things straight or to the copy editor. There are typos (e.g. "Barry Crouch" instead of Barty Crouch) and serious plot holes. There's a curse word in the book; I'm glad I caught it before I gave a copy of the book to my young niece so I could explain the context to her, but I almost considered not giving her a copy of the book, because it's not really appropriate for a nine year old, unlike every other book in the series.
The entire book seems forced and contrived like Rowling was merely writing to fulfill a contract and not because she was passionate about Harry Potter any longer. I've been wondering if she perhaps employed ghost writers to finish the novel; The Deathly Hallows is unsatisfying, not because of what happens in the story, but because of the way the story was written.
Extremely disappointing July 21, 2007
100 out of 257 found this review helpful
For a series that started so well and grew so strong through the fifth book, Rowling apparently decided to sit on the fortune she amassed and churn out garbage for the final two books. The excellent characterization, tight symbolic structure, and fascinating plot twists began to disappear in the sixth book and have crumbled away in this tedious and shallow final installment.
"The Deathly Hallows" is riddled with plot holes, continuity errors, and inexplicable characterization changes. When did Hermione, "the best in her year", get reduced to laundress and decide it was a good idea to Obliviate her parents? When did Ron, a well-meaning if rather insensitive clod, suddenly become a potential date rapist with his "gold" book on how to control witches--I thought the Imperius was illegal? And after all this time of Harry being an active protagonist, moving to counter Voldemort's actions, we find out that all Harry had to do was take another killing shot? And instead of the promised epilogue that tells us "everything" that happened to all the characters we grew so fond of, we get a trite scene that reads like a mediocre fan-fiction.
And that does not even cover the seeming complete lack of editing that left this book full of grammatical errors and misspellings.
I expected better of you , Ms. Rowling.
A disappointing end to a good series... August 11, 2007
98 out of 154 found this review helpful
I was really looking forward to this book, but the literary journey that should have been an joy instead became a slog. The lack of decent character building and plot development just killed the book for me. Here are my major complaints about the book:
* Major characters were killed off without a fitting send off.
* It felt like about 400 pages were spent on showing the kids camping out all over the UK, accomplishing nothing and coming up with no new ideas.
* The pacing and the writing, which I thought were good throughout the rest of the series, were choppy at best.
* The Deathly Hallows concept was extraneous and the execution lacked logic; the Horcruxes would have been enough of a basis for a story.
The bottom line is that I didn't think that this book matched the spirit and achievement of the other books. I didn't get the impression that the kids learned much this time, or that they earned the final victory. Only Neville ultimately seemed to shine and blossom.
I closed this book wanting to read some Anne McCaffrey or Mercedes Lackey, two "light fantasy" authors who certainly know a thing or two about pacing and character development. Having read this final book, I can't remember why I liked the first ones as much as I did, and I'm thinking of getting rid of all my Harry Potter books. I just can't see myself reading them again. It is really a shame that Rowling couldn't keep up the good writing through the entire series.
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