it is the wind, a rustle
I finished the final Harry Potter book early this morning. It was OK.
I think I understand why some people were upset with the books. It’s not that they’re particularly bad, but they’re just not particularly good, either. There are plenty of other examples in the genre that are just as good, and a not-inconsiderable number of examples that are significantly better. Rowling’s success seems to me (and probably to others) to be some quirk of fate or some miracle of marketing more than any kind of artistic success. I’ll just that that I did enjoy reading the books, and I found some of the plot elements fairly compelling. I had two main complains with the series:
First, the “magic incantations” I think were largely stupid. Grammatically incorrect Latin is not magic. If it were, every first year Latin student would be igniting his textbook every time he screwed up the declension of ignis. I’m not saying that I know more (or anything) about fire than Ms. Rowling, but that whole thing just struck me as incredibly jarring every time a new spell was introduced. The whole incantation thing was a great opportunity to make some clever and inventive puns, and mostly it was just dumb.
My more fundamental complaints has to do with setup and backstory. When reading a fantasy novel, or particularly a series of fantasy novels, the backstory of the world is often as (or more) interesting than the actual plot. A common tactic used by writers of fantasy is to weave the “plot important” facts into the backstory along with other piece of flavor, so that when some important revelation appears from the background, it seems to be arising from the rules of the world as they’ve been set forth and not from the author’s contrivance.
Rowling basically 100% fails in this capacity. Every important revelation is revealed to us scant chapters ahead of time. Without “spoiling” things, there’s a very important revelation about the mechanics of wand ownership that strongly affects a final confrontation. This whole “wand lore” issue could have been mentioned as early as the first book, and would have been a really interesting through-line to follow throughout the series. Hell, it even could have been mentioned early in the 7th book, but instead it’s brought up just a few chapters before it becomes important. This is a pattern throughout all the books, and it’s frankly pretty disappointing.
Anyways, that’s all. Good but not perfect, and certainly overrated books.
Now I’m reading Anansi Boys. It’s very good.